Social Q&A website Formspring is looking to take its product to the next level, starting with snagging two key senior-level hires from Nokia and Linden Lab, creators of Second Life.
Later today, Formspring will announce that it has hired Rob Storrs to be its head of engineering and Tom Wang to be its head of product. They started with Formspring earlier this month, CEO Ade Olonoh told me last week.
Rob Storrs was the director of web development at Linden Lab, the company behind the Second Life virtual world. There, he created and oversaw different engineering teams focused on social networking, search, virtual goods and e-commerce.
Tom Wang was the VP of product at social networking service Plum before its acquisition by Nokia in 2009. Before that, he was the VP of product at Break Media and a director of product management at AOL.
Growth and Challenges
Both are definitely impressive hires for a company that's been, for the most part, on the rise. Formspring was launched just 10 months ago, but it already has 17 employees, 20 million users and 1 billion questions answered. We can think of a lot of startups that would love that type of traction.
The social Q&A service is also a power player on Twitter, apparently; Olonoh told me that 1 to 2% of all tweets are related to Formspring, an incredibly impressive number that is actually believable when you search for Formspring on the microblogging service.