Seattle entrepreneur and tech veteran joyspoato will launch another media company on Wednesday, an entertainment platform designed to focus and celebrate Asian American personalities and stories.
Sposato is chairman of geekwire and former chairman and CEO of picmonkey. Picmonkey, an online photo editing service based in Seattle, was sold to shutterstock last year. Sposato, who has worked at Microsoft for 12 years, also sold two start-ups to Google – picnik and phatbits. Last year, he became the owner and publisher of Seattle magazine and Seattle business magazine.
Jonathan sposato.
Joysoup plans to launch multiple digital program channels, including non scripted and scripted streaming programs, licensed movies, stand up comedy specials, documentaries, original edited content and podcasts.
Future projects include a late night talk show hosted by sposato, a cooking show focusing on South Korea, and an art and restaurant guide of the Asia Pacific Islander center in the United States.
Joyce’s origins are rooted in spozzoto’s belief that Asian Americans are grossly underrepresented in the mainstream media.
“When I was growing up, I almost never saw anyone who looked like me on TV, not a bad person, not a scapegoat, not a laughing stock,” spozzoto said. “I believe that the recent rise in anti Asian hate crime in China is partly due to the fact that AAPI has been regarded as’ the other ‘and’ foreigners’, even though it is generations of Americans like others.”
Spozotto strongly believes that the image and story of “American Asians” are “strong, powerful, beautiful and humorous, which is an important way to recapture the narrative.” Joyce said at a news conference that using “Asian Americans” instead of Asian Americans is a way to “shift the focus and recognize that each of us chooses how to put all parts of our identity together”.
The early content of the website includes an original series called “team tran”, which focuses on the 22-year-old Asian racing star Samantha Tran and her rise in professional racing driving. Another series called “American Idol” features a living Asian American Idol. Spozotto sat down with Star Trek actor George Takei for an interview.
The original name of the website was York. Last year, TV was criticized on social media for its brand and the use of specific terms such as “yellow” and “Asians”. Sposato told asamnews that the website was changing its name to “less polarized”
He said that although the word “yellow” has a historical derogatory tendency towards Asian Americans, perhaps because of this tendency, he feels that Asian Americans have the opportunity to have and master its power. The word “near Asian” is what he said, such as his wife is white or his father is white.
“They’re next to each other, my family,” said Bosto. “I hope this effort will also accommodate them… Some people on twitter instinctively think our intentions are the worst and take ‘yellow’ and ‘Asians’ in completely different unexpected directions.”
Spozzoto, who is Joyce’s editor in chief, told geekwire that he believes the Seattle region, especially the technology industry, will have a strong interest in the platform because of the high proportion of Asians in both regions.
“When we allow immigrants to flourish, we all benefit as a whole. Seattle’s technology industry itself is a leader in this area, and its relationship with AAPI participation is very unique,” sposato said.
“One of the reasons I like Seattle is that we are a little strange,” he added. “We like to do things in our own unique way. Isn’t Seattle the perfect birthplace of disrespect and different media platforms centered on the new definition of ‘Asian American’?”