Internet History Podcast

(Feed Drop) Command Line Heroes Oct 31, 2020

Search for Command Line Heroes anywhere you listen to podcasts.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

202. The del.icio.us Story With Joshua Schachter Oct 23, 2020

Joshua Schachter, founder of del.icio.us, is someone I’ve wanted to talk to from the very first day of this podcast. As we’ll discuss, del.icio.us was such a standard bearer of the web 2.0 era. Of user generated content. Of sharing long before Facebook or Twitter or any of that. If my email chain is to be believed, this episode has been four years in the making, and I’m glad Josh and I found the time to do this episode and bring the podcast back.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

201. The History of Audible With Angelika Fuellemann Aug 11, 2019

Angelika Fuellemann is a designer who worked early on with BookSense.com, then got hired by Audible early on, so this is the early story of Audible. It’s funny… audio, streaming music, podcasts, audiobooks, it seems so obvious now, but it really is funny to look back and think about how off the wall this seamed before the smartphone. You mean books on tape will be a thing?

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

200. Professional Blogging Pioneer Josh Marshall Jul 14, 2019

Josh Marshall is one of the key people who brought blogging into the realm of serious, award winning and respectable journalism. The story of his blog/publication, Talking Points Memo, or TPM is the story of blogging becoming legit and serious, but also the story of modern media over the last 20 years of digital disruption.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

199. Is Tech Making Us- Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid? Jul 01, 2019

Is technology really rotting our brains, destroying our society... or is that what everyone has always worried about with every technological advance, going back to tv, or telephones, or even writing letters? The new book, Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid: Changing Feelings about Technology, from the Telegraph to Twitter tries to look at this question from a historical perspective. Is it really different this time? But more importantly... to what degree has technological change impacted how we think of things, and vice-versa.

My thanks to the authors, Luke Fernandez and Susan J. Matt.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

198. Inventor of the Hashtag, Chris Messina Jun 16, 2019

Well, as we say in this episode, he’ll always be known as the inventor of the hashtag, but Chris Messina has been central to so many things in tech over the last 20 years or so. Helped Mozilla launch Firefox. Founded BarCamp where so much Web 2.0 goodness happened and was launched. Cofounded the first co-working space in San Francisco. Helped Google try to grok social with Google+. Oh, and that hashtag business.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

197. The Internet Bookshop Story With the Tech Business History Podcast Jun 02, 2019

I’ve said before I wish I could cover technology history beyond just North America, more… Well, Charles Miller has started a great podcast in Britain called Tech Business History. Charles used to report on the tech business as a BBC documentary producer. In the first series of his podcast, he’s exploring the dot com boom in the UK with some of the people he met when he was filming for the BBC back in 1999. It’s a fantastic show that I’ve fallen in love with, so what I want to do is play you an episode from his show that was amazing. It’s exactly the sort of interview I wish I had gotten for this show: In the episode we’re going to hear, he talks to Darryl Mattocks, the founder of a very early dot com called The Internet Bookshop. Yes, they were selling books on the internet before Jeff Bezos did. But I’ll let Charles introduce his guest – in this episode of TBH – Tech Business History. And if you like it, do catch up with the other episodes on iTunes or from your podcast provider

The Tech Business History Podcast

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

196. Google, Twitter and More With Karen Wickre May 18, 2019

Everyone knows Karen Wickre, because she’s one of those classic connectors. Once we finally got in touch, I wasn’t surprised to learn we knew about half a dozen of the same people though we had never remotely crossed paths. But Karen knows everyone because she’s popped up Zelig-like in a bunch of interesting places over the course of tech history over the last 30 years or so. Early tech journalism. Planet Out. Early Google employee. Early blogger. Early tweeter. Editorial Director at Twitter. Karen has a great book out that you should read, explaining how to do what she does so successfully, called Take The Work Out of Networking: An Introvert’s Guide To Making Connections That Count.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

195. Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott May 04, 2019

Kevin Scott is the current Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft. We talk about his entire career, how being an academic seemed to be his path before he transformed the ads system at Google. Then he revolutionized the entire advertising industry at AdMob; is credited by some people by saving LinkedIn from technical rot; and now, today, oversees Microsoft's efforts in AI, VR/AR all the future things. Fantastic conversation.

Kevin's podcast is: Behind the Tech

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

194. The History of the ISP Industry With Sonic's Dane Jasper Apr 20, 2019

Today we continue my efforts to preserve the history of the ISP industry. Today it feels like the Internet is simply all around us all the time, but there are amazing entrepreneurial stories about how that crucial infrastructure was laid. Today we talk to Sonic founder Dane Jasper, who can not only give us the history of the industry, but the present day as well, as Sonic is still a thriving and important independent ISP.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

193. The Home Page Film With Doug Block Apr 06, 2019

20 years ago, the acclaimed documentarian Doug Block released a landmark film, Home Page. Doug’s documentary accidentally chronicled the birth of blogging, featuring several people we’ve talked to on this very show, including Justin Hall. But the documentary also captured a moment in time, the web going mainstream, the beginnings of the dotcom bubble, the early days of Wired, Hotwired and Suck and also so many of the things I ask people about on here regularly. How people learned to live online, to begin to port all of modern life over to the digital. Well, Home Page is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a re-release, and starting this week, you can watch it yourself everywhere films are gettable, including iTunes. Today we speak to Doug Block about this amazing movie that I think is one of the best historical records of the era we have been interrogating for nearly 5 years on this podcast. Go watch Home Page yourself, and check out The D-word, Doug’s community for documentarians, at D-word.com.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

192. Hulu's Founding and Digital Design With Dan Maccarone Mar 23, 2019

Dan Maccarone is a digital design veteran, websites, products, strategy. He's got some amazing stories about the dotcom bubble, about the aftermath, and the rise of Web 2.0. He shares some unique design lessons but also, the story of the birth of Hulu, which I don't think has really been covered anywhere before.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

191. Bringing The WSJ Online With Rich Jaroslovsky Part 2 Mar 10, 2019

Part two of the WSJ's online adventures intersect with several other stories we've covered on here over the years.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

190. Bringing The WSJ Online With Rich Jaroslovsky Feb 25, 2019

We’ve had a couple of people come on here to discuss how the New York Times got online, but the spiritual yin to their yang is the Wall Street Journal and we haven’t done enough to explore their path to embracing the internet. It’s worth doing that because they embraced a different model from basically day one. Almost alone among the web media pioneers, the Journal went the subscription route. So, we’re going to talk to Rich Jaroslovksy, who headed the team that brought the Journal online, to see why they went that route, to learn about the path to the web and much more.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

189. A Legal History of the Web Era With Richard Chapo Feb 10, 2019

It’s bothered me for a while that over the 5 years or so of this podcast, we haven’t focused very much on some corners of the history. For example… the legal side? Copyright law? Intellectual property law? How much have we talked about disruption and piracy and filesharing and all that stuff? So, I spoke to Richard Chapo, who has been doing Internet Law since the web went mainstream. We talk about the Napster era, we talk about how much of an influence the adult industry had on digital law, we talk about the state of digital law today, and actually, a whole bunch of contemtorary law stuff like GDPR.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

188. TheGlobe.com Story With Stephan Paternot Part III Jan 26, 2019

Part three of our epic conversation with Stephan Paternot. Here's what happens when you've been through the wringer. When you've been to the top of the rollercoaster and also down to the bottom. Here's how you take stock of your life, how you reinvent yourself, re-find you entrepreneurial spirit... I feel like there are so many lessons in these three episodes. Lessons for entrepreneurs today. Lesson for... I dunno. People in the crypto space? My thanks to Stephan Paternot for an insanely great conversation.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

187. TheGlobe.com Story with Stephan Paternot Part II Jan 06, 2019

Ok, part 2 of the Stephan Paternot mega-episode right now. This is where we get into the meat of it, the good stuff, the whole crazy roller coaster ride of being the hottest startup of the dotcom era. And I was going to make this the last episode, but as I was editing this, I realized that after we get done with this story, Stephan talks a lot about what happens after... what happens after you've been on a crazy ride like this. How you have to reinvent yourself, and your life, and your career. He said so many interesting things about that, that for the first time ever, we're going to do a part 3, coming in two weeks, to talk about the reinvention.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

186. TheGlobe.com Story with Stephan Paternot Dec 24, 2018

I said in the book, I think TheGlobe.com was the quintessential dot-com company. We spoke to one of the cofounders previously, Todd Krizelman. Todd was great, but he was time constrained and he didn’t quite get as personal about the story as I would have hoped. Well, I finally got to talk to the other founder of TheGlobe, Stephan Paternot. And Stephan was… AMAZING. He shared the whole story, the whole wild ride, from a historical angle, from a business angle, from an entrepreneurial angle and also, from a very personal angle. THIS the dot-com era story I’ve been looking for for years. It’s also the story of probably the most important pioneer of social media before there was even a term for such a thing. And by the way… that TV Show that just came out on NAT GEO, Valley of the Boom? THIS IS THAT STORY. Stephan just re-released his book, A Very Public Offering: The Story of theglobe.com and the First Internet Revolution.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

185. Ripple's David Schwartz Dec 10, 2018

David Schwartz is the Chief Technology Officer at Ripple, the company behind the cryptocurrency XRP. What is it like to start, build and build out a crypto startup? Is it different than the web and internet startups that we’ve covered on this show for years? What is Ripple? How is it unique in the crypto ecosystem? What is it trying to do for the world? All of this… and yes, why is crypto so tribal… and yes… where is the crypto space even at in this moment in time (December 9th, 2018, btw, for posterity).

