March 5, 2007

Ahmad-Taylor Busts a Move

By Shirley Brady

Comcast’s senior director of interactive products has left the building. Tired of commuting four hours a day between his Manhattan home and Comcast’s Philly HQ, Ty Ahmad-Taylor quietly joined MTV Networks in January as VP of product development for MTVN’s music group and Logo.

He’s helping expand MTVN’s virtual world franchise that kicked off in September with Virtual Laguna Beach and was followed by Virtual Hills. For the spring, Ahmad-Taylor is developing the next virtual online communities around MTV’s brands. First up: VMTV (or MusicWorld — the name is still being finalized), a 3-D animated music-based cyberspace environment where users choose avatars to visit virtual clubs, interact and enjoy musical acts, videos and other virtual experiences.

The San Francisco Bay Area native got his start in cable as creative director of @Home Networks in 1997, where he helped create next-generation portals for broadband and interactive television. He took a year sabbatical in 2000, quitting when @Home became Excite@Home, to take French cooking lessons in London, snowboard in Lake Tahoe and generally decompress from the @Home experience and plot his next move.

That turned out to be on the West Coast as chief creative architect for MetaTV, where he created interactive portals for Cox, EchoStar and other MSOs, including Comcast, which convinced him to sign on as director of strategic planning for Comcast Cable and Comcast Interactive Media. He also helped craft and execute Comcast’s wireless strategy before becoming senior director for cross-platform applications.

Now living and working in New York, where Ty and his wife Klaire have a toddler, Kilian, he’s also busy this year helping MTVN’s Logo group launch its virtual community, LogoWorld, following MTV’s virtual spin-off.