Cape Town based
Matthew developed a passion for all things digital at an early age when, as a seven-year-old, he began programming on his first computer. He has spoken and guest-lectured on online media issues around the world, including New York, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Ireland and Kenya.
While GM at Mail & Guardian Online, the online business underwent a turnaround, achieving historically high revenue and readership numbers, regularly featuring as one of the country’s top ten websites and the third biggest news site (Nielsen//Netratings). Under his watch the site went through a complete overhaul, redesign and redevelopment, which included building a new CMS, inhouse from the ground up. In recent times the site launched 11 new online brands and 7 new mobile sites, including the flagship m.mg.co.za. The site’s Thought Leader “editorial blog” and newsinphotos.co.za were recognised by the 2008 Webby’s alongside big international brands like the New York Times, CNN, CNBC, CBS, New York Observer and Washingtonpost.com. It also won “SA Blog of Year 2008”.
He founded and now heads an incubation, innovation division at 24.com, the country’s largest online operation. He previously headed up South African online news publisher Mail & Guardian Online
, the oldest on the African continent, which is also co-owned by the UK’s Guardian Newspapers Ltd. He also owns a web development and consulting company.
For what it’s worth, he was in 2009 named one of “SA’s top 100 most influential media and advertising people” by The Annual for his work in new media. The Mail & Guardian also named him one of “300 Young South Africans you should take out to lunch”, (although this has yet to result in any free lunches). He was also named an upcoming New Media “Mogul” by FHM magazine & nominated for the 2009 Men’s Health “Best Man” awards.
Matthew has been involved in the online medium in various capacities, almost since its inception in this country. He worked for the BBC's commercial website division in London (beeb.com) just before “the crash”, South African portal iafrica.com, M-Net's Carte Blanche and Avusa (formerly Johncom) Publishing. He is a former chair and founder-member of the local Online Publishers Association (www.opa.org.za) and director of Creative Commons, South Africa. He co-founded award-winning editorial blog Thought Leader (a 2008 Webby Honoree) and blog aggregator amatomu.com.
Matthew is a prominent blogger and one of his proudest moments was when his blog scooped "best business blog" at the 2008 SA blog awards. He has shared the stage with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales in a talk on “Future Web Trends” in 2007.
Matthew is a tech commentator on Cape Talk 567 and Radio 2000. He’s a contributor to US journalism site Poynter Online (www.poynter.org) and former columnist for The Media magazine (www.mg.co.za/netsavvy). He was a judge at the HighWay Africa new media awards and e.tv show the Amstel Salute to Success where entrepreneurs were awarded for pitching winning business models.
He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Rhodes University, with three majors in journalism, philosophy and history. Matthew is a new media graduate and knows no other medium!