Web Masters
141 episodes - English - Latest episode: 3 months ago - ★★★★★ - 24 ratingsWeb Masters is an original podcast that explores the history of the Internet through the stories of some of its most important innovators. In each episode, host Aaron Dinin, a serial entrepreneur and digital media scholar, talks with Internet entrepreneurs who created important websites, tools, services, and features. Some are hugely popular, some you’ve never heard of, and all of them have impacted everything you do online. You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at how the Internet has enabled -- and continues to create -- some of the greatest business opportunities in history from the people who have proven they know how to build successful Internet businesses.
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Episodes
Startup Gold Episode #5: The Purpose of Entrepreneurship With Peter Sunde
January 31, 2024 18:23 - 15 minutes - 29.2 MBIn this Startup Gold episode of Web Masters, Aaron returns to the story of Peter Sunde, co-founder of the Pirate Bay, a notorious file sharing website.. The podcast explores how Sunde's journey challenges traditional views of entrepreneurship, focusing on his unique reasons for starting the controversial file-sharing site. Facing legal issues and even imprisonment, Sunde's experience raises questions about the true purpose of entrepreneurship. This episode of Web Masters will ask ...
Startup Gold Episode #4: Seeing the Future with Raj Kapoor
December 27, 2023 16:30 - 13 minutes - 24.1 MBIn this Startup Gold episode of Web Masters, host Aaron explores some wisdom shared by Raj Kapoor, founder of Snapfish. The central theme revolves around the importance of skating to where the puck is going in entrepreneurship. Drawing from the advice of successful investor Bill Gurley, Kapoor emphasizes the need for entrepreneurs to predict the future trajectory rather than focusing on the present. The episode delves deeper into the concept, connecting it with the evolving landsca...
Startup Gold Episode #3: The Importance of Timing with John Danner
November 30, 2023 14:42 - 14 minutes - 26 MBIn the third episode of the "Startup Gold" series from Web Masters, Aaron explores the importance of timing in the ultimate success (or failure) of a business. The discussion about timing centers around his conversation with John Danner, CEO and founder of Net Gravity, the first Web marketing company in history. According to John, he was a "horrible CEO." And yet, his company was hugely successful. How does that happen? Hint: the answer has something to do with having great timing...
Startup Gold Episode #2: The Dangers of "First-Mover Advantage" with Jason Olim
October 31, 2023 07:05 - 13 minutes - 25.4 MBIn the second episode of the "Startup Gold" series from Web Masters, Aaron revisits a conversation he had with Jason Olim. Jason Olim founded CDNow.com. It's a name most people don't remember these days, but it was the first major e-commerce retailer on the Web. In fact, it was Amazon before Amazon and had the dominant position over Jeff Bezos back when the Web was first taking shape. So why didn't CDNow become the world's most popular e-commerce platform? Why doesn't CDNow still ...
Startup Gold Episode #1: How to Build a Truly Great Product with David Cummings
September 30, 2023 07:05 - 8 minutes - 15.8 MBAfter 100 interviews with 100 incredible entrepreneurs, Aaron and the Web Masters team are diving into the archives to extract some of the best advice about entrepreneurship and building profitable Internet businesses. We're calling it "Startup Gold." In the first episode of Startup Gold, we're catching back up with David Cummings, founder of Pardot, to explore his thoughts on what it takes to build a truly great product. For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.
Taegan Goddard @ Political Wire: The Political Junkie Who Built a Community for Fellow Addicts
July 31, 2023 07:05 - 37 minutes - 34.5 MBIn this episode of Web Masters, we delve into the fascinating journey of Taegan Goddard, the visionary behind Political Wire, one of the internet's longest-running political news websites. Host Aaron Dinin interviews Taegan to uncover the early days of blogging and internet media, how Political Wire became a go-to destination for political junkies, and the challenges and successes of building and maintaining a creator business model. Taegan shares insights into the evolution of Po...