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

184. GV's Ken Norton Nov 25, 2018

Ken Norton is a partner at GV, Alphabets venture capital arm, but before that, he was a product manager at Google, where he led the development of products like Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Mobile Maps. But he was also early at JotSpot which became Google sites, was a product manager at Yahoo, was an early employee at CNET and was CTO of Snap, a company probably none of you have ever heard of but I’ve been dying to talk about for years. No. Not snapchat. The original Snap. The dotcom era snap. So, this is another great episode with a guy who has played roles in a ton of our favorites companies and topics.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

183. Selling the First Facebook Ads, With Matt Britton Nov 11, 2018

Matt Britton not only sold the first ads to and for Facebook, way back in 2004, he gives us a really insightful and, frankly, unbiased look at what Facebook was like as a company in its very earliest days.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Emergency Podcast Announcement Nov 02, 2018

Emergency Podcast Announcement

Link to Amazon

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

182. Google's Matt Cutts @mattcutts Oct 28, 2018

I figure most of you should know who Matt Cutts is, but if you don't, let's just leave it at this: he's about to give you the best, most behind-the-scenes oral history of early Google we've gotten so far on this podcast. He was the head of Google's web spam team for nearly 15 years. He's also the current head of the USDS, so if you what to know what YOU can do for your country—if you're in technology and you want to make the government work better—listen to this episode!

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

181. (Ch. 7.5) The Story of craigslist Oct 13, 2018

SUMMARY:

The history of Craig Newmark, craigslist and other odds and ends that didn’t make the book!

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

180. Part 2 With John McCrea Sep 30, 2018

Simple enough: Part 2 with John McCrea. More on SGI, more on doing battle with Microsoft in the 90s. And... interesting stuff on VR and the future...

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

179. On Silicon Graphics with John McCrea (Pt. 1) Sep 17, 2018

John McCrea is a Zelig-like personality who pops up in so many of the narratives we've already covered: Apple. Netscape. Doing battle with Microsoft. This is part one, mostly about Silicon Graphics, a company I had been thinking about doing an episode on for a while now, to really rejuvenate that company’s reputation, historically. For reasons that will be obvious when you listen.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

178. On Google's 20th Birthday - The History of Google Sep 01, 2018

On Google's 20th Birthday (September 4th) a re-cutting and re-airing of my comprehensive history of Google, from it's inception through its IPO. Happy Birthday, Google!

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

177. NandO.net with Fraser Van Asch Aug 19, 2018

Nando.net was not only a very early experiment in bringing journalism to the web, it was also one of those local ISP's that flowered in the era of the early 1990s. Fraser Von Asch was not only one of the key players at The News & Observer (thus, "NandO") who brought the project to life, he is another person who has straddled the media industry between the print and digital eras and can give us some amazing insights into the transitions therein... or lack thereof.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

176. The Epic Fail of Digg V.4 With Will Larson Aug 06, 2018

This story has gone down in Silicon Valley lore as the ultimate cautionary tale. Digg was the earliest high flying startup in early social media. But then, other startups like Facebook and Twitter started to steal the limelight. So Digg tried to keep up by launching the infamous Digg version 4. And… it’s a disaster. Users hate it. So much so, that many people feel that the reason Reddit is Reddit today is because the Digg community fled their en-masse. Digg Version 4 has become a much cited horror story for when a redesign can be so disruptive it can kill a company. So, what’s the real story behind this urban legend? Today, we talk to Will Larson, who today is at Stripe, was a young engineer working on the launch of Digg version 4.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

175. How the Internet Came to Pakistan With Imran Haider Jul 22, 2018

Today, we're going to continue our occasional project of getting oral histories and personal anecdotes about how, exactly, the Internet and the web came to various places around the world. On this episode we're going to look at how the Internet came to—and is still in the process of coming to—Pakistan. Imran Haider is a listener to the show, works in the tech industry, and analyzes the south asian tech scene at his blog, arkito.co. Today, he tells us how the digital revolution came to Pakistan, how it's still in the process of rolling out, what that has meant for Pakistani society and what the startup and tech scene IS in Pakistan. My thanks to Imran Haider for being a longtime listener to this show, and for being willing to contribute to the project, and please, check him out at arkito.co... it's Ben Thompson level analysis of the tech scene in the sub continent.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

174. Bringing the NYTimes and MSNBC Online With Lisa Napoli Jul 08, 2018

Lisa Napoli got a job straight out of college at CNN in its earliest days, which is a crazy startup story in it’s own right. But then she worked for a time at Delphi, which was an early online service and competitor to AOL and Prodigy that I don’t think we’ve covered much here before. And then she helped bring the NYTimes online with CyberTimes, which, as she said, is forgotten to history even by the New York Times. Then on to MSNBC, a crazy hybrid tech and media startup that I don’t think we’ve discussed much either. There’s just so many great stories here. Please enjoy this conversation with Lisa Napoli.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

173. Netscape's Rosanne Siino Jun 24, 2018

Rosanne Siino has been on my list to talk to from day one of this podcast. As you know, I started by reaching out to Netscape folks and Rosanne was the head of communications for that very first dotcom company. She saw it all, she can give us her take on both the engineering side and the management side, since she was uniquely able to observe both. Rosanne and I were recently on a documentary series currently airing on A&E in the US, The Untold Story of the 90s. So, I reached out, and we recoded this fantastic extended interview about all things Netscape and about the very birth of the Internet Era.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

HUGE Podcast Announcement Jun 16, 2018

HUGE Podcast Announcement! Details on how to pre-order the podcast book!

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

172. How Politics Came to the Web With Karl Mattson Jun 10, 2018

Today we're going to go back to take a look at early journalism on the web. Karl Mattson helped launched one of the first political news websites, ElectionLine. He helped cover the 1996 election when covering an election on the web was a completely new thing. He then moved to AOL, helped run their news channels and has some amazing historical details about he era, especially the Clinton intern scandal.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

171. Claude Shannon, Father of Information Theory May 27, 2018

Claude Shannon was a mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as "the father of information theory." In the pantheon of cool people who made the modern information era possible, he’s right up there. Today, we’re going to talk about Shannon’s life with Jimmy Sony and Rob Goodman, authors of a great biography of the man called A Mind At Play, How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age. Especially you software engineers out there, if you don’t know who Claude Shannon was, get educated. You owe your livelihood to this man.

Buy the book!

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

170. The Godfather of Streaming Music, Robert Reid May 13, 2018

Summary:

Robert Reid, the founder of Rhapsody, can be considered the Godfather (founding father?) of the streaming music reality we now live in. But guess what? That's only half of this episode! Because it turns out, Robert is the author of a book that was probably one of the biggest reasons I started doing this podcast. The book was Architects of the Web, 1000 Days that Built the Future of Business. It was one of the first books to come out about the history of the web era. It was published in 1997, I think. I read it in college. I re-read it maybe 6-7 seven years ago and it helped inspire me to start this podcast. Those first interviews I launched the podcast with? The Netscape guys? Jon Mittelhauser? Alex Totic? I read about them in this book and I straight up cold-emailed them. So you're going to get a fascinating fly-on-the-wall account of early Netscape, early Yahoo, all sorts of companies we've talked about.

Robert continues to be an accomplished author.

Buy his books:

After On

Year Zero

And listen to his exceptional podcast, also called After On.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

169. Kottke.org's Jason Kottke, @jkottke Apr 29, 2018

Jason Kottke, of kottke.org fame, was one of the early bloggers, one of the first bloggers to go pro, and one of the few solo bloggers still going. If you know Kottke.org, then you love it. How could you not? If you’ve never heard of it, you can thank me later. This episode examines what it means to be a publisher on the web for 20 years as well as the discipline required to find cool stuff on the web every single day (almost).

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

168. The History of Java With Todd Sundsted Apr 15, 2018

People have been yelling at me for years that I’ve not covered more technical aspects of the web’s history, especially things like Java. Specifically Java. The argument can be made that Java helped the web evolve into what it’s become. So, that’s why I was thrilled to sit down with Todd Sundsted, who is a developer who has been working with Java for more than 20 years. Todd walks us through the history of Java and why it is so important to the web’s general evolution.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

167. NYTimes Tech Columnist, Farhad Manjoo @fmanjoo Apr 01, 2018

Today, a man who needs no introduction: New York Times Technology Columnist Farhad Manjoo. This episode was recorded about two months or so ago, so we talk about the book leave Farhad is on that he only recently made public, but of course, we get into his whole career and his unique vantage point and views on the world of tech.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

166. Amazon, Hulu and Oculus with Eugene Wei Mar 17, 2018

No joke, this is one of my favorite episodes we've ever done. Eugene Wei was an early employee at Hulu, so we get some details on that company for the first time, and he also worked at Flipboard and Oculus, so we get some important context especially on the future of VR and the like. But the most fascinating stories you'll hear will be about Amazon, where Eugene was the first analyst in the strategic planning department. As you'll hear, Eugene had a unique perspective on Amazon's early strategy and business structure, almost a historically unique perspective... he could see month to month, how Amazon was built, what Amazon was trying to do, and why. This is such an amazing perspective on such an important company.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

165. Claire L. Evans, Author of Broad Band- The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet Mar 04, 2018

Claire Evans is the author of the new book: Broad Band The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet. This is the best tech history book I’ve read in a while and you know I read them all. Of special note, considering our 90s-heavy focus on this podcast, the book includes the stories of Word.com, which was a competitor to Feed.com (which we’ve previously covered) and Women.com which was a competitor to Ivillage (which, again, we’ve spoke at length about). But you also get an amazing portair of tech in the 1970s, hypertext as a movement outside of the web, and stories about amazing women like Grace Hopper and Jake Feinler.

