Posted on June 12, 2012 by Tracy Boyer Clark

Editor’s Note: II is now published by UNC Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Read Post here.

 

After much thought and deliberation, I am excited to announce that I am selling Innovative Interactivity. After nearly five years of sweat and tears, I have decided to step aside and let someone else (or another entity) take over the site and ensure its continued growth. I am open to considering any and all proposals so please email me at innovativeinteractivity@gmail.com if you would like to learn more!

Included in the deal will be rights to the entire site (including an archive of 712 posts, 157 of which are bilingual), the Facebook page (1,110 fans), the Twitter account @iitweets (2,900 followers), and the innovativeinteractivity@gmail.com email address. I’m happy to stay on as an advisor and/or feature blogger as the new owner transitions in and I transition out.

In 2011 the site received more than 81,000 visitors from 183 countries/territories, who viewed more than 130,000 pages and spent on average 2.5 minutes on the site each visit. I’m happy to go over more specific traffic numbers with potential buyers on an individual basis.

I never knew exactly when the time would come to sell this blog, but I always knew it was imminent ever since I separated the site’s identity from my name back in 2008. I started blogging in 2007 after learning about the importance of blogging during the Poynter Summer Fellowship. Writing this blog was truly a roller coaster of highs (such as meeting and interacting with each of you) and lows (such as losing the $10,000 blogging scholarship back in 2010). Regardless, the lessons I have learned throughout this experience have been invaluable and I sincerely thank each and every one of you for showing your support along the way.

So why am I selling the site? By constantly blogging about exceptional multimedia I learned that although multimedia is my passion, my expertise is certainly not in producing it! Rather, I love the strategy and marketing behind it. Who is the audience? How do you make it profitable? How do you build loyalty? How do you value and price the experience? Answering these types of questions are crucial to determining the sustainability of media and unfortunately I have noticed that many times people produce multimedia without thinking about the business model behind it. Going forward I am hoping to help fill this void.

Another important lesson I have learned is that multimedia is not limited to journalism. Rather, today it is ubiquitous: People use it in marketing, advertising, academia, philanthropy, journalism, etc. Storytelling is all around us, both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C).

I graduated from UNC Chapel Hill last month with the first MBA/MSIS (Information Science). In taking marketing courses during my MBA, I learned that I absolutely love the marketing side of media and technology. Thus, today I am thrilled to announce that I have accepted a Mobile Marketing Manager role at IBM within their WebSphere portfolio. I am ecstatic to learn from the tried-and-true technology giant in the industry while helping to shape the mobile strategy for one of its largest product lines.

To all of my journalism colleagues, mentors and friends: I want you all to know that I am not “leaving” the media industry. I honestly believe that the lines between media and technology are blurring more and more each day. For instance, IBM excels in data visualization with ManyEyes and gaming with Serious Games. I also loved recently learning that IBM teamed up with USC Annenberg Innovation Lab to develop the data visualization tool BigSheets, which IBM and USC used to analyze oscars data in real-time for the LA Times Oscars Sentimeter tool. Did I note that BigSheets was built with Hadoop, a NOSQL technology that I recently blogged about after taking a class strictly on NOSQL databases?? This field truly amazes me more every day I’m in it and I’m thrilled to jump in even more now that I am done with graduate school.

And, on a personal note, I just purchased my first home with my husband and we finally get to live together (and in the same city) after doing long distance for our entire seven year relationship. I am excited for what lies ahead and I hope you will continue to interact with me so I can keep abreast of everything that you all are doing! I have made a separate Twitter account so please follow me @tracyboyerclark and connect with me on LinkedIn.

Again, thank you to each and every one of you for being part of this site’s success and I hope you continue to read and support II regardless of its new owner. Best wishes to all of you and I look forward to what the future has in store for us all!

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• Announcing II’s proud new owner: UNC Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication! →