David Balter '93 to discuss innovation and shifting landscape of the Web
Few Skidmore alumni have navigated the emerging world of social media with greater
success than David Balter ’93, who in 2004 was featured in a cover story in the New
York Times Magazine for his launch of BzzAgent, his pathbreaking social-marketing
firm.
David Balter '93
An innovation-obsessed builder of companies, Balter now serves as executive chair
of BzzAgent and as a member of the global executive team and global head of investments
for Dunnhumby, a top “customer science” firm, to which he sold BzzAgent in 2011. A
cofounder of the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association, Balter also is CEO of Smarterer,
a venture-backed startup that assesses digital, social and technical skills.
In his April 15 dialog with Catherine Hill, Skidmore’s Harder Professor of Business
Administration, Balter will share his perspective on the ever-shifting landscape of
the virtual world and describe the wealth of opportunities he sees for entrepreneurs,
marketers, interactive designers, and content creators. The discussion, titled “Innovating
on the Web and in Business,” will start at 7 p.m. in Gannett Auditorium in Palamountain
Hall. A light dessert reception in the Class of 1967 Lobby will follow the discussion.
Connecting people and their favorite brands since 2001, BzzAgent remains the nation’s
leading social marketing company. It puts products in the hands of hundreds of thousands
of everyday consumers and helps them share their opinions of them with friends and
family via reviews, Facebook posts, blog posts, photos, videos, and more.
Founded in 2010, the Google-backed Smarterer uses crowd-sourcing to help large enterprises
create skill inventories; its technology can validate anyone’s skill in just about
any area in ten questions, 120 seconds.