Buy it today!

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

164. How the Web Came to Germany, With Thomas Ganter Feb 19, 2018

Podcast listener Thomas Ganter gives us a first person, anecdotal account of how the web came to Germany in the 1990s.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

163. The History of Online Video with JibJab's Gregg Spiridellis Feb 05, 2018

Gregg Spiridellis has been making things go viral on the web since before the term VIRAL was even a thing. His company, JibJab has been producing web videos since the dialup dotcom era, producing hits you might remember such as Elf Yourself, Nasty Santa and This Land Is Your Land. JibJab has survived the dotcom bust, the coming of broadband, the coming of YouTube, the coming of social media and the mobile internet. What you’ll hear today is absolutely a masterclass in pivoting, in adapting a business model to thrive in every new technology environment and embracing every new platform and paradigm.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

162. Venrock's David Pakman on Apple's Music Group, N2K, eMusic and Dollar Shave Club Jan 21, 2018

David Pakman is a well respected venture capitalist at Venrock, but also a lifelong musician and music fan. Earlier in his career he played a significant role in bringing music to the web. David tells us about cofounding Apple’s Music Group, his role in facilitating the first digital sales of music online at dotcom-era companies N2K and MyPlay, and competing directly against iTunes when he was at eMusic. As a bonus, he gives us some background on the more recent founding story of Dollar Shave Club.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

161. Jeff Bussgang on Open Market and early eCommerce Jan 08, 2018

It gets my goat that these days, the history of ecommerce begins and ends with Amazon. There were so many companies and big ideas that got us where we are today, and one of the most important companies was Open Market. Jeff Bussgang is here to tell us the (today) often overlooked story of the earliest days of trying to sell stuff on the web. Today, Jeff is a General Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

160. Growing Up With The Web With Desiree Garcia @thedezzie Dec 18, 2017

An exploration of what it was like to come of age in the early web era.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

159. The Forgotten Story of PLATO, with Brian Dear Dec 11, 2017

Plato was an online and interactive learning computer system developed in the 1960s at the University of Illinois. But in the early 1970s, Plato got truly networked, and the users took over. Plato had already pioneered such things as touch screen computing, but the kids introduced and pioneered concepts like forums, message boards, e-mail, chat rooms, instant messaging, multiplayer games and even emoticons/emojis were pioneered on the Plato system.

Buy The Friendly Orange Glow

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

158. Bob Stein of Voyager and The Criterion Collection Nov 27, 2017

Bob Stein was the founder of Voyager, publisher of the first consumer CDROM titles, and, far and away the leader of the CDROM industry in the late 1980s and early 90s. Bob was also one of the founders of the Criterion Collection, as well as the publisher of the first electronic books.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

157. Rob Malda (@cmdrtaco) on SlashDot and Social Media Nov 12, 2017

You might know him as Rob Malda, or you might know him as CmdrTaco, but he was the founder of the great geek social website Slashdot. Slashdot recently turned 20 years old, Rob commemorated this in a great Medium post, and so I reached out to him to tell us the story of one of the first great social media websites.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

156. Dave Winer on The Open Web, Blogging, Podcasting and More Oct 30, 2017

Dave Winer has been called the godfather of a lot of things. The godfather of blogging. The Godfather of Podcasting. One of the key people involved in the development of RSS. But as you’ll hear in this great and wide-ranging chat, Dave Winer is just a software developer who has never stopped tinkering, never lost his interest in coming up with new tools and new technologies. Dave was kind enough to sit down and go over his whole career, from the very earliest days of the PC era, to the present day.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

155. Giphy with Nicole LaPorte Oct 16, 2017

SUMMARY:

Nicole Laporte has a cover story in Fast Company magazine this month about Giphy, potentially the next big story in online advertising and marketing, as well as… search?

Read her profile of Giphy here.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

154. Om Malik on Blogging and Web 2.0 Oct 01, 2017

Om Malik is, of course, a legend. One of the first journalists on the “tech beat” in the 1990s, one of the first bloggers to “turn pro,” one of the driving forces behind the Web 2.0 time period, and one of the most trusted analysts of the technology industry in general, today he is a venture capitalist at True Ventures.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

153. The AOL/Time Warner Merger - Crossover with the Acquired Podcast Sep 17, 2017

What is generally considered the worst merger of all time, and certainly the crescendo event of the dotcom bubble era, today we take a look at the AOL/Time Warner merger, again with the excellent guys at the podcast Acquired.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

152. David Shen on Early Yahoo and the Maturation of Online Advertising Sep 03, 2017

David Shen was employee #17 at Yahoo, where he eventually had a hand in, not only the birth of advertising as the primary business model for the web but, eventually, the development of digital ads into their more modern, interactive form. As you'll hear, David recounts the early days of Yahoo, surviving the dotcom bust and taking advertising beyond the simple banner ad.

And he recounts all of this in his recently published new book: Takeover! The Inside Story of the Yahoo! Ad Revolution

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

151. Facebook's First Senior Software Engineer, Karel Baloun Aug 13, 2017

Karel Baloun was the first senior software engineer hired at Facebook in 2005. This was after the Accel round of funding, when Facebook truly began to staff up and grow up. Baloun was only at Facebook for a year, from 2005 to 2006, but he provides some amazing insights about the company. What was Facebook’s culture like in 2005? What were the key innovations that ultimately let Facebook succeed where others failed? Would Zuckerberg make a good President of the United States? What became of Pokey, the mascot Facebook once considered launching?

You can buy Karel’s 2007 book here.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

150. More SoundCloud Chat with Buzzfeed's Ryan Mac Aug 06, 2017

Just as last week’s episode posted, another great piece about SoundCloud was posted on Buzzfeed by the great Ryan Mac. So, in a rare attempt by me to be topical, today’s episode is with Ryan Mac, discussing his article, which fills in some of the details about what Christina and I were speculating on last week.

Ryan’s article can be found here.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

149. Christina Warren on SoundCloud Jul 30, 2017

Our friend Christina Warren is back for another analysis episode. Christina recently posted a tweetstorm about SoundCloud, and its prospects for the future. So she kindly agreed to come on the show, look at the history of SoundCloud as a company, and try to help me figure out why SoundCloud finds itself on the brink of oblivion. You all know Christina from her years at Mashable and most recently, Gizmodo. As you’ll hear toward the end, she’s at Microsoft now, and you can always hear her on the Rocket podcast.

The Verge article we refer to can be found here.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

148. Don Melton on Apple, Safari, WebKit and Netscape Jul 23, 2017

Don Melton is popularly known as the father of the Safari web browser or WebKit. He’s basically a web browser legend. Not only does Don tell us a lot of great stuff about Safari, WebKit, Apple and more, but he was also an early Netscape employee, so we get some more great details about that company, especially in its later stages.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

147. The First Text Message With Neil Papworth Jul 09, 2017

The first text message (or, to be accurate, SMS message) was sent on December 3, 1992. It was sent by Neil Papworth, and it said, “Merry Christmas.” This is the story of that first text, recorded for the first time.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

146. Mike Slade on Steve Jobs' Return To Apple Jun 25, 2017

As promised, Mike Slade is back to tell stories from the period 1998 through 2004, when he was Special Assistant to Steve Jobs. Background details on the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone and more!

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

145. Brian Merchant, Author of The One Device Jun 18, 2017

Finally! A detailed history of the development of the iPhone inside Apple. But not only that, an extensive history of all the technologies that came together to make the iPhone possible. Lithium ion battery technology, touchscreen technology, Gorilla Glass, GPS, digital photography, maps… everything. The author, Brian Merchant, was kind enough to send an advanced copy and, as you’ll hear when I talk to him, I couldn’t have been more excited to read! This is the book I’ve been waiting for for about ten years.

Buy your own copy here!

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

144. The "First" Blogger, Justin Hall Jun 11, 2017

A lot of people give credit to Justin Hall for being, if not the first, then spiritually, at least, the “first” blogger. Since early 1994, first as Justin’s Homepage and at various points, as Justin’s Links from the Underground and Links.net, Justin Hall has been writing online and sharing online—especially, sharing himself online—longer than almost anyone else on the planet. Hear his story today, and watch his documentary at: http://overshare.links.net/

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

143. Neil Hunt on the History of Netflix and Netflix Streaming May 29, 2017

For several months now, I've been complaining on Twitter and a bunch of other places that, for as ubiquitous as Netflix streaming has become—I think it's one of the most important technology products of the last decade at least— there's actually been comparatively little journalism or scholarship about how the product came about. That's why I was delighted to get acquainted with Neil Hunt, who is the Chief Product Officer at Netflix. Since he's been at Netflix since 1999, not only is he the perfect person to tell us how Netflix streaming came about (the technical hurdles, the strategic decisions, etc.) but he can also give us the whole history of Netflix, from basically the very beginning.

