Skyfire Announces Hiring of Travelocity Chief Marketing Officer and Internet Veteran Jeffrey Glueck as Chief Executive Officer

Skyfire, the makers of the Skyfire browser for mobile devices, announced today that Jeffrey Glueck has joined the company as CEO.   While at Travelocity, Jeff helped the company grow from $3.5 billion in sales to $10.6 billion globally.   As Chief Marketing Officer, he led branding, customer experience, business development and the advertising model business, and introduced the Travelocity Guarantee and the iconic Roaming Gnome advertising campaign.  Jeff grew Travelocity’s ad sales by nearly 40% in 2008 both on Travelocity.com and sister site IgoUgo.com, the fastest growing travel community and user-generated destination content site in the US. Prior to Travelocity, he co-founded internet start-up Site59.com in 1999, which pioneered last minute packaging technology.  Site59 became the US leader in the "last minute deals" space and was sold to Travelocity in 2002.    

“Skyfire has developed a revolutionary product—the only mobile browser that can deliver the full-featured PC web to your smartphone, including any video.  Due to its unique architecture, Skyfire is poised to become much more than a browser,” comments Jeff Glueck. “I look forward to accelerating the growth of Skyfire to bring all types of smartphone users the web sites they love.  We’ll also enable media publishers to distribute their multimedia content without compromise.  Skyfire is already changing the way people experience the internet on-the-go.”

With Jeff Glueck on board, co-founder Nitin Bhandari will become Chief Product Officer and lead the effort to create a next-generation user experience.  Bhandari will also expand Skyfire as a platform that media and entertainment companies can utilize for co-branded mobile apps and video apps.  “We’ve been very keen on bringing Jeff to Skyfire and I’m glad he’s made the decision to join us.  Jeff’s unique mix of success with partners and direct-to-consumer marketing has spanned start-ups and large-scale global operations.  His focus on creating user value that translates to internet monetization is the perfect fit for Skyfire as we enter the next stage of growth,” said Nitin Bhandari.

Glueck was named to Advertising Age's “40 under 40” list in 2007 and as one of the top 13 “Customer Champions” by 1to1 Magazine.  He was one of 25 leaders profiled in the book “Online Marketing Heroes” (Wiley, 2008).  Under his leadership, Travelocity has been recognized with a Gold Effie from the American Marketing Association for best retail advertising campaign in the USA.   He also served in the Clinton Administration as a White House Fellow focused on international trade and environmental agreements.

He holds degrees from Harvard University and Oxford University, where he was honored as a Marshall Scholar.