Ali Aydar is a computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur. He is currently the
chief executive officerA chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
at
SporcleSporcle is a trivia quiz website launched in July 2007. According to the website's founder Matt Ramme, the name Sporcle is inspired by the word 'oracle'...
.
He is best known as an early employee and key technical contributor at the original
NapsterNapster is an online music store and a Best Buy company. It was originally founded as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files that were typically digitally encoded music as MP3 format files...
, the file-sharing service created by
Shawn FanningShawn Fanning is an American computer programmer, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor. He developed Napster, one of the first popular peer-to-peer file sharing platforms, in 1998. The popularity of Napster was widespread and Fanning was featured on the cover of Time magazine...
in 1999, and at
SNOCAPBackgroundThe company was founded by Shawn Fanning , Jordan Mendelson, and Ron Conway. Other SNOCAP employees included music lawyer Christian Castle, the company's first General Counsel, and Ali Aydar, the company's Chief Operating Officer, who joined imeem after its acquisition of SNOCAP in April...
, the
digital rightsThe term digital rights describes the permissions of individuals legitimately to perform actions involving the use of a computer, any electronic device, or a communications network...
and content management
startupA startup company or startup is a company with a limited operating history. These companies, generally newly created, are in a phase of development and research for markets...
Fanning founded after Napster. He was also
chief operating officerA Chief Operating Officer or Director of Operations can be one of the highest-ranking executives in an organization and comprises part of the "C-Suite"...
of
imeemThe online service imeem was a social media web site where users interacted with each other by streaming, uploading and sharing music and music videos...
, which acquired SNOCAP in 2008.
Aydar's experiences working at Napster were documented in two books: Joseph Menn's definitive Napster biography,
All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster, and Steve Knopper's
Appetite for Self Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age.
Early life
Ali Aydar was born in
Richmond, VirginiaRichmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...
and grew up in
Napoleon, MichiganNapoleon is an unincorporated community in Napoleon Township of Jackson County in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also a Census-designated place for statistical purposes and without any legal status as an incorporated municipality...
. In
high schoolHigh school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
, he ran a
Bulletin Board SystemA Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...
by the name of "Awesome Fred's BBS." After
high schoolHigh school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
, he attended
Carnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
, where he majored in
mathematicsMathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
and
computer scienceComputer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
. While there, Aydar was a contributor to the
Free Internet Chess ServerThe Free Internet Chess Server is a volunteer-run Internet chess server. It was organised as a free alternative to the Internet Chess Club , after that site began charging for membership.-History:...
, an open-source project that enabled people to play online chess for free. This experience led to Aydar co-founding online chess startup chess.net with
John FanningJohn Fanning was the Founding Chairman and CEO of Napster. He founded the company with his nephew Shawn Fanning. He owned 70% of the company and represented the founders on the board of directors...
, the uncle of Napster creator Shawn Fanning, in 1996.
Career
While working at chess.net, Aydar first met Fanning's then 15-year old nephew, Shawn. In
All the Rave, Joseph Menn notes that Shawn interned for chess.net in the summer of 1997, sleeping on a couch in the living room. That summer, Aydar and the other chess.net employees became close with the younger Fanning, who was just learning
computer programmingComputer programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in one or more programming languages. The purpose of programming is to create a program that performs specific operations or exhibits a...
. Aydar bought Fanning his first book on programming in
C++C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
, the language he would use two years later to build the Napster file-sharing software.
Napster
After leaving chess.net, Aydar moved to
ChicagoChicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, where he worked as a banker. In late 1998, Shawn Fanning contacted Aydar via instant messenger to tell him about a software application he was writing that would enable people to share music. Fanning was then a freshman at Northeastern University.
In August 1999, Aydar moved to
CaliforniaCalifornia is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
's
Silicon ValleySilicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
to work for a startup. Within weeks, he was recruited to join Napster. He joined in September 1999, becoming its first non-founding employee.
Initially, Aydar was an individual contributor to Napster's engineering team. Eventually, he moved into a management role as Napster's senior director of technology, where he was responsible for managing the development of Napster's next-generation legal service.
Aydar authored Napster’s
search engineA search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
software, which supported the millions of search queries Napster users made every day. At that time, Napster was the fastest-growing application in the history of the Internet; at its peak, the service had over 85 million
registered userA registered user is one who uses a program or a website and provides his/her credentials, effectively proving his/her identity.-Technical differences:...
s and 2 million simultaneous users around the world. Aydar’s server software infrastructure successfully scaled to handle the exponential increase in Napster search queries, helping support Napster’s unprecedented growth.
Following Napster's shutdown and subsequent
bankruptcyBankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
, Aydar served as an advisor to the management team of software company
RoxioRoxio is a division and brand of Sonic Solutions . Roxio branded products are sold online, through over 15,000 retail outlets, to organizations through volume license agreements and pre-loaded onto OEM PC's and devices...
during its 2003 acquisition of music service
PressplayPressplay was the name of an online music store from 2002 - 2003 created as a joint venture between Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment. The two record labels provided music via subscription for pressplay along with BMG, EMI, Warner Music Group and various independent labels. It was...
.
SNOCAP
In June 2003, Aydar joined Shawn Fanning,
Jordan MendelsonJordan Mendelson was the Chief Architect of the original Napster from 1999 to 2002. After Napster, Mendelson and Shawn Fanning founded Snocap in 2002. Jordan Mendelson served as Founder and Chief Architect of Snocap for five years, leaving in 2007 to develop a new start-up...
and
Ron ConwayRon Conway is an American angel investor, often described as one of the "super angels". Conway is recognized as a strong networker and is based in Silicon Valley.-Early career:...
at SNOCAP, the digital rights and content management startup Fanning founded after Napster's collapse. A significant number of its employees were people who had worked for Napster; an August 2005 profile in
TIMETime is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
magazine noted that "27% of SNOCAP's employees are Napster veterans."
Aydar served as SNOCAP's chief operating officer from the company's inception through its acquisition by imeem in 2008, and for a year also served as its interim CEO. He co-invented SNOCAP's digital registry and MyStore technologies. While at SNOCAP, he also completed an MBA from the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
on a part-time basis.
imeem
Aydar joined imeem as part of its acquisition of SNOCAP in April 2008, and served as the company's chief operating officer. He was an early advisor to imeem, serving on its
board of directorsA board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...
from 2003 until 2007. imeem was acquired by
MySpaceMyspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
in December 2009.
External links