Link to transcript.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

142. Andy Rachleff @arachleff co-founder of Benchmark and Wealthfront May 21, 2017

Andy Rachleff was a co-founder of Benchmark, one of the most respected venture capital firms to this very day, and one of the biggest venture players during the dotcom era. On today’s episode, Andy gives us more background on eBay’s founding and what venture investing was like during the dotcom era. But Andy is also that very rarest of breeds, someone who became an entrepreneur AFTER an illustrious career as a venture capitalist. So Andy also tells us all about Wealthfront, one of the most interesting players in the modern personal investment space.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

141. Nathan Latka @NathanLatka of the Top Entrepreneurs Podcast May 13, 2017

Summary

Check out The Top Entrepreneurs Podcast here!

Books recommended on this episode:

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

140. The Google Chef, Charlie Ayers Apr 24, 2017

The famous Google Chef, Charlie Ayers, remembers joining Google when it was about 50 employees, the company’s early growth, culture, and the unique role he played in shaping that culture.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

139. The Napster Story with Jordan Ritter Apr 16, 2017

If you know the Napster story at all, then you know about the Shawn(Sean)s. Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker. But in my opinion, and in the opinion of a lot of other people, a name that you should be just as familiar with is Jordan Ritter. Napster was an incredible phenomenon, reaching tens of millions of users at its height, and though Jordan Ritter didn't invent Napster, he very much was responsible for scaling it and turning it into the phenomenon it became. In today's episode, Jordan recounts the entire Napster story, from its gestation in the w00w00 hacker collective (which, by the way, people talk a lot about the PayPal mafia, but an argument can be made for a w00w00 mafia) all the way through Napster's legal descent into oblivion. You might know Jordan as the cofounder of Cloudmark and Servio, and at the end of the episode, he talks about the big problems he's working to solve today.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

138. (Ch. 9.2) The History of Google Part 2 Apr 10, 2017

There was one important trait that Google shared with the dotcoms: it wasn’t making very much money. It’s somewhat forgotten, given what would come later, but Google existed for several years without much of a business plan. The vision Larry and Sergey had sold the Venture Capitalists on involved a three-pronged strategy. First, Google would license its search technology to the major portals. Second, the company would sell its search technology as a product to enterprises. And third, there were some vague promises about selling ads against searches on its own website.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

137. (Ch. 9.1) The History of Google Part 1 Apr 02, 2017

When Larry and Sergey first met, they didn’t like each other much...

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives The Google Story How Google Works The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture Googled: The End of the World As We Know It The Google Guys: Inside the Brilliant Minds of Google Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2000/05/29/search-and-deploy http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1999/11/08/268521/index.htm

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

136. Petstore.com's Joshua Newman on the Pets Space During the Dotcom Era Mar 26, 2017

During the dot-com era in the late 90s, there were four different venture-backed startups (six, depending on how you count) that focused on the pet retail space. Most famous, or notorious, I guess was Pets.com, of the sock puppet fame, but today, we’re going to get some context and perspective on this moment in time from another player from this era. Joshua Newman was the founder of Petstore.com, which actually got started first, but eventually ended up getting acquired by Pets.com. I wanted to talk to Joshua because I think the Petstore.com is a really interesting lens to look at e-commerce companies in the dot-com era, the strategies they pursued and the unbelievable environment they existed in.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

135. The Pseudo.com Story With Dennis Adamo Mar 20, 2017

Before Snapchat Stories, before YouTube, in the dial-up era of the 90s, there were a select few who were experimenting with streaming video and interactive media on the web. The most prominent and notorious of these pioneers was Pseudo.com. Dennis Adamo was one of the co-founders of Pseudo.com.

You can learn more about Dennis' VR startup here: Spaceoutvr.com

The articles about Josh Harris and Pseudo that I mention are here and here.

And the documentary on Harris called We Live in Public is on iTunes.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

134. Yahoo's Acquisition of Overture (Crossover Ep. w/the Acquired Podcast) Mar 13, 2017

Today's episode is a special event, a crossover episode with the Acquired Podcast, which you can find in your podcast directory by searching for the word Acquired, or by going to Acquired.fm. Acquired is hosted by Ben Gilbert, the Co-Founder of Pioneer Square Labs and David Rosenthal a Principal at Madrona Venture Group out in Seattle. To mash up our two models, we're going to talk about Yahoo's acquisition of Overture, and how that related to Google's ultimate success with Adwords. We talked about a lot of this with Gary Flake in episode 133, so, for a bit of context, here is that entire story. Please enjoy, and please, do check out the Acquired podcast at Acquired.fm

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

133. Gary Flake on Overture, Yahoo and the History of Search Feb 26, 2017

Gary Flake has been involved with search technology ever since he got turned on to this particular field in college. In this wide-ranging discussion, Gary lays out for us, basically, the history of search technology before Google, the impact of Google, and then, since he lived it, the notion of competing with Google. The reason why Gary can talk so in depth about all of this is that he was Yahoo's Chief Science Officer in the early 2000s, when Yahoo, via the infamous project Panama, and other initiatives, attempted to keep Google from taking over the entire search market. And because, prior to that, Gary was at Goto/Overture, he gives us basically the entire story of the birth of paid search as an industry. The story of Google is about two miracles. The first miracle is the Google algorithm that essentially solved search. And the second miracle is paid search... AdWords, AdSense, all of that... which is essentially the greatest advertising machine ever invented. But, not a lot of people remember: paid search was actually invented, not by Google, but by Goto/Overture.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

132. MG Siegler @mgsiegler on TechCrunch and GV Feb 20, 2017

You all know MG Siegler. From TechCrunch’s most famous blogger to GV’s most affable venture capitalist, he has a lot to say about Apple, the business of blogging and where Silicon Valley is at in the modern era.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

131. Elizabeth Osder on the NYTimes.com, Yahoo and More Feb 13, 2017

Elizabeth Osder is one of those digital media veterans who’s career has spanned the entire web era, from bringing the New York Times online (though, she got her native New Jersey online first by launching NJ.com a few years beforehand) all the way through her continued work with any number of digital media companies through her consultancy the Osder Group. In between, she has some amazing stories about working at Yahoo, launching the earliest of multimedia websites for folks like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the fallout from the dotcom bubble.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

130. AOL, AIM, Chat Rooms, The Time Warner Merger... AOL's History with Joe Schober Feb 06, 2017

Joe Schober was the longest serving employee of America Online, working there as an engineer, and later chief architect, from 1992 until just a few years ago. So, there literally couldn't be anyone better to walk us through AOL's history and many iterations. In this episode, we go back to the days when America Online was an underdog online service with only a couple hundred thousand users, through AOL's dominance in the early web era, the AOL/Time Warner merger... all of it, including an insider look at the chatrooms and AIM.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

129. Michael March on the Indie ISP Industry, and the Birth of Online Spam Jan 30, 2017

Michael March was the founder of Internet Direct, the first commercial ISP in Arizona. Michael gives us a first-hand account of the independent ISP industry that grew up around the country in the 1990s. AOL might have been the training wheels for the internet, but the Mom-n-Pop ISPs probably gave more Americans their first Internet experience than any of the online services.

Bonus: Michael was an incidental witness to the first major commercial spam event on the Internet, a story that he relays at the end of this episode.

And you can see Internet Direct featured in a really delicious infomercial from the time here.

And you can follow Michael on twitter @cowmix

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

128. Jim McCann of 1800Flowers Jan 16, 2017

Would it surprise you to learn that 1800Flowers was not only one of the first ecommerce pioneers but quite possibly, the first to be profitable in a meaningful way? You wouldn't be surprised if you knew the story of 1800Flowers and its founder, Jim McCann. Today we speak with Jim to hear that story, to learn about a company that was fearless in trying any new thing that came along... so long as it brought them closer to their customers. And, since Jim has been at this for quite a while, toward the end, he also tells us where he thinks commerce—in general—is going.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

127. The History of the iPhone, On Its 10th Anniversary Jan 06, 2017

"So… Three things: A widescreen iPod with touch controls. A revolutionary mobile phone. And a breakthrough internet communications device. An iPod… a phone… and an internet communicator… An iPod, a phone… are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device! And we are calling it iPhone.”

- Steve Jobs, January 9, 2007

Those words have become so famous in the history of technology that I imagine a large percentage of listeners have them memorized. Ten years ago this Monday, January 9, Steve Jobs stood on stage and announced the iPhone to the world. It was the crowning achievement in the career of the greatest technologist of our time, the moment that the modern era of computing began.