Daniel Ha @ Disqus: The Entrepreneur Who Made Commenting Easier
June 01, 2023 16:55 - 38 minutes - 34.9 MBIn this episode of the Web Masters podcast, we sit down with Daniel Ha, co-founder of Disqus, the popular online commenting platform. Daniel shares his insights and experiences in building a successful tech company, providing valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs and webmasters alike. Join us as we delve into the fascinating world of online engagement and discover the story behind Disqus. Key Points: Introduction to Disqus (02:30 - 07:45): Daniel introduces Disqus, explaini...
Jed Carlson @ ReverbNation: The MBA Who Taught Bands How to Share Their Music Online
April 24, 2023 07:30 - 30 minutes - 27.9 MBOn this episode of Web Masters, we sit down with Jed Carlson, co-founder of ReverbNation, the premier online platform for independent musicians and bands to showcase their talent and connect with fans. Leveraging his experiences as a serial entrepreneur, Jed shares his insights on building a successful tech startup, the challenges of scaling a platform, and the importance of creating value for both artists and fans. We delve into the origins of ReverbNation and how the company has ...
Osman Rashid @ Chegg.com: The Man Who Turned Textbook Rentals Into Big Business
March 27, 2023 07:05 - 39 minutes - 36.2 MBIf you've ever had to buy textbooks for school, you know how shockingly expensive they are. You also probably know about Chegg, the company that first made online textbook rentals easy and cheap. At first glance, textbook rentals might not seem like big business, but lots of people need textbooks. Plus, some legal hurdles for Amazon -- the obvious competitor -- left an opening that Osman Rashid, founder of Chegg, was able to squeeze through. The result was a company that's been hel...
Terry Jones @ Travelocity & Kayak: The Travel Agent Who Put Travel Agents Out of Business
February 27, 2023 08:05 - 39 minutes - 36.1 MBIf you want to fly across the world tomorrow, you can make your plans within minutes while sitting on your couch. But booking travel used to be much more complicated. It required calling (or visiting) travel agents who would manage all of your reservations for you, and then you'd have to wait from them to send your tickets and itineraries. The process could take hours, and ensuring you'd found the best prices was near impossible. That all changed when American Airlines began making...
Steve Kaufer @ TripAdvisor: The Entrepreneur Who Wanted a Better Vacation
January 23, 2023 08:05 - 47 minutes - 43.1 MBChances are, before you take a vacation, you do lots of research figuring out where to go and what to do when you get there. Today, that's as easy as a Google search, but that wasn't always the case. In the early days of the Web, vacation research required hours of tedious detective work as you pieced together little bits of information about the places you wanted to visit from questionable sources. That all began to change when Steve Kaufer launched TripAdvisor. His travel review ...
Ben Huh @ Cheezburger Network: The Guy Who Did Haz Funny Cat Pictures
December 19, 2022 08:05 - 26 minutes - 24.3 MBWhat would the Internet be without pictures and videos of cats doing ridiculous things? Luckily, we'll never have to find out, and it's thanks, in part, to Ben Huh. In the early 2000s, Ben bought a popular cat meme website called I Can Haz Cheezburger and he turned it into the Cheezburger Network, one of the Internet's most popular user-submitted content websites. In its heyday, the site was so popular it produced everything from coffee table books to reality television shows. As ...
David Gardner @ The Motley Fool: The Brothers Who've Been Giving Online Investing Advice for 30 Years
November 21, 2022 08:05 - 47 minutes - 43.3 MBFor almost as long as people have been communicating on the Web they've been using it to talk about stocks. At the heart of those conversations since the very beginning were the Gardner brothers, David and Tom. Together they launched The Motley Fool. The Motley Fool began as a small financial newsletter for friends and family, it evolved into one of the most popular forums on AOL, and it's since become one of the most reputable sites for financial advice anywhere on the Web. During...
