Bill Townsend - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Bill Townsend is a businessman who helped build several Internet properties, most notably search engine Lycos, social networking pioneer sixdegrees.com, whose intellectual property formed the basis of LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,...

, GeoCities (sold to Yahoo!

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...

) and Deja (sold to Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

and ebay

EBay

eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...

Career

Townsend has founded, co-founded or served on the executive management teams at several Internet companies most notably Internet search engine Lycos

Lycos

Lycos, Inc. is a search engine and web portal established in 1994. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, webhosting, social networking, and entertainment websites.-Corporate history:...

.

He was formerly Executive Vice President, Office of the CEO at biometric authentication, transaction and loyalty firm, Pay By Touch

Pay By Touch

Pay By Touch was a company founded by John P Rogers. It was a privately held company which enabled consumers to pay for goods and services with a swipe of their finger on a biometric sensor...

and CEO at technology incubation firm Interminds. He served as VP Business Development at Deja News (now Google

Google

and eBay

EBay

), and assisted in the launch of GeoCities (now Yahoo!

Yahoo!

) and turnaround of NewsAlert, now Dow Jones MarketWatch and SixDegrees.com whose intellectual property was sold to create LinkedIn

Education

Townsend earned an MBA from Baylor University

Baylor University

Baylor University is a private, Christian university located in Waco, Texas. Founded in 1845, Baylor is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.-History:...

's Hankamer School of Business where he holds the John Schoen Entrepreneur-in-Residence chair and teaches leadership and entrepreneurship. He earned his BA at The College of Wooster.

Philanthropy

In 2000, Townsend founded The Amati Foundation, to help expand the stringed arts, specifically education in playing, making, and preserving the violin.
In 2006, he released a seminal study on consumer attitudes toward classical music events and how those attitudes affect attendance at orchestras in the United States and Europe. The study was featured in The Strad magazine. In 2009, The Amati Foundation moved its headquarters to California and opened an office in Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China. In 2010, The Amati Foundation partnered with ABC Television's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

Townsend began studying violin making under the tutelage of Ziang Mei then continued learning techniques from William Hilton (a student of Vhakn Nigogosian), and Alberti Genduso (who has studied with the German masters Horst Kloss and Karl Roy, director of the Bavarian State School of Violin Making in Mittenwald, Germany). In 2005 he introduced a wood treatment system to increase sonority and harmonics in instrument making. This system, Il Cremonese Violin Treatments, creates a base chemically matching the ground used by Antonio Stradivari

Antonio Stradivari

Antonio Stradivari was an Italian luthier and a crafter of string instruments such as violins, cellos, guitars, violas, and harps. Stradivari is generally considered the most significant artisan in this field. The Latinized form of his surname, Stradivarius, as well as the colloquial, "Strad", is...

from which to apply varnish and protect wood. One of his instruments was featured in The Smithsonian Institution's Heart & Hands exhibition about musical instruments and their makers.

Politics

Townsend was the 1992 Republican

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

candidate for United States Congress

United States Congress

The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

's 20th Congressional District, narrowly losing by 1½% to 16-year Democrat incumbent Austin J. Murphy.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.