On the ten year anniversary of the birth of the iPhone, this is the story of that moment and the history of that device which can take a rightful place alongside the original Macintosh, the first IBM PC, the Apple I, the Altair 8800, the DEC PDP-8, the IBM System/360 and the ENIAC as one of most important machines to have brought computing into everyday life.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

126. (Ch. 8) How the Dotcom Bubble Happened Jan 01, 2017

The background, root causes and rough outline of the dotcom bubble. How it happened, why it happened... and why it's unlikely to happen again anytime soon.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

125. Sebastian Mallaby on Alan Greenspan and the Dotcom Bubble Dec 12, 2016

As most of you know, I’m busy writing a book that this podcast is partially source material for, and at the moment, I’m deep in the weeds on chapters about the Dotcom bubble—how it happened, why it happened, that sort of thing. By necessity, I’ve been going into a lot of economic background for the bubble, and in the course of doing so, the famous chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, keeps coming up. So, today’s episode is a bit of an analysis episode as I speak with Sebastian Mallaby, who is the author of THE definitive biography of Greenspan, a book called The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan. Listen along with me as I try to get a sense of the role the Fed chairman played in setting the table for the dotcom bubble.

The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

124. Founder of ReadWriteWeb, Richard MacManus Nov 27, 2016

Summary

Sometimes you get to talk to your actual heroes. I've been reading Richard MacManus probably almost as long as he's been writing on the web. He is the founder of the popular ReadWriteWeb blog, and he was one of the forces behind the Web 2.0 movement that was so influential in my career as a web entrepreneur. Here's another story of the accidental professionalization of blogging, from one of the pioneers.

Richard is a science fiction writer now! Buy his book Presence! It's about the future of VR!

PS: My TED Talk can be found here.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

123. Founder of Reel.com, Stuart Skorman Nov 14, 2016

Summary

At the dawn of e-commerce, if Amazon.com staked a claim in books, and sites like CDNow staked a claim in music, then Reel.com should be remembered as the important dot-com era player in movie retail. But more than just going toe to toe with Amazon, Reel.com actually pioneered online movie rental as well. Reel.com's founder, Stewart Skorman, actually came from the world of video rental stores, and sold his video chain to Blockbuster. So the first site to rent you movies via the postal service? Reel.com. And more importantly, the site that really pioneered movie matching technology, that art/science of recommending which movie you're really going to want to watch tonight? Reel.com.

Stuart's exceptional memoir/entrepreneur's handbook is called Confessions of a Serial Entrepreneur: Why I Can't Stop Starting Over

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

122. The First Web Search Engine? With Oliver McBryan Nov 07, 2016

If you’ll remember back to the chapter episode on the early search engines and Yahoo, I said that it’s hard to pin down exactly what the “first search engine” was. There were so many competing projects and technologies that launched in different ways at different times. One potential candidate is the World Wide Web Worm, which is criminally undercovered by the histories out there. The World Wide Web Worm was developed by Oliver McBryan, at the University of Colorado at Boulder in late 1993. It grew out of an early directory site for web content that McBryan also launched, a sort of Yahoo before Yahoo.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

121. Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath on Facebook, AIM and WinAmp Oct 31, 2016

Summary

Most of you know Chamath Palihapitiya as one of the most prominent and progressive venture capitalists working today. But before forming Social Capital, Chamath was an early employee at a startup we've already covered, WinAmp; was the head of AOL's Instant Messenger product; and of course, was an early employee at Facebook.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

120. Jason Calacanis @jason on Silicon Alley, The Dot-Com Bubble and Web 2.0 Oct 24, 2016

Most of you will know Jason Calacanis from his many high profile endeavors such as his podcasts (especially This Week in Startups) his Launch conference and Inside.com. But older listeners will remember Jason as one of the most colorful personalities of the dot-com era in New York, as the publisher of Silicon Alley Reporter. And Jason also played a key role in forming the modern media landscape as the founder of Weblogs Inc. We talk about all of that much more.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

119. The Story of Slate.com with Julia Turner @juliaturner and Jacob Weisberg @jacobwe Oct 09, 2016

SUMMARY

I missed it (I should really be keeping a calendar of these things) but Slate.com celebrated its 20th anniversary last month. If you’ll recall, we went into some detail about Slate’s founding in this chapter episode, but today we have Slate’s current Editor in Chief, Julia Turner, and a former Editor and current Chairman of the Slate Group, Jacob Weisberg, on the pod to discuss the history of Slate and the contributions Slate made to the evolution of digital media on the web.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

118. The Birth of Amazon's 3rd Party Platform with John Rossman Sep 26, 2016

John Rossman helped transform Amazon.com’s business. After the dotcom bubble burst, Amazon delved into a new business line that allowed third parties to do business off of Amazon’s platform, and make use of Amazon’s many competencies. In this Episode, John describes his role developing the Amazon 3rd party marketplace and gives us his perspective on what makes Amazon successful. John’s book about Amazon is called The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Lessons Behind the World’s Most Disruptive Company. If you want to understand Amazon on a deeper level, I highly encourage you to check it out.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

117. Founder of Friendster and Nuzzel, Jonathan Abrams Sep 18, 2016

Jonathan Abrams was the founder of the first modern social networking site, Friendster. This is essentially the story of the birth of social media… the ideas that inspired the very notion of social networking, the struggles to launch a web startup after the dotcom bubble burst, the challenges of suddenly becoming the hottest startup in the world, and the eventual battles with MySpace and Facebook for social as we know it today.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

116. Director of the Documentary Silicon Cowboys ( @Silicon_Cowboys ) Jason Cohen Sep 12, 2016

If you'll remember a few years ago I spoke with Rod Canion about how Compaq created the industry standard computer platform that finally supplanted IBM. Well, this week, on September 16, a new documentary about the Compaq story, called Silicon Cowboys, is coming to theaters, On Demand and various rental and streaming services like iTunes, Google Play and Amazon Video. So, we spoke briefly with the director of the film, Jason Cohen. Find out more about where the movie is showing and view the trailer here.

The film will be opening in theaters this Friday in the following cities..

New York, NY Pasadena, CA Santa Monica, CA San Jose, CA Houston, TX Columbus, OH Chicago, IL San Francisco, CA Grapevine, TX South Miami, FL Phoenix, AZ Westminster, CO Cherry Hill, NJ Arlington, MA

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

115. Mike Slade on 80s Microsoft, NeXT, Starwave and Steve Jobs' Return to Apple Sep 05, 2016

I originally wanted to talk to Mike Slade about Starwave, the innovative company that launched some major names onto the web, including ESPN.com, ABCNews.com, MrShowbiz.com, and after an eventual sale to Disney, put together the pieces that eventually became the Go.com portal play. But Mike is one of those guys who has had such a varied and interesting career, I couldn't help but go into other eras of his career. The dude worked at Microsoft in the early 1980s. He worked at NeXT in the early 90s. And from 1998 through 2004 he was Special Assistant to Steve Jobs as he saved Apple as a company, launched the iPod and kicked into motion the modern gadget era.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

114. Douglas Colbeth, CEO of Spyglass Aug 28, 2016

We've spoken a lot on this show about Netscape and the "Browser Wars," but there's a key angle to this story that we haven't had the chance to delve into yet. While Netscape was out in California creating Navigator, there was another company, Spyglass, that had licensed Mosaic's browser code and was attempting to build a business around web browsers at the exact same time. Spyglass helped bring browsers to market before Netscape did, and even went public before Netscape's famous IPO. And one more thing? Internet Explorer was developed as a competitor to Netscape Navigator because Spyglass did a deal with Microsoft. Douglas Colbeth was a co-founder and CEO of Spyglass, and in this episode, he gives us all the background and fascinating details surrounding the opening salvoes of the Browser Wars.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

113. Joel Johnson on Gawker and the Rise of Professional Blogging Aug 08, 2016

Summary

Joel Johnson has spent nearly his entire professional career, working in digital media. He went from being an anonymous online commenter to being an early editor of Gizmodo, to eventually becoming editorial director of Gawker Media. Essentially, Joel was there from the very beginning when blogging began to "go pro" and evolved into modern media as we know it today. Joel recounts the history of the blogging "industry," Gawker Media especially, and gives us his own perspective on where digital media has been, and where it might be going.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

112. Inventor of the First Digital Camera, Steven Sasson Aug 01, 2016

Summary

Steve Sasson was the inventor of the world's first digital camera. Because it's hard to imagine modern life without digital photography, it's maybe easy to forget what a marvel it really is. And Sasson has been front and center for the entire digital photography revolutions. In this episode, he recounts for us the sort of skunkworks project that led to the first digital camera, recalls the long gestation the technology had within the company that developed it, Kodak, and toward the end, we get into a fascinating examination of technology disruption itself, for which Kodak is often held up as a poster-child, in terms of innovation challenges in the digital era.

You can see Steven demo the first digital camera in this brief video:

Inventor Portrait: Steven Sasson

Photos of the original camera here and here.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Announcing the Podcast Book! Jul 25, 2016

Quick, special announcement of a book, based on the podcast, coming from Liveright (W.W. Norton) in 2018. Regular episode to come next monday...

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

111. CompuServe Founder Jeff Wilkins Jul 05, 2016

Summary

Jeff Wilkins was the co-founder and first CEO of CompuServe, perhaps the original consumer online service. Jeff recounts for us CompuServe's founding in 1970, the launch of it's consumer-facing service in 1980, and all of the innovations that CompuServe brought to life: the first commercial email product; the first newspapers online; the first airline listings; and most interestingly, CB Simulator, the grandaddy of all chat apps in the world. We even revisit the famous AOL CD carpet-bombing campaign from a new angle, and Jeff shares his insights about how and why AOL was able to become the dominant online service of the 90s.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

110. Hunter Walk Talks Second Life, Google Adsense and YouTube Jun 12, 2016

Special Note: We’re testing something new this week. You can read a full transcription of this episode here.

