About the founder
Hi, my name is Ted Johnson and I’ve started a new company called Backlot Creations! What follows is a quick tour of how I got here — from movie websites in the ’90s to the new YouThink app today.
I started my career working for Hollywood Online (which then changed its name to Hollywood.com) mostly working on websites that promoted movies. The best site I worked on was probably for the film The American President (we got a Clio award which was very exciting!).
The first proper business I started was Trivia Machine, an online trivia game. I ended up selling that business after a few years and it changed names to Trivia Spot.
After that I was involved with a startup company that made yet more movie websites, but we were also hired to make an early website for Ted.com which was cool (even cooler because my name is Ted).
In 2001 I launched youthink.com which was a social website where the main action was asking and answering questions. I’ll get back to this soon!
As youthink.com took off, I got busy adding new features. One feature was a “links” section which was links to interesting websites. I ended up spinning this out into a new business called I-Am-Bored.com. I-Am-Bored.com ended up being much more successful than youthink.com and I sold it in 2007. Another section I added to youthink.com was about quizzes, and this was spun off into another site called quiztron.com.
While I was still running I-Am-Bored.com I created a system for selling ads on the site. This system ended up being spun out into an advertising network called Ad Engage. Ad Engage ended up being sold as well a few years after I-Am-Bored.com.
Another adventure was a site called list-alert.com which was a tool to help people find products for sale online.
But what I’ve been spending most of my time working on since 2009 is what is now Timeshift Media, Inc. We run two fitness video companies, pilatesanytime.com and yogaanytime.com.
Back to youthink.com now! I was so busy with Timeshift Media that I wasn’t able to keep up with youthink.com and I ended up shutting the site down in 2022. But now I’ve got a little bit more time, and I’ve decided that the new YouThink mobile app is going to be the first product launched by this new business, Backlot Creations! I’m very excited to be re-launching youthink.com as the YouThink mobile app.