Sidebar Expands Management Team; Patrick Kennedy Joins as President and CEO and Kieran Hannon Joins as COO

LOS ANGELES -- (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Sidebar (www.sidebar.com), a free mobile application that allows users to receive personalized recommendations for news, games, music, apps and other entertainment content, announced today the addition of two senior executives to the management team. Patrick Kennedy joins the company as president and CEO and Kieran Hannon joins as COO.

Prior to Sidebar, Kennedy worked with digital media companies to develop new content discovery, marketing and distribution opportunities. He spent almost two years as a strategic advisor to the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA). Before this, Kennedy spent eight years at Sony Pictures Digital, serving as executive vice president. He managed the day-to-day strategic operations of the Sony Digital Networks Division, where he oversaw Sony’s entry into mobile entertainment and the creation of Sony Pictures Mobile. He also led the studio’s online digital media marketing, licensing, and distribution efforts and built and managed Sony Corporation’s digital services platform for connecting content to devices. Patrick also held the position of executive vice president at Technicolor.

Before Sidebar, Hannon served as CMO of online retailer Cooking.com where he helped the company expand its base with new partners and reach customers in innovative ways. Prior to this, Hannon was executive vice president of marketing at Helio where he spearheaded the company’s brand development across traditional and non-traditional marketing channels. Before this, he served as vice president of marketing for the RadioShack Corporation where he developed the company’s first integrated marketing campaign in more than 10 years, which ushered in the most successful sales day in the company’s history. Hannon also served as president of Grey Worldwide in San Francisco. Hannon will lead the company’s sales, marketing, content and distribution activities.

“Consumers are overwhelmed with the sheer volume of mobile content available and simply can’t keep up with the constantly growing library of smartphone apps and other mobile content that they would be interested in,” said Kennedy. “Sidebar solves this dilemma by delivering content that is personalized to users’ likes and interests. We send it directly to their phones in an unobtrusive way. The engineering team, led by CTO Eric Wilson, has built a sophisticated application that will greatly improve the content discovery experience.”

The company recently completed a highly successful consumer trial conducted with a Tier 1 carrier that validated Sidebar’s appeal and ability to stimulate content consumption and engagement. The trial included 5,000 smartphone users and, in a survey taken after its completion, they gave Sidebar high marks for being “easy to use” and “a fun way to get information.” Nearly half of the surveyed active users expressed that they were more likely to consume mobile content as a result of their use of Sidebar and 20 percent said that they shared, bought or downloaded a product or service that they discovered in Sidebar.

“The trial was a clear validation that mobile users find Sidebar to be an effective way to discover and engage with content,” said Hannon. “Combining this with our personalization engine allows us to communicate 1:1 with consumers on a level previously unheard of in mobile. Marketers and content owners have been looking for an efficient way to reach the mobile user and Sidebar now delivers exactly this.”

Sidebar allows smartphone users to receive personalized recommendations with content delivered daily. Sidebar learns users’ interests so that it becomes highly personalized to each individual over time. Sidebar offers instant gratification so users spend time enjoying content rather than searching for it and it is cached for one click access. Selections are pulled from a wide range of mobile media – applications, music downloads, podcasts, RSS feeds, video, wallpaper, ringtones and more.

About Sidebar

Sidebar is a free mobile app that makes it easy for smartphone users to discover and share games, apps, video, news, lifestyle and entertainment content. Sidebar creates highly personalized recommendations so consumers can spend more time interacting with content and less time looking for it. The company is funded by Mobile Media Ventures and is headquartered in Santa Monica, Calif. For more information, visit www.sidebar.com.