Craig Newmark @ Craigslist: The "Forest Gump of the Internet" Who Helps People Find Stuff
October 17, 2022 07:05 - 28 minutes - 26.1 MBIs it possible to start a wildly successful company by luck? It is according to Craig Newmark. As you can probably guess by the name, Craig is the founder of Craigslist, the ultra-popular classifieds website that millions of people have been using for decades to help solve just about any kind of need you could possibly imagine. But that wasn't the goal behind launching Craigslist. Instead, Craigslist was started as a simple email list to share what was happening in the Bay Area. H...
Marc Seriff @ AOL: The Network Engineer Who Introduced the Internet to Everyone
September 12, 2022 07:05 - 40 minutes - 37.3 MBFor millions of people, their first experience with the World Wide Web was made possible by America Online -- AOL. In fact, most people directly associate AOL with the Web. But did you know AOL predates the World Wide Web by nearly a decade? That's because, when AOL launched, the it was still illegal to use the Internet for commercialize activities. Instead, AOL was one of a handful of companies attempting to create their own global network. And, thanks to a bunch of CD-Roms you pr...
Jason Calacanis @ Silicon Alley Reporter: The Guy Who Threw the Best Parties in New York City
August 08, 2022 07:05 - 35 minutes - 32.1 MBToday, Jason Calacanis is one of the most prominent names in the Silicon Valley tech and entrepreneurship community. But, before he was a well-known West Coast investor, he was at the center of the smaller bust fast-growing East Coast tech scene in New York known as "Silicon Alley." Jason ran Silicon Alley Reporter, a magazine dedicated to the tech innovation happening in New York City. It grew from a 16 page, homemade, photocopied booklet into a 300+ page glossy generating million...
Charles Adler @ Kickstarter: The Music Lover Who Popularized Crowdfunding
July 11, 2022 07:05 - 46 minutes - 108 MBThe Kickstarter name is synonymous with crowdfunding. It's like the Kleenex of the crowdfunding industry. But, strangely enough, Kickstarter didn't invent crowdfunding. The technique dates back centuries. Heck, Kickstarter wasn't even the first crowdfunding website. So how did it become the world's de facto crowdfunding platform? In this episode of Web Masters, we find out by speaking with one of Kickstarter's co-founders, Charles Adler. He shares the story of building the platform...
Amir Ashkenazi @ Shopping.com: The Coder Who Made Online Bargain Hunting Easy
June 27, 2022 07:05 - 30 minutes - 69.1 MBMost of us do a significant chunk of our purchasing at Amazon.com. Or, at the very least, a site like it. Amazon may or may not be the cheapest, but we're pretty sure it'll have what we want, we know delivery will be quick, and the price will be competitive. Even though we don't give online purchasing a second thought these days, it actually took a lot of years for early web users to get comfortable buying stuff from the internet. That's because E-commerce didn't begin as a better ...
Mark Chasan @ eMusic: The Lawyer Who Loved Music
June 20, 2022 07:05 - 32 minutes - 75.4 MBMost digital music pioneers encountered lots of resistance from the large music record labels. In fact, many of their companies were sued out of existence. But not eMusic. eMusic's founder, Mark Chasan, was one of the few digital music pioneers who actually managed to successfully navigate the early digital music waters, ultimately building an online music business that couldn't be stopped by the music industry and their endless string of lawsuits. On this episode of Web Masters, ...
Alon Carmel @ Jdate: The Real Estate Investor Who Took Niche Dating Mainstream
June 13, 2022 07:05 - 37 minutes - 86.7 MBWhen Alon Carmel launched JDate in 1997, he wasn't a pioneer in the online dating industry. He wasn't even a pioneer in the online Jewish dating industry. In fact, by the time he had the idea for Jdate, the Web already contained over a hundred Jewish themed dating websites. But rather than seeing all that competition and thinking the market was saturated, Alon saw the competition and figured: "It must be a good business." Recognizing the opportunity, Alon and his friend, Joe Shapir...
