Soraya Darabi claims she’s a would-be harmonica player on Twitter, and it’s easy to see why she doesn’t have time to take that show on the road. She’s busy preparing PressLift for its Social Media Week debut, while also contributing to Social Media Week’s board, to name a couple of her latest commitments. Fortunately for all of us, she took the time to serve as the guinea pig in the SMW blog’s interview series; we’ll have features with more social media movers coming up.
Social Media Week: What are you most looking forward to during Social Media Week?
Soraya Darabi: Apart from the panel drop.io is hosting, the PressLift event, and an event I’m hosting with Caroline McCarthy, Alli Mooney and Emily Gannett called “Digital Divas,” to honor women in technology, I’m looking forward to the New York Times panels, the Charitini /Think Social non-for-profit panel and the special New York Tech Meetup hosted by Scott Heiferman of Meetup.
How is PressLift going to contribute to SMW?
PressLift is in open-beta now, but we will officially launch during Social Media Week. Both Steve Greenwood and I are on the Social Media Week advisory board and PressLift is an official communications partner of SMW. Plus, drop.io is a partnered organization. Clearly, we’re involved and looking forward to the events and festivities, and spreading the word about them as best possible.
You recently moved from one of the most established brands in traditional media to a relatively new startup where you’re launching a new product. How does the experience compare?
SD: Comparing The New York Times to drop.io is not easy. I loved my job at The Times and the thrill of working for a celebrated, around-the-clock news and information organization was unparalleled.
What’s great about drop.io is that even though it’s a Time magazine “Top 50″ Web site with millions of users, the company truly has that fun and energetic start up vibe. I work directly with a team of 14 brilliant technology enthusiasts.
If you’re on a desert island and your phone can only tap into enough bandwidth to download a single mobile application, what would you choose?
Am I alone on this island? If not, and there are a few tiki hot spots, then I’d say foursquare. But if alone, my answer is the Classics app. I hope my mobile device is the Apple tablet.
If you could pick any person living or dead to be the patron saint of social media, who would you choose and why?
This question is making me laugh. I don’t know… Tom from MySpace? With over 270 million friends he most definitely deserves the honor.
-Interview by David Berkowitz, Sr. Director of Emerging Media & Innovation at 360i
