David Slade and Mark Calabrese Appointed to Senior Leadership Team
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, and CARMEL, IN – ChaCha, the leading human-powered Q&A site, announced the addition of David Slade and Mark Calabrese as General Managers to its executive team. Slade will manage expansion of ChaCha’s business in the online Q&A space, which, according to comScore, already represents the #1 mobile Web property as measured by time spent by smartphone users. ChaCha.com also ranks as a Top 50 online site, in terms of monthly unique visitors, according to Quantcast. Calabrese will lead development and implementation of the company’s mobile apps, executing ChaCha’s vision and strategy to lead in the Q&A category on all device platforms, including iOS and Android.
“Both David Slade and Mark Calabrese bring unique and seasoned experience scaling digital platforms, and we are pleased to have them as part of our team,” said Scott Jones, CEO of ChaCha. “As we continue a sustained record of high growth, we look forward to their leadership driving high-performance results for our business.”
Before joining ChaCha, Slade consulted for content and ecommerce startups. Prior to consulting, as Head of Product for CBS Interactive’s business technology sites, Slade led the relaunch of ZDNet and TechRepublic Web sites, revamping monetization strategies and driving both sites’ mobile Web, app, and social strategies. Slade was also previously the CTO of Online Technologies, at VNU Business Media Europe, the European division of the Dutch-American media conglomerate, formerly named VNU and now known as Nielsen.
With more than two decades of experience as an IT strategist and change agent, Calabrese has created successful operations and service delivery environments for start-ups and Fortune 500 companies. Before joining ChaCha, Calabrese was the Director of Global Services for Thomas Reuters Elite, an end-to-end enterprise business management solutions company. There, he worked to scale and refine performance of global service delivery, increasing client satisfaction and profitability.
Slade will be based in ChaCha’s recently opened San Francisco office while Calabrese will be based at the company’s national headquarters in Carmel, Indiana. Both will report to CEO Scott Jones.
ChaCha’s new appointments come on the heels of the company’s recognition as the top answer provider on mobile devices for accuracy from the Butler UniversityQ&A Intelligence Index according to Butler Business Accelerator’s “Study on Q&A Platforms” released just last week. Further validating ChaCha’s utility to users, ChaCha.com ranked as the #1 mobile Web site in comScore’s January 2013 Mobile Metrix Key Measures report, when measured by average minutes per smartphone visitor.
For more information about ChaCha, please visit: http://www.chacha.com/.
About ChaCha
ChaCha is the leading source for free real-time Q&A. Through its unique “ask-a-smart-friend” platform, ChaCha has answered over 2 billion questions since launch from more than 40 million unique users per month via online (ChaCha.com), iPhone app, Android app, mobile text (242-242), and voice (1-800-2-ChaCha™). ChaCha is one of the fastest-growing mobile and online publishers according to comScore, Nielsen, and Quantcast; was named by Forbes as one of America’s Most Promising Companies; and is a Red Herring Global Top 100 Company. Follow ChaCha on Twitter: @ChaCha and @ChaChaMan.