Carl Lipo @ Allrecipes: The Archaeologist Who Taught People to Cook
June 06, 2022 07:05 - 39 minutes - 91.1 MBWhat do archaeology and cookie recipes have in common? In truth, not much. But that didn't stop a group of archaeology graduate students from the University of Washington from joining together to create CookieRecipe.com. CookieRecipe grew so popular that the grad students started building other similar sites, like PieRecipe.com, CakeRepice.com, ChickenRecipe.com, and ThanksgivingRecipe.com. Eventually, their network of recipe sites got so popular that they decided to combine it int...
James Hong @ HOTorNOT: The "4 or 5" Who Helped People Figure Out Their Attractiveness
May 23, 2022 07:05 - 46 minutes - 107 MBEveryone is familiar with the 1 to 10 numeric grading scale used to describe people’s attractiveness. A supermodel might be described as “a perfect 10,” while “a 1” is basically the ugliest person you could ever imagine. In the early 2000s, a couple of college buddies in Silicon Valley decided to turn that concept into a website. It was called HOTorNOT.com. On HOTorNOT, brave people who wanted an honest measure of their attractiveness would upload pictures of themselves, and other ...
Jesse Lipson @ ShareFile: The Solo Founder Who Bootstrapped an Enterprise SaaS App
May 16, 2022 07:05 - 37 minutes - 85.8 MBAs the ShareFile name implies, it's a software for sharing, storing, and otherwise managing files in the cloud. It's not a particularly unique service. In this episode, you'll hear ShareFile's founder, Jesse Lipson, mention some familiar competitors -- companies like Dropbox and Box and YouSendIt. Though, to be fair, in 2005, when the company launched. these types of services weren't so common. Still, cloud file management isn't exactly an obscure niche, meaning, there are a decent ...
Mitch Kapor @ Lotus, the EFF, and Mozilla: The Founder Who Became an Activist
May 09, 2022 07:05 - 37 minutes - 85.7 MBMost founders are lucky if they build one organization that changes the world. Mitch Kapor has done it multiple times. And he's supported dozens more through venture backing and philanthropy. On this episode of Web Masters, Mitch talks about his experiences building Lotus Software, the digital world's first massively scaling software company. He followed that by launching the Electronic Frontier Foundation to help protect innovators and entrepreneurs experimenting in the digital sp...
Matt Shobe @ FeedBurner: The Designer Who Helped People Monetize RSS"
May 02, 2022 07:05 - 38 minutes - 89.2 MBBefore social media websites became our feeds of information from around the Internet, people relied on RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to build their own feeds of content from different websites. While this was a great way for consumers to keep updated on what their favorite sites were producing, it wasn't so great for the sites themselves. Lots of their readers were viewing content through RSS feeds, which meant less site visitors and less money from advertisers. The FeedBurner t...
Matt Shobe @ FeedBurner: The Designer Who Helped People Monetize RSS
May 02, 2022 07:05 - 38 minutes - 89.2 MBBefore social media websites became our feeds of information from around the Internet, people relied on RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to build their own feeds of content from different websites. While this was a great way for consumers to keep updated on what their favorite sites were producing, it wasn't so great for the sites themselves. Lots of their readers were viewing content through RSS feeds, which meant less site visitors and less money from advertisers. The FeedBurner t...
Scott Heiferman @ Fotolog: The Serial Entrepreneur Who Created Instagram Before Instagram
April 25, 2022 07:05 - 25 minutes - 59 MBScott Heiferman was the featured guest on Web Masters Episode #80. In that episode, we heard about how Scott built Meetup, the pioneering website for helping people find their local communities. But that wasn't the only popular website Scott built. He also built Fotolog. Fotolog was a social media website where people posted and shared their photos online for their friends to view in their feeds. In other words, it was basically Instagram. But it appeared nearly a decade before Ins...
Scott Heiferman @ Meetup: The Neighbor Who Helped People Find Their Communities
April 18, 2022 07:05 - 32 minutes - 75.1 MBWe all know the Internet is a great place for connecting with people anywhere in the world who share the same interests and passions, but can it also be a great place for getting connected with people in your local comunity? The guest in this episode of Web Masters thought it could be. It's Scott Heiferman, founder of Meetup. What began as a project to help Scott better connect with his New York City neighbors in the wake of the September 11th tragedy quickly grew into the world's ...
