via TweetDeck

TripIt is far and above my favourite way to track my travel, and Alaska has a great policy for refunding airfare price drops – I may never hesitate to buy a ticket again!

Or you might be viewing your source code and finding prescription drug names popping up suspiciously. Not that I know anyone who has had that problem recently. Certainly not me. No…. no, siree. Not I.

*cough*

Also, I should submit the title of my post to anti-joke.com.

I worked at an amazing startup called iLike until Myspace acquired us at the end of last year. Both were great experiences for me professionally, and I had fun.  But alas, it is the end of that era. Myspace recently went through some fairly exhaustive layoffs and I’m now unemployed. I hold no ill will towards Myspace, they did the best they could and for a year I fought hard for them.  In the end, they treated us quite fairly.

Now, I’m on to my new full time job: looking for a job. It may seem counter-intuitive, but I’m excited. It’s been a long time since I’ve had the opportunity to really step back and imagine where I would like to go professionally. It has made me think a lot about why I do what I do and what direction I want to go with it.

My conclusion so far is that I love (love love love) being a product manager. Thinking about user scenarios. Friendly, intuitive interactions that make people smile. Problem solving. Being decisive and unafraid. Going to battle with a great team. Getting to the root cause of issues, and with any luck solving an issue before it has a chance to ship.  It all makes you want to come into work in the morning.

Previously, heading support meant cleaning up product’s messes. Treating only the symptoms. Being in product gave me a chance to dig into the causes. Where were users going to get hung up? Was this designed for superusers or for someone who’s never seen our product before? What were the assumptions we were making? Was it easy? Was it quick? How many clicks did it take to accomplish something?   It was a breath of fresh air.  It was like moving from the urgent treatment ward in the hospital to the preventative care section. Finally, power to make things better from the gate!

Suffice to say, I find work of this nature very rewarding and fulfilling, which makes this the most exciting job hunt of my life.  I know what I want to do. Now I just need to find a team and a product that I can direct my energy into, something that I deeply believe in, and a place where I can continue to grow.

Special thanks to Beth Goza, Karen Clark, and Alexis Hebert for being such great co-panelists; and to Harmony for recording this.

I won’t delve into the details here on my personal blog, but I did want to make note of the occasion and that I think it’s a great move for all involved. This is the culmination of a lot of hard work. Things have been exciting here and busy, busy, busy… We’re all revved up for the challenges and opportunities that our upcoming changes will bring. This positions us ideally for continued innovation in tools for artists, as well as being the foremost facilitator of community between artists and their fans. The whole team will be moving to Fox Interactive in Seattle, and I’m looking forward to meeting everyone there soon.

The last few years with iLike have just flown by, it seems like yesterday we had four million users, and now we’re past fifty five million users. Today marks the beginning of a new chapter! I’m so glad to be a part of this experience, and a part of an amazing team.

The iLike team earlier this year with Jason Mraz