David Shing (born 1970), also known as "Shingy", is an Australian marketing executive. He held various senior marketing positions at

AOL AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo (2017� ...

between 2007 and 2019.

Personal life

David Shing grew up in suburban Australia. He studied at

Billy Blue William Blue (c. 1767 – 7 May 1834) was an Australian convict who, after completing his sentence, became a boatman providing one of the first services to take people across Sydney Harbour. He was also made a water bailiff and watched boat tr ...

design school in Sydney.

Career

In 2007, Shing began a long relationship with

as the Marketing Director for AOL Europe. In 2010, he was promoted to VP Media and Marketing for AOL international. In 2011, he became the company's self-named "Digital Prophet". He was charged with promoting the company by speaking at conferences and events, including

SXSW South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Te ...

and

TEDx TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...

. He stayed on at

Oath Traditionally an oath (from Anglo-Saxon ', also called plight) is either a statement of fact or a promise taken by a sacrality as a sign of verity. A common legal substitute for those who conscientiously object to making sacred oaths is to ...

and later

Verizon Media Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...

after AOL's purchase by

Verizon Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...

. He left in 2019.

Public image

Shing has spoken at many live events, the coverage of which has focused on his unusual fashion sense, his idiosyncratic speaking style and his unclear role within AOL (with ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

''s Adam Gabbatt stating, for example, that the definition of a Digital Prophet "remains unclear"). His appearance on

MSNBC MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and political ...

and the follow-up article in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' made him the focal point for a conversation around the meaning behind

buzzword A buzzword is a word or phrase, new or already existing, that becomes popular for a period of time. Buzzwords often derive from technical terms yet often have much of the original technical meaning removed through fashionable use, being simply used ...

s in the

media industry Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets. Broadcast media transmit information e ...

. Some have gone so far as to describe his lectures as "pure gibberish," though they are defended as "less outlandish in context" by the advertisers he works with. Although he has been described as a symbol of AOL's "uncertainty and aimlessness" and even "everything that's wrong with corporate America," it has also been argued that the Digital Prophet moniker disguised a "fairly standard role" within the company.

In popular culture

A character named "Shangy", transparently parodying Shing, appears in the comedy sketch show ''

W/ Bob & David ''W/ Bob & David'' is a comedy sketch show created by and starring Bob Odenkirk and David Cross that premiered on Netflix on November 13, 2015. The sketch show consists of four half-hour episodes plus an hour-long making-of special entitled "Be ...

''.

References

External links

* http://www.shingy.com/ - Homepage {{DEFAULTSORT:Shing, David 1970 births Living people AOL employees Technology evangelists