Michael Robertson @ MP3.com: The Entrepreneur Who Got Sued for Making Music Streamable
April 11, 2022 07:05 - 1 hour - 144 MBHard as it may be to remember now, there was a time when every song we wanted to listen to wasn’t available to stream instantly. Instead, we had to own physical copies. First came the record, then the tape, then the CD. However, in the late 90s, a new encoding technology was developed that allowed near-CD-quality music to exist in a relatively small file format. The format was called MP3. You’ve surely heard of it. As MP3s grew in popularity, Michael Robertson decided to buy the d...
Andrew Conru @ FriendFinder Networks: The PhD Who Made Online Dating More 'Friendly'
April 04, 2022 07:05 - 46 minutes - 106 MBNot every online dating website needs to be for everyone. At least, that's what Andrew Conru believed. Rather than creating a single dating website and expecting everyone to join it -- which was the strategy of dating mega-site Match.com -- Andrew took a different approach to online dating. He launched a network of dating websites, each with their own theme designed to serve a specific niche of users. Most well-known among those dating websites was Adult FriendFinder, the Internet'...
Steve Madere @ Deja (Google Groups): The Developer Who Could Have Built Google
March 28, 2022 07:05 - 33 minutes - 77 MBMost people can’t imagine a form of the Internet that doesn’t involve the World Wide Web. In fact, the World Wide Web and the Internet are so deeply entwined that the majority of users don’t even realize there’s a difference. But that’s only because the World Wide Web was the winning technology. In the early days of the Web – i.e. the early 1990s – it was competing with other, similar technologies. In fact, some of those other technologies were significantly more popular. The most ...
Mike Davidson @ Newsvine: The Designer Who Re-Built Journalism for the Digital Age
March 21, 2022 07:05 - 43 minutes - 99.6 MBYou're probably used to getting your news via social media. But there was a time, early in the age of social media, when news and social media weren't so deeply integrated. Instead, Internet users flocked to social news websites. One of those websites was Newsvine. It was a creator platform for citizen journalists, and it paid people anywhere in the world for writing and sharing the news they witnessed. Since the peak of Newsvine's popularity, social media platforms have merged wi...
Patrick Lee, Stephen Wang, Senh Duong @ Rotten Tomatoes: The College Buddies Who Liked Watching Martial Arts Movies
March 14, 2022 07:05 - 42 minutes - 97 MBRotten Tomatoes began as a hobby project. Senh Duong, the original creator, started posted reviews for movies he enjoyed on a small, personal website. Pretty soon after he began, lots of people started relying on those reviews in order to choose the movies they wanted to watch, and the site's traffic began growing exponentially. Unable to handle the growth by himself, Senh turned to two friends he used to enjoy watching movies with back in college -- Patrick Lee and Stephen Wang --...
Marshall Brain @ HowStuffWorks: The Writer Who Built the 'Coolest Site on the Internet'
March 07, 2022 08:05 - 36 minutes - 82.9 MBThe Internet has always been a place to learn about new things. But, in the early days of the Web, one writer took that opportunity for learning to an extreme by creating an entire website devoted to explaining how stuff works. His name is Marshall Brain, and he named his website -- quite appropriately -- HowStuffWorks.com. HowStuffWorks became a popular online destination for people to learn about the inner works behind everything from internal combustion engines to water towers. ...
Nugget McNett @ FlightAware: The Pilot Who Helped Make Flight Tracking More Accessible
February 28, 2022 08:05 - 51 minutes - 118 MBFlight tracking might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about how the Internet has changed the world, but, as with so many other industries, the Web changed commercial aviation forever. However, it didn't change it the way you might think. FlightAware made the data for all flights publicly available. By doing that, it gave people access to valuable information they were able to use to make airline travel more efficient and more comfortable. The team at Flight...
