About Us
What is 360voice.com?
360voice is a leading online community for the Xbox 360 with a twist. Using unique technology, the data from your Xbox Live gamercard is transformed from a snapshot into a rich history of your gaming, told in blog format from the perspective of your Xbox. This allows for conversations around specific daily achievements and events like gamer score increases and your most played games. In addition to the blog content, users can interact by leaving comments, compete in gamer score challenges, and gather badges for various site and cross-game accomplishments.
Who runs 360voice.com?
Trapper Markelz (ChangeAgent), Stephen Sopp (Fatty Chubs) and David Larrabee (Squidpunch).
Trapper Markelz was born in Alaska, went to school at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and lives in Arlington, MA with his wife and daughter. He is currently VP of Products for GamerDNA, Inc.
Steve Sopp was born in Pennsylvania, graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology, and lives in Cambridge, MA with his wife and dog. He is currently the lead data architect for GamerDNA, Inc.
David Larrabee was born, and still lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and two children. He is currently working as an Applications Developer for New York City Vacation Packages.
We have personal websites at www.trappermarkelz.com, www.istephen.com and www.squidpunch.com.
Steve is an Xbox MVP and we are all members of the Xbox Community Developer Program (XCDP).
Steve and Trapper have been working on numerous internet projects since college. They were the first people to record super bowl commercials and put them online for voting (1998). They were involved with teamdvd.com, one of the first review sites for DVD movies when the media was brand new. They also were involved with filmtease.com, the first movie review sites to utilize IM-style conversational reviews. 360voice.com is their latest collaboration, and they never dreamed it would attract enough attention to allow them to go full time working on gamer communities.
David has worked on numerous projects in the Xbox community (TheLiveEye, 360friendspot) and joined the team in February 2008.
How did you come up with the idea for your site?
As a member of the Xbox Community Developer Program, Steve had access to the live gamer feeds and was playing around with the data. I attended the O'Reily Emerging Technologies conference where I heard Bruce Sterling give a keynote about blogjects (a term coined by Julian Bleecker)... futuristic objects that write "blogs" about their interactions with the world and other devices just like humans write about their interactions with the world and other people. In discussing this keynote with Steve, it didn't take long for us to see how this academic concept could relate to the Xbox 360, albeit in a much more scaled back fashion. We got quick prototype of the idea up and running in a few days. The response from the prototype was so huge that we immediately developed it into a full blown product which became 360voice.com.
What new features are coming next?
New features for 360voice are always in the works! Also be sure to check out GamerDNA.com where the success of 360voice will hopefully move beyond just the Xbox and into the wider gaming universe!
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