Very thankfully, Fi has been a successful pioneer in providing the highest quality interactive services for a dream client list, which has earned us an FWA hall of fame placement and recognition as the third most admired company in Imagine Publishing's list, after Apple and Pixar. That's amazing, but we feel we can strive to do even better.

Over the past few years, the Youtube's and MySpace's have done an absolutely fantastic job driving traffic. It is an interesting evolution from when Fi began, and the Lycos's and Altavistas were conquering the internet. As with the concept of a “website” back in 1999, I feel nobody has tickled my fancy when it comes to the UGC and social media world. I believe there is enormous potential in anything that delivers what the consumer wants, is well executed in its delivery and continually evolves to meet changing needs and expectations. I have always believed in myself and Fi, so we took the leap and invested in Kontain passionately and financially.

Still today in 2008 (almost 2009!) my parents in Ireland have trouble sending me videos of a recent holiday or photos of their new puppy. The challenge in getting the mainstream public to easily contain and share their life is something I hear about almost daily from Fi's peers and Fortune 100 clients. Kontain is focused on Mom and Dad first and providing a place to store your content and share it easily in a beautiful format online, with encouragement to upload regularly and get user feedback second.

Media blogging is what it boils down to, but Kontain is really blogging for the mainstream folks on Earth. Blogging as a concept has become attached to political voices, journalism, tech savy users and time investment - which will by nature result in a smaller contributing audience. We looked at countless sites and platforms out there, hunting for what they do well and improving upon that. We love the blog idea, it's an advanced version of a public diary in our view. But to make it appeal to both me and the mainstream internet user, we needed to use the blog format as a tool to engage people and encourage and challenge them to keep posting and Kontaining their lives. We added a media focus over a text focus, the ability to easily share or contain your photos, videos and audio. With the staggering number of users with digital cameras across all demographics, there are trillions of photos and videos taken that are put to rest on local hard-drives that never see the light of day.

As with everything, Fi believes in pushing, evolving and breaking through new interactive frontiers. We don't think Kontain “alpha” is the complete answer to the challenges we see in the UGC and social media space. But we strongly believe Kontain will provide some answers as it continues to develop. Kontain will start as a utility, positioned to organically and seamlessly introduce community features that make sense for and speak to our users. What is so exciting to me about Fi and Kontain is we never feel finished as others may, we are genuinely just getting started and our passion for enriching people's lives through interactivity grows with each user visiting an Fi experience.

David Hugh Martin
CEO & Founder
Fi