Jon Oringer @ Shutterstock: The Software Engineer Who Created a Marketplace for Photographers
February 21, 2022 08:05 - 31 minutes - 71.1 MBShutterstock probably isn’t the first company that comes to mind when most people think of successful, billion dollar New York tech companies. Instead, the list includes names like BuzzFeed, Rent the Runway, and WeWork. But that’s only because most people don’t spend much time trying to find stock photography. However, if you’re one of the few people in the world who regularly needs high quality photos, you know how important they are. You also understand and appreciate the challen...
Jane Metcalfe & Louis Rossetto @ WIRED: The Partners Who Published the Mouthpiece of the Digital Age
February 14, 2022 08:05 - 42 minutes - 97.6 MBIn the early 1990s, emerging digital and Internet culture weren't mainstream, but it was clear they were going to change the world. People wanted to understand how these new technologies were going to impact them, so they turned to a technology they were already familiar with: magazines. Leading the charge was the most popular publication about the digital age: WIRED Magazine. Launched just as the World Wide Web was first gaining traction, WIRED Magazine quickly became the mouthpie...
Erik Selberg @ MetaCrawler: The Grad Student Who Searched Other Search Engines
February 07, 2022 08:05 - 34 minutes - 78.6 MBIf you need to find something on the Web, it's as simple as going to Google and typing whatever you're looking for. You don't even think twice about whether or not you'll get useful results. Heck, you don't even think twice about whether or not the Google webpage will actually load. But early search engines weren't nearly as reliable. Before Google perfected web search, lots of search engines were trying to figure out the best way to help people find what they needed online, and th...
Erik Selberg @ MetaCrawler: The Grade Student Who Searched Other Search Engines
February 07, 2022 08:05 - 34 minutes - 78.6 MBIf you need to find something on the Web, it's as simple as going to Google and typing whatever you're looking for. You don't even think twice about whether or not you'll get useful results. Heck, you don't even think twice about whether or not the Google webpage will actually load. But early search engines weren't nearly as reliable. Before Google perfected web search, lots of search engines were trying to figure out the best way to help people find what they needed online, and th...
Rand Fishkin @ MOZ: The Writer Who Helped Everyone Become Better at SEO
January 31, 2022 08:05 - 43 minutes - 99.5 MBHow do you get your website listed at the top of Google? It's a simple question with an answer so difficult and complex that Rand Fishkin built an enormous company around it. It's called MOZ, and it's the world's premier search engine optimization (SEO) company. On this episode of Web Masters, you'll learn about how Rand built MOZ as he describes his entrepreneurial journey from optimizing client websites for early search engines all the way up through building a venture backed com...
Yvonne Marie Andres @ Global SchoolNet: The Teacher Who Pioneered E-Learning
January 24, 2022 08:05 - 37 minutes - 85.6 MBYou might think "Zoom Classrooms" and #EdTech are new things. They're a byproduct of ubiquitous computers and faster Internet connections. But that's not actually the case. Even before the World Wide Web existed, creative teachers were figuring out how to use the Internet to engage students and enhance the types of learning possible in the emerging digital world. Leading the charge was Dr. Yvonne Marie Andres. In the early 1980s, Yvonne found herself with a computer in her classroo...
Dries Buytaert @ Drupal: The Coder Who Helps People Manage Their Websites
January 17, 2022 08:05 - 45 minutes - 104 MBYou may or may not know what Drupal is. However, when you're using a website, there's a decent chance you're using it. It's one of the Web's most used open source content management platforms, and it's currently being used to operate millions of sites. But Drupal didn't start as a content management system. It began as a way for Drupal's creator to tell his friends the status of their shared, high-speed Internet access. As more and more people suggested ways of expanding the softwa...
Phil Fernandez @ Marketo: The Marketer Who Helped Jumpstart the SaaS Industry
January 10, 2022 08:05 - 38 minutes - 87.6 MBIn the early days of computers, software was sold as a one-off license. But why let someone pay you once when you can get that person to pay you for the same product multiple times? At least, that's the mantra of the Software As A Service industry, otherwise known as SaaS. Helping lead the charge on a new business model of recurring, subscription software was Phil Fernandez and his marketing automation company, Marketo. Phil and Marketo wanted to democratize the marketing software ...