Everyone’s favorite, friendly neighborhood Venture Capitalist, Hunter Walk, discusses four amazing segments of his career: Late Night With Conan O’Brien, Second Life, Google Adsense and YouTube.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

109. The History of Sierra Online with Laine Nooney Jun 05, 2016

Summary

Ken and Roberta Williams were the founders of the legendary PC gaming company Sierra Online. Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the School of Literature, Media and Communication at Georgia Tech, Laine Nooney, joins the show to discuss the history and legacy of Sierra Online. You can find out more about Laine's work at her website, LaineNooney.com and by following her on Twitter at Sierra_OffLine.

Pictures of Ken and Roberta Williams:

Picture 1

Picture 2

A screencap from King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne

A screencap from Kings Quest V

A screencap from Leisure Suit Larry

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

108. BabyCenter.com Founders Mark Selcow and Matt Glickman May 30, 2016

Mark Selcow and Matt Glickman were the founders of BabyCenter.com. The story of BabyCenter is a combination of several themes we've discussed on this show: creating community as a strategy for building a sustainable audience, attempting e-commerce in the 1990s, and, most interestingly, we get into an in-depth discussion of their experiences of the DotCom bubble.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

107. Founder of Marketwatch, Larry Kramer @lkramer May 22, 2016

Summary

Larry Kramer was the founder of MarketWatch.com. He’s also been the President and Publisher of USA Today and he’s currently interim CEO of TheStreet.com. We talk to him about creating a brand like MarketWatch in a space dominated by powerful incumbents like The Wall Street Journal, CNBC and others. But we also hear what it was like to work in the legendary Washington Post newsroom in the 1970s and 80s, as well as what it takes to bring success to modern media properties like USA Today in the digital era. If you want a first hand primer of when digital and old-world media collided, you couldn’t do better than to listen to the career path of Larry Kramer.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

106. Co-Founder of Tesla, Marc Tarpenning May 15, 2016

Summary

Marc Tarpenning, along with Martin Eberhard, was the cofounder of Tesla Motors back in 2003. But before that, Tarpenning and Eberhard were also the cofounders of NuvoMedia, which produced one of the world's first ebook devices, the rocket eBook. So, for the first part of the episode, Mark recounts the story of NuvoMedia and then about 25 minutes in we begin the founding of Tesla, in my opinion, perhaps the most amazing startup story of the last 20 years.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

105. Tom Rielly, Founder of PlanetOut May 09, 2016

Summary

Tom Rielly was the founder of PlanetOut, the largest LGBT website and community of the 1990s. Tom recounts the unique impact the web and online technology had on the LGBT community and, prior to that, remembers the early days of the Mac industry. But of course, Tom is best known today for his work at TED, where he is director of Community as well as the TED Fellows program. So we get some interesting TED history as well, especially how posting TED Talks online has transformed the organization.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

104. Suck Again! Joey Anuff And Carl Steadman Return! May 02, 2016

Summary

What more do I need to say? Joey and Carl are back for round two.

You can visit the Suck archives here.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

103. Rafat Ali @rafat of PaidContent and Skift Apr 25, 2016

Summary

I can't be sure about this exactly, but I would hazard to say Rafat Ali is possibly patient zero when it comes to taking a blog and turning it into a real, 21st century media company. Before the Huffington Post, before TechCrunch, even, maybe, kind of, before Gawker, Rafat founded PaidContent in 2002. He later sold it to the Guardian Media Group in 2008. Today he is the CEO of Skift.com, a media vertical in the travel industry space. Rafat has such an amazing story: an immigrant's story, an accidental entrepreneur's story, and, basically, the first-hand story of how blogging morphed into "professional," modern digital media.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

102. Analysis Ep. 5 - The History and Future of Automotive Tech with Mike Dushane Apr 10, 2016

I know it’s a bit beyond our usual chronology of 90s-era technology, but car tech has come up so much in recent episodes, that I thought it was high time to learn more about the history and future of automotive tech. Electronic vehicles, Tesla, autonomous vehicles, but also, basic recent car tech advances like navigation systems and the like. So, to help me with that, I spoke with Mike Dushane, a 20 year web veteran, like myself, but also a veteran of Automobile Magazine, Car and Driver and, generally, an observer of and participant in the automotive industry over the last couple of decades as digital technology and cars have collided.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

101. Matt Kursh on Pen Computing, Sidewalk and MSN Mar 21, 2016

Summary

Matt Kursh was a part of the pre-web Silicon Valley frenzy for pen computing that we’ve spoken about several times on this show. Matt is kind enough to give us an in depth look at that mini-bubble and explains how it happened and how it paved the way, in a roundabout way, for modern handheld devices. Matt was also involved in several Microsoft initiatives in the 1990s, including the pioneering local site Sidewalk and MSN.com at the height of the portal era.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

100. The Man Who Could Have Been Bill Gates? The Gary Kildall Story Mar 13, 2016

Summary

To celebrate our 100th episode, we’re taking a special look at one of the foundational legends of the technology industry. It’s about the man who invented the modern disc operating system (the OS) and the concept of the software platform. That man was Gary Kildall. And the question we examine in this episode is, why is Bill Gates the richest man in the world, and not Gary Kildall? Could things have turned out differently?

In this episode we use audio from the following documentaries:

Triumph of the Nerds

and

Computer Chronicles

Special thanks to Justin Schwinghamer for the original score and the voice acting.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

99. Founders of Suck.com, Carl Steadman and Joey Anuff Feb 28, 2016

Summary

Carl Steadman and Joey Anuff were the founders of perhaps the most influential of the early web content sites, Suck.com. If you’re unfamiliar with Suck, you’re about to get a taste of why so many of us have been such big fans for so long. If you’re a longtime follower of the adventures of Joey and Carl, then get ready for some of that old time stuff, for the first time in 20 years.

You can visit the Suck archives here.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

98. Rob Lord, Founder of the Internet Underground Music Archive Feb 24, 2016

Summary

Rob Lord was the founder of the Internet Underground Music Archive all the way back in 1993. This would become the first website devoted to the distribution of music via MP3 downloads, and very much paved the way for a lot of what came later. Before almost anyone else, Rob had a vision that digital would be the future of music distribution, and he has pursued that vision throughout his career, which includes such music related startups as N2K, Muse.net and the Songbird player. We’ve actually already mentioned Rob at length in the Justin Frankel episode, as Rob joined Justin to create Nullsoft and disseminate the Winamp player. There’s some great, never-before-discussed details here, about doing business with the music industry, with Napster, and even with a young Travis Kalanick.

Today, Rob is working on a new startup called Shrines, which should be in public beta shortly.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

97. Chris Fralic @chrisfralic Discusses Half.com and Del.icio.us Feb 14, 2016

Summary

Most of you will know Chris Fralic as a partner in the VC firm First Round Capital, here in New York City. But Chris was also heavily involved in two key companies that we’ll be talking more about over the next year, Half.com and del.icio.us. Chris gives us the history and context for those two innovators, and shares stories from an interesting career, stories that range from competing against Michael Dell to sell computers to launching TED Talks online.

As an added personal historical bonus, Chris shared the Personal Pitch Deck he put together when trying to convince Half.com to hire him, back in the day. You can see he did his homework, analyzing the market, evaluating the opportunity and weighing the challenges Half would face. No wonder he got hired. Click here to view it.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

96. The First "Web" Cam With Quentin Stafford-Fraser Feb 08, 2016

Summary

I wanted to speak to Quentin Stafford-Fraser because he was involved in the first “web” cam. I say “web” in quotes because, it wasn’t technically on the web, but, well, you’ll understand the distinction when you listen. But Dr. Stafford-Fraser has been involved in so many things, right up to the present day, that I couldn’t help but ask him about the rest of his fascinating career. So, come for the webcam stuff, but stay to hear about studying computer science under the founding legends of the field, the first webserver at Cambridge, the development of Virtual Network Computing, augmented reality, and even the present and future of smart and autonomous car technology.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

95. Pathfinder Executive Paul Sagan Feb 01, 2016

Summary

Paul Sagan has had a long and illustrious career, which includes: 1) stints working on the Full Service Network, that interactive tv initiative in Orlando Florida that we've mentioned several times in the past, as well as 2) being a key member of the team that developed Pathfinder, one of the very first professionally produced content sites on the world wide web. He was also heavily involved in the development of another company we've mentioned previously, Akamai Technologies, where he served as Chief Operating Officer, CEO and Director. Today, Paul is Executive in Residence at General Catalyst Partners. A couple of times, we mention another oral history project that Paul is a part of, and that is Digital Riptide, which collects interviews about how journalism and digital technology have evolved over the past 25 years. You can find out more about that project at DigitalRiptide.org.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

94. Founder of the First Dorm Room Dot Com, Tripod's Bo Peabody Jan 10, 2016

There's a certain romance surrounding dorm room startups. From Microsoft, to Dell, to Facebook, there's something about the audacity of building a company before you even get your degree that catches the imagination. The title for the first of the Dot Com dorm room startup probably goes to Tripod, which was founded all the way back in 1992 by Bo Peabody. Bo recounts how Tripod stumbled upon one of the earliest antecedents for what today we would call social media, and gives us an amazing analysis about what it really takes to succeed as an entrepreneur.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

93. (Misc 4) Minitel, the French Internet That Came Before the Web Jan 03, 2016

SummaryToday we’re going to talk a bit about alternate Internets. In previous episodes, we have outlined how, going back to the 1970s and 80s, early experiments with networked computing and online services began using a technology called Videotex. So, I wanted to dig deeper into these experiments to look at them as valuable precursors to the world wide web and the modern Internet. It is unlikely, for various technical reasons, that videotex could have evolved systems that could have challenged the modern TCP/IP internet as we know it, but it’s fun to explore these other systems and imagine an alternative net that might have developed. And most interestingly, to me at least, this exercise will allow us to examine Minitel, the French Videotex network that grew to prominence a full decade before the World Wide Web.

