AUSTIN, Texas — Is David Shing an oracle of the future or just a loud Australian guy with weird hair?
The man who you may know as Shingy is AOL's "digital prophet," a title for which he has caught some flack. During SXSW in Austin, he opened up about the whole prophet thing, his devotion to AOL and his hair.
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Earlier this year, Shing appeared in a short interview on MSNBC, which quickly spread online. Shing has been in the marketing game for years, but nobody had heard of a "digital prophet" before. This, combined with his eye-popping hairdo (which he's had since age 11; his sister is a hairdresser), quickly turned him into a lightning rod for criticism. It's likely the rest of the world cares little about Shing, his nickname or his looks, but in a media world obsessed with the rise and fall of AOL, Shing became a sensation.
Mashable talked to Shing in the video above, where he explains he totally made up his title. "At the end of the day, the Internet is meant to be fun," he says. "So I don’t take it too seriously. I’m a creative at heart. An evangelist? Who wants to be called an evangelist or who wants to be called an architect or creative?”
But he never imagined the blowback he'd receive for it. "In this new economy, I think there's a time and place for things to change, man, and we're in a place where people can look weird and they can have weird titles," he says. "But they're still saying things that are interesting. ... I didn't think I'd get flack for having a title for 'digital prophet.' Clearly I don't look like a prophet, my man."
If he understands the digital roadmap so well, though, and is saddled with a title that implies vision and foresight, you have to ask: why AOL? The company has had a bumpy history and still struggles to rebrand itself as a company that delivers content and connectivity (not the one that proclaimed "you've got mail" and filled landfills with discs).
Shing says he knows he had choices, but that AOL, which owns brands like The Huffington Post, Engadget and TechCrunch, is in the right place to deliver content, context and, especially, video.
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