Jacob Lodwick @ Vimeo: The Filmmaker Who Pioneered Online Video Sharing
January 03, 2022 08:05 - 1 hour - 150 MBVideo streaming is a relatively recent addition to the Web. That shouldn’t surprise anyone with even a cursory knowledge of how the Internet works. Compared with things like text and images, the storage and bandwidth required for online video is obviously significantly higher, and it took a while for the Internet’s infrastructure to be able to handle the larger data loads. But storage and bandwidth limitations weren’t the only issues. Digital video recording devices are also relati...
Who Invented the "Like" Button?
December 27, 2021 08:05 - 10 minutes - 25 MBEvery major social media platform has a "like" button. It's a core part of Internet culture and a simple measuring stick to determine how popular a piece of content is. But even though it seems obvious today, it wasn't such an obvious way of judging content in the early days of social media. In this special holiday mini-episode of Web Masters, Aaron shares the story he learned from Jakob Lodwick, founder of Vimeo, about where the "like" button came from and why it worked so well. ...
Milo Medin - @Home: The Farm Boy Who Gave the World Faster Internet
December 20, 2021 08:05 - 41 minutes - 94.9 MBIf you're reading this, chances are you'e connected to the Internet all the time. But that wasn't always the case. In the early days of the Web, people would dial into the Internet using their phone lines, do what they needed to online, and then turn off their connections. That began to change when internet service providers began offering faster, always-on broadband connections separate from people's phone lines. But those faster connections wouldn't have been able to go much fast...
Peter Rojas @ Gizmodo & Engadget: The English Major Who Built Two Popular Gadget Blogs
December 13, 2021 08:05 - 50 minutes - 115 MBPublishing about niche topics used to be too expensive. But then the Web happened, and the costs for publishing and distribution dropped to almost nothing. That change opened the door to an entirely new generation of publications targeting small, focused audiences. Peter Rojas took advantage of this shift by launching Gizmodo, the Internet's first popular gadget blog. And, it turns out, gadget lovers weren't as small of an audience as he thought. In fact, there was so much demand f...
Joey Anuff @ Suck.com: The Guy Who Thought the Early Web Sucked
December 06, 2021 08:05 - 38 minutes - 88.9 MBThere was a lot of hype and excitement surrounding the early Web. Problem was, it wasn't nearly as refined as it is now. In fact, the early Web was pretty terrible. While most publications -- publications like Wired Magazine -- were evangelizing and praising the tech revolution, Joey Anuff and Carl Steadman were sharing a different and more realistic perspective on their website, Suck.com. Other people noticed, and Suck became one of the most popular content sites on the early Inte...
Dennis Crowley @ Foursquare: The 'Location Guy' Who Wants to Curate Experiences
November 29, 2021 08:05 - 45 minutes - 104 MBWhen you think of Foursquare, the popular, location-based social media app, you surely think of things like check-ins and badges and becoming "mayor." That was fine with Dennis Crowley, Foursquare's founder, so long as it meant you were using Foursquare. But it's not what he cared about. Dennis wasn't building an app for people to show their friends where they were going. Dennis just needed to know where you were going so he could tell other people the best places to go, too. The g...
Sabeer Bhatia @ Hotmail: The Engineer Who Made Email Free
November 22, 2021 08:05 - 39 minutes - 90.1 MBIf you used the Web in the late 90s or early 2000s, there’s a good chance you had a Hotmail email account. At the very least, you knew plenty of people with one. After all, at its peak, 25% of Internet users had Hotmail accounts. As a result, lots of people associate the creation of email with Hotmail. But Hotmail didn’t invent email. Not even close. The first digital messaging systems current users would recognize as “electronic mail” were being used all the way back in the 1960s,...