Savtira adds former Napster CEO

TAMPA -- John Fanning, the founding chairman and CEO of Napster, will join the board of directors at Savtira Corp., the company says.

Fanning brings content streaming, distribution, and aggregation knowledge to a young Tampa-based company focused on many of the same key business ideas (see “Building on a Cloud,” April 1). In 1998, he and his nephew Shawn Fanning founded Napster, one of the first peer-to-peer music file sharing systems in the world.

Upon joining Savtira's board, Fanning will begin working with Timothy Roberts, Savtira's CEO. In August, Roberts declared that his company would hire 265 new employees in the Tampa area over the following 18 months, paying an average wage of more than $81,000.