Robert Hoffer is an American businessman who for the past 25 years has primarily worked in technology and software.
Over the course of his career, he has worked for and consulted for many large corporations, including Apple Computer, AOL, Xerox, PepsiCo, Playboy, Citibank, and Lipton.
[1] This may be the driving force behind his work as co-founder of several Internet companies, including InfoSpace Corp., an Internet directory services provider; Query Labs, offering third-party directory services to newspapers and media firms; and Typo.net, which launched the hotly debated concept of interstitial advertising.
For example, in 1995, Hoffer was instrumental[3] in bringing the first web-based national Yellow and White Pages online, which were later licensed and co-branded with Yahoo, Nynex, American Express, Excite@Home, Lycos, and others.
As the co-founder of Colloquis in 2000, Hoffer created the first commercially viable online robot for instant messaging, securing a controversial[4] patent for the technology.