SocialSev

Earlier this month, I had the privilege of meeting and spending time with Josh Catone. If you don’t recognize his name, chances are you’d recognize his work. Josh is currently the Features Editor for Mashable, the world’s most widely-read social media blog (source: compete.com). Digging a little deeper into Josh’s past, one could easily mistake his résumé for the subscriptions list of a techie’s RSS reader.

Josh started his illustrious career writing for the wildly popular computing magazine, Maximum PC… while he was still in high school. But he was just getting warmed up. Before he landed his next high profile writing gig, Josh launched Rails Forum, a community for Ruby on Rails users. Today, that site receives 25K-35K unique visitors per month. He then spent over a year as the Lead Writer/Editor for ReadWriteWeb before accepting the Lead Blogger position at SitePoint. Earlier this year, Josh took on the role of Community Manager for DandyID, a data portability platform for online identity management. But that gig would be short-lived, as Mashable came knocking this spring.

Although Mr. Catone has firmly established himself as a social media rock star, you’d never know it by talking to him. He’s one of the most down-to-earth, humble people that I’ve ever met in this industry. The night that I met Josh, he also introduced me to a friend of his who didn’t use Twitter, Facebook, or any of the other IP’s that we’re all so addicted to. In the social media world, that’s a lot like being Amish. But I also believe it’s one of the many ways that Josh keeps himself grounded, a trait that likely fueled his success over the years. Read the rest of this entry »