Special thanks to Laurent Bristiel @LaurentBristiel for his research assistance on this episode.

The New York Times on the death of the Minitel

This is the Reply All episode about working for a Minitel Rose service

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

92. Founder of the World's First Commercial Website, Dale Dougherty Dec 14, 2015

Summary

Dale Dougherty was the organizer of the world’s first ever web developers conference, the World Wide Web Wizards Workshop in July of 1993. This was where Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreessen first met. Dale is also the man who coined the term “Web 2.0” when he organized the first Web 2.0 Summit. But Dale was also the co-founder of the web’s first ever commercial website, Global Network Navigator, or GNN. Today, Dale is probably best known as the founder of Make Magazine, Maker Faires and the entire Maker Movement.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

91. Co-Founder of Feed Magazine, Stefanie Syman Dec 07, 2015

Summary

If you'll remember in Episode 32, we explored the early digital media startups like Salon, Slate, Suck, Pathfinder, etc. One site that was mentioned, but did not get a lot of detail in that episode was Feed Magazine (aka, Feedmag.com, or Feed). The reason I couldn't go into much detail is because secondary sourcing about Feed is difficult to come by 20 years on. And that's what I was absolutely delighted to make contact with Stefanie Syman. Stefanie, along with Steven Johnson, was a co-founder of Feed, and she recounts the wonderful time period early on when two freelance writers could say, "Gee, why don't we just publish a magazine on the web?" It's a great story of the early Internet scene in New York City, and stay tuned to hear all the people who cut their teeth at Feed and went on to fabulous careers.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

90. CEO of MapQuest, Barry Glick, Discusses the History and Future of Location Tech Nov 20, 2015

Summary

I don't think very many people, twenty years ago, would have imagined that maps, location technology and the like would prove to be so strategically important and structurally integral to the Internet and modern technology as we're coming to know it. One person who might have had the vision was Barry Glick, founding CEO of MapQuest. Barry was there in the early days when maps and computers first met, and he has stayed in the location tech industry through the emergence of GPS, mobile devices and now into the current future of driverless cars and the like.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

89. How Tom Hadfield Founded Soccernet At Age 13 Nov 09, 2015

Summary

Tom Hadfield was the founder of Soccernet, which is still the premiere soccer (football!) website in the world. But just as the title says, Tom began Soccernet when he was twelve or thirteen. So, certainly, Tom takes the cake, out of anyone we’ve spoken with so far, for having been in the Internet Game his entire life. Tom tells us the unique story of Soccernet’s founding and how it ended up with ESPN. As a bonus, since Tom is the first person we’ve spoken to from outside of North America, he’s also able to give us our first look at how the web took off in other parts of the world.

BTW, spread the word on the podcast via these links:

NPR’s Earbud.fm submission form.

ProductHunt podcast tool

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

88. How Microsoft Went Online, With Brad Silverberg Nov 02, 2015

Summary:

In the early 1990s, Brad Silverberg was one of the key champions of the Internet within Microsoft. As the first ever Senior Vice President of the Internet Platform and Tools Group, he essentially led Microsoft’s efforts to embrace the Internet and the Web beginning in late 1995. As the senior Vice President of the Personal-Systems Division, Brad also led the development of Windows, from the launch of Windows 3.0 through Windows 95, which he helped establish as Microsoft’s greatest ever product. Today, he is a venture capitalist with both Fuel Capital and Ignition Partners.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

87. Tim DeMello Talks Home Delivery Startups Oct 26, 2015

Summary:

One of the big trends of recent years in the tech space has been the rise of delivery startups like Instacart and Postmates and the like. In a way, this is a resurrection of an idea, if you remember famous 90s startups like WebVan, Peapod and Kozmo.com. So, I thought it would be interesting to speak with someone who founded a delivery startup back in the 90s. Tim DeMello was the founder of Streamline, a delivery startup which actually predated the dot-com era. We talk to Tim about the economics of home delivery businesses and find out what he thinks the prospects are for the current crop of delivery companies.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

86. Martin Nisenholtz on Bringing the New York Times Online Oct 19, 2015

Martin Nisenholtz is a digital media pioneer. He founded perhaps the first digital marketing group at Olgilvy and Mather all the way back in 1983. But from 1995 through 2012, he was first the President of New York Times Electronic Media and then CEO of New York Times Digital and then Senior Vice President of Digital Operations at the New York Times Company. Martin, is literally the guy who has been front and center in everything the Times has been doing in digital for the last 20 years. He headed the team the launched the first NYTimes.com website back in 1995, and he has helped steer all of their web and digital efforts all the way through to the present social and mobile era.

A screenshot of @Times on AOL here.

A screenshot of an early NYTimes.com homepage here.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

85. Evan Kirstel @evankirstel Discusses The Wireless Industry and Broadband Oct 12, 2015

Listen:

Evan Kirstel is a 20 year veteran of the wireless, broadband, cloud and social space. He is also absolutely the number one person to follow on Twitter if you like a daily dose of amazing articles and blog posts. Evan helps me frame just that: how the modern wireless industry developed, the various issues involved in the evolution of broadband, and where it all might be going.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

84. Analysis Ep. 4 "Clutching Pearls" With Chris Higgins Oct 05, 2015

Summary:

Chris Higgins is back! In this very fun episode we talk about Windows 95, command line computing, who is the Microsoft of tech today and how the Matrix is the perfect hacker/Internet movie.

Listen, we promised a bunch of things would be in the show notes, but sadly, we didn’t write them down. This is what I could remember. If there are others I forgot some, send them to me via email or a tweet.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

83. Founder of Travelocity, Terry Jones Sep 27, 2015

Summary:

Terry Jones was the founder and CEO of Travelocity. Perhaps the primary pioneer in the online travel space, Terry explains the unique challenges Travelocity faced when dealing with the airline industry, fending off competition from the likes of Microsoft (Expedia) along with giving us a pretty fascinating look at how the modern travel industry works.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

82. (Ch. 7.4) eBay Wins the Auction Wars Sep 21, 2015

Summary:

Part 2 of eBay’s founding story. How, why and when eBay became the undisputed king of the online auction space.

Bibliography:

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

81. Founder of WebCal and "Turbo Yahoo" Bruce Spector Sep 15, 2015

Summary:

Bruce Spector is another early web entrepreneur whose company would be acquired during the dotcom era. In this case, the company was WebCal and the acquirer was Yahoo. Bruce later went on to spearhead Yahoo's acquisitions during the late 90s, including two of the largest, Broadcast.com and Geocities.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

80. Founder of CBS Sportsline Mike Levy Sep 07, 2015

Summary:

There was a time, early on in the web era, where things were very much wide open. An entrepreneur could survey the scene and say, "No one has done a great sports site yet. Why don't I build one?"

Mike Levy did just that, taking on deep-pocketed incumbents like ESPN to build Sportsline (eventually, CBS Sportsline) into a lasting and powerful brand. Mike recounts Sportsline's initial incarnation as a dialup service, its partnerships early on with major sports celebrities, as well as being present for the foundations of the modern fantasy sports industry.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

79. Glenn Fleishman @GlennF Returns! Aug 30, 2015

Summary:

Glenn Fleishman is back to talk more about Amazon's founding mythologies, the recent controversies surrounding Amazon's work culture, and the effect the web revolution has had on publishing and journalism, but from the point of view of a writer.

The New York Times article we discuss extensively can be found here.

The David Halberstam book on the rise of modern media can be found here.

And the book that Glenn recommends can be found here.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

78. Yahoo's Master Brand Builder, Karen Edwards Aug 24, 2015

Summary:

Most people agree that Yahoo the king of the dot-com-era search sites on the strength of its zany, friendly, ubiquitous brand. The woman responsible for building that brand was Karen Edwards. Karen recounts becoming the first dot-com company to advertise on tv, seeking out “near-surfers” and marketing an internet company in an era where many people didn’t know what the internet even was.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

77. Narendra Rocherolle @narendra of Webshots and 30 Boxes Aug 17, 2015

Summary:

How did we get from a place where people were completely skeptical of living their personal lives online to the "share everything" society we live in now? Well, companies like Webshots got us here. Webshots was the first site to organize and encourage public photo sharing online. Narendra Rocherolle was one of the founders of Webshots and in this episode, we talk a lot about the digital sharing habit and how it evolved. But we also get what I think is the most detailed and informative founder arcs we've yet heard. You'll learn how Webshots was founded, pivoted a couple of times, found success, had a successful exit... only to find its acquiring company in bankruptcy after the dot-com bust... only to have the founders themselves buy the company back and find success all over again.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

76. Steve Goldberg of Microsoft and the IAB Aug 03, 2015

Summary:

Steve Goldberg was the first hire for Microsoft's Advertising division. He was present at the launch of such projects as MSNBC, Slate, Expedia and MSN, the portal. Steve goes into fascinating detail about Microsoft's relationship to the advertising industry, and Microsoft's strategic goals generally. But we also speak more broadly about online advertising, because Steve was one of the founders of the IAB, that online advertising trade association/standards body that, to this day, is such a guiding force for the industry.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

75. The Development of Consumer Broadband with Intel's Avram Miller Jul 27, 2015

Summary:

Avram Miller was the co-founder of Intel Capital, and during the 90s, racked up some of the greatest venture fund successes of all time, backing such companies as Broadcast.com, Geocities, CNET and more. Crucially, for our purposes, Avram and Intel were also instrumental in the development of residential broadband. Just this week, we heard in the news how Comcast has more internet subscribers than tv subscribers for the very first time. Avram was key in—as he puts it—convincing the Cable industry that it wasn't just in the entertainment business but in the communications and technology business as well.

