Guy Kawaski, A Social Media Influencer

Back in January, Forbes published a Top 50 Social Media Influencers list. I was told to choose someone off of this list to write a brief biography of their social media experience and their published work. I had no clue who to choose. So I went down the list and looked at their occupation and why they had such a big social media "pull". The first person who caught my attention was Guy Kawasaki, a former Apple evangelist with a social pull of 2, 651, who is ranked as #3 on the list of 50. I went to Guy's twitter page and began to read through his tweets. In less than two hours, he tweeted two things I am very interested in, The Hunger Games and Deadliest Catch. It was then that I decided to write my biography on him.

Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an "online magazine rack" of popular topics on the web. Guy is also a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. Previously Guy was the chief evangelist of Apple. He has a BA from Stanford University and has written ten books. Guy grew up in a tough part of Hawaii called Kalihi Valley. His parents worked as much as they could to ensure he and his sister always had what they needed. Guy attended a couple of different schools in pursuit of figuring what he wanted to do with his life. Guy worked for NOVA, a jewelry business, for a few years until the Apple II "removed the scales from my eyes". Later on down the road his roommate got him a job at Apple. Once he saw what Macintosh could do he thought he was in heaven. For years he "evangelized" Macintosh to software and hardware developers and "lead the charge against world-wide domination by IMB". By 1987, his job at Apple was done. Macintosh had all of the software they needed by then. He left Macintosh to start a Macintosh database company called ACIUS. To this day the 4th Dimension, one of the products, remains a great database. He ran that company for two years and then left to peruse writing, speaking, and consulting. In 1989, he and three others started another software company called Fog City Software. In 1995 he returned to Apple as an Apple fellow. At this time Apple was supposed to die. A couple years later, he left Apple again to start an angle investor matchmaking service called Garage.com with a couple others. Currently, he is a founding partner at Garage and co-founder of Alltop as well as a husband, father, author, speakers, and hockey addict.
            *All info on Guy Kawasaki's life is from http://www.guykawasaki.com/about/. 


If I was able to ask Guy Kawasaki any questions, they would be:

• What is your social media motto?
• Does Apple use social media effectively? (I love Apple!)
• What social media concepts do you think are most important to know?