Andrew John Hobsbawm (born 12 June 1963)[1] is an entrepreneur, writer and musician from London, England.[2][3][4][5][6] He co-founded Online Magic, a British new media company, which was acquired by Omnicom in 1997.[1] Hobsbawm is also a founder of EVRYTHNG and Do The Green Thing.[6][7][8][9]
He is a member of the British Interactive Media Association’s Digital Hall of Fame.[10][11]
Andy Hobsbawm is the son of the historian Eric Hobsbawm and Marlene Hobsbawm (née Schwartz) in London, England.[12] Hobsbawm attended sixth form college in Montreal, Canada, but did not go on to university to obtain a degree.[13][14] He joined a rock band, Tin Gods, after leaving school.[14]
While playing with Tin Gods, Hobsbawm responded to a newspaper ad soliciting entrepreneurs, which led to a position at magazine publisher APT Data.[14] During his tenure there, Hobsbawm formed Internet Publishing with Eamonn Wilmott to develop the first European e-zine, PowerPC News.[1][14][15][16]
Hobsbawm and Wilmott co-founded Online Magic, a leading British new media company in 1995.[1][17] Online Magic became the first international web agency and developed the first website that covered a British general election, GE97.[11][15][16][18][19] Omnicom’s Agency.com invested in Online Magic in 1997 and acquired it in 1998.[20] Hobsbawm, who had served as president of Online Magic, was appointed Agency.com’s chief creative officer for Europe.[21][22] Hobsbawm became chairman of Agency.com Europe in 2004. He left the company in 2009.[23]
In 2007, Hobsbawm co-founded Do The Green Thing, a social networking site for encouraging people to lead greener lives, with Naresh Ramchandani.[7][24][25] In 2008, Hobsbawm presented Do The Green Thing at TED in Monterey, California.[26] His lecture was later included as a TEDTalk.[27]
In 2011, Hobsbawm co-founded EVRYTHNG, a Web of Things software company.[9][28][29][30]
Hobsbawm has written articles for Forbes, the Financial Times and The Independent.[5][31][32] He was also a weekly columnist on the new economy for the Financial Times.[1][5][6][31] He is a co-author of The Economist’s Brands and Branding (ISBN 1576603504).[31][33]
Hobsbawm has also written three white papers, entitled "10 years on: The State of the Internet a Decade after Mosaic", "Small is the Next Big Thing: The Size and Shape of Commerce and Culture" and "Product Relationship Management: Turning physical products into owned digital media."[34][35][36]
Andy Hobsbawm, 36
In 1962 he married again, this time to Marlene Schwarz, of Austrian descent. They moved to Hampstead and bought a small second home in Wales. They had two children, Andrew and Julia.