Please visit Avram's exceptional blog: Two Thirds Done.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

74. Developer of Winamp, Justin Frankel Jul 20, 2015

Summary:

A conversation with Justin Frankel, creator of the Winamp application, which was arguably the software package responsible for popularizing the MP3.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

73. "Father" of the MP3, Karlheinz Brandenburg Jul 14, 2015

This is the story of MP3, the technology that (revolutionized? upended? destroyed? transformed?) changed music forever. It is also a conversation with the man who is most responsible for developing MP3 technology, Karlheinz Brandenburg.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

72. Owen Thomas Returns! Jul 06, 2015

Summary:

Owen Thomas is back on the show for another analysis episode, helping us establish the context for the dot-com era. You can listen to his previous episode here.

Note: Next week's episode will be dropping on Tuesday morning.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

71. Founder of Quote.com, Chris Cooper Jun 28, 2015

Summary:

Get ready for one of the most fascinating entrepreneurial stories we've covered thus far on the show. Chris Cooper was the founder of Quote.com, which, as you'll see, powered the finance portals of everyone from the search engines to the online traders like E*TRADE. But, prior to that... let's just say Chris Cooper has done it all: degrees in Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering; a job testing nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site; several years making his living as a professional gambler in Las Vegas; several years making his living manufacturing illegal drugs, Breaking Bad-style; a stint in prison where he learned to code; proprietor of a subscription-based BBS; and of course, founder of one of the web's first sources of financial information.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

70. The Forgotten Story Of The Original IPhone Released In 1998 Jun 22, 2015

It turns out that almost exactly 9 years before Steve Jobs introduced the world to the iPhone, there was another 3-in-1 device that was introduced to the world, and it just so happened that that device was also known as an iPhone.

But the company that brought the "first" iPhone to market, all the way back in 1998, was called InfoGear, not Apple.

This is the story.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

69. Steve Yelvington Discusses Newspapers and the Early Web Jun 15, 2015

Summary:

Today we’re going to go a bit backwards in our timeline, back to some of the issues we covered in our Chapter 5 episodes. All of the research I did on newspapers and their early attempts to experiment with digital media came from secondary sources. That is why I was excited to be introduced to Steve Yelvington on Twitter. Steve is a several-decades-long veteran of the newspaper industry as well as a true online and web pioneer. He gives us some great first-person perspective about how the news industry succeeded and failed in its attempts to address the challenges of the Internet Era.

We mention a recent blog post of his in our conversation. You can read that blog post here.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

68. Founder of When.com, Ted Barnett Jun 08, 2015

Summary:

So far in our project, we've mostly spoken to people who were involved in startups that went public in the dot com era. But as I've said many times, that's only part of the story. I very much wanted to speak to someone involved with a successful startup that was acquired by a larger "portal" site. So, I reached out to Ted Barnett, who was one of the founders of the early web calendar site, When.com, which was eventually acquired by AOL. In this episode, we talk about the economics and strategic considerations of a 90s startup that found overnight success, but could not scale in a way that would allow it to continue to grow without hooking up with a larger, deeper-pocketed partner.

But Ted's career is so interesting and varied, we also got to delve into a bunch of other fascinating topics: what it was like to work at Apple in the late 80s, early 90s John Sculley-era; the pre-web "bubble" of pen-computing startups; working at AOL at the height of its late-90s powers; how a company like Kodak dealt with technological disruption completely decimating its 100-year old business; and even the current prospects for Virtual Reality technology.

Because our discussion with Ted paints such a well-rounded picture of a technology career lived in full... recounting how a young technologist can work their way up the ranks, all the way to founder and CEO... I would go so far as to say this is absolutely an essential listen for young people who are starting out in Tech today.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

67. Journalist Maggie Mahar Discusses the Dot-Com Bubble Jun 01, 2015

Summary:

Maggie Mahar is an award-winning journalist who has written for Money magazine, Institutional Investor, the New York Times, Bloomberg, and in the 1990s, covered the markets for Barron’s Magazine. She is also the author of an excellent book, Bull: A History of the Boom and Bust, 1982-2004, that has been extremely helpful for me as I begin to frame the episodes that will bring us into the dot-com “bubble” era. I reached out to her to see if she would help me kick around some of the ideas that her book raised… in order to wrap my mind the causes and context of the bubble. Of course, I recorded our conversation so that we can all start thinking about this era together.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

66. (Ch. 7.3) The Founding of eBay May 25, 2015

...or, to be more strictly accurate, this episode covers the founding of AuctionWeb, the site that would become eBay. How Pierre Omidyar founded a company that brought auctions to the web and revolutionized what classified ads and ecommerce could be.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

65. The "Book Club" Episode May 18, 2015

Summary:

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

64. Geocities Founder David Bohnett May 11, 2015

Summary:

We continue our survey of the pioneering social/community sites by sitting down with David Bohnett, who, along with John Rezner, founded Geocities. David recounts how a lifelong passion for communications tech inspired the idea of Geocities, how and why the site grew to become one of the 5 most popular web destinations in the world by the late 90s, as well as the company's blockbuster sale to Yahoo. We also marvel at how Geocities lives on, thanks to the passion and affection of the Geocities community.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

63. TheGlobe Co-Founder Todd Krizelman May 04, 2015

Summary:

One of the biggest names of the dot-com era was TheGlobe.com. It had one of the most successful and storied IPO's of it's day, and it was lead by two early-twenties co-founders, long before that sort of thing was common. Todd Krizelman (along with Stephan Paternot) was one of those co-founders, and in the offices of his current company, MediaRadar, he sat down with me to remember the founding story of one of the earliest and most innovative community sites on the web. We're exploring these community sites as a sort of survey of proto-social-media websites, and as you'll hear, TheGlobe was one of the most interesting.

If you're interested in reading more about this story, check out the book A Very Public Offering: A Rebel's Story of Business Excess, Success, and Reckoning.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

62. iVillage Co-Founder Nancy Evans Apr 27, 2015

Summary:

Nancy Evans and Candice Carpenter founded iVillage in the mid 1990s. iVillage was one of the first community-focused sites on the early web, and grew to be one of the biggest of its ilk. Not only was iVillage a site and a company founded by women, but it was also among the first sites that targeted women as a demographic in the early web era. Nancy recounts for us the development of the company, the benefits and pitfalls involved in being one of the highest-flying companies of the dot com era, and gives us some powerful perspective about the role women have played from the very beginning of the web era.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

61. (Ch 7.2) Amazon's Dominance of eCommerce Apr 19, 2015

Summary:

It’s part two of our Amazon founding story. How did Amazon come to completely dominate e-commerce? How did Jeff Bezos’ “Get Big Fast” strategy evolve? How and why did Amazon become the quintessential “dot com” and dot-com-era stock? The answers are within.

Bibliography:

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

60. Early eBay Executive (And Future California Governor?) Steve Westly Apr 13, 2015

Summary:

If you are a Californian, then you might know Steve Westly's name very well. After all, in the mid 2000s, Westly was elected Controller of California, essentially the Chief Financial officer of the state, and he also ran for Governor in 2006. In fact, if you listen to the end of this episode, he might again show up on a ballot for governor some time in the very near future. But before his time in California government and politics, Steve Westly was also one of the key early eBay executives, who was instrumental in transforming eBay from a niche hobyist website to the global auctions and commerce powerhouse we all know it as today. We've not yet gotten to eBay in our overall narrative yet, so think of this as a primer to wet your appetite for the story of eBay's founding, coming very soon. In the mean time, you're going to very much enjoy this conversation with eBay's Senior Vice President, Steve Westly.

Here's a recent story from the LA Times about Westly's potential run for Governor.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

59. Early Amazon Engineer and Co-Developer of the Recommendation Engine, Greg Linden Apr 05, 2015

Summary:

As you know, we’ve been trying to cover from every angle, the innovations that ecommerce sites in general, and Amazon.com specifically, brought to the world. That is why I was thrilled to get to speak with Greg Linden, who was one of the Amazon engineers who was responsible for a lot of the personalization and data-driven innovations at Amazon, especially the recommendation engine. Greg explains in great detail the technological challenges involved, but also gives us a conceptual and almost philosophical background to the ways that harnessing data and deploying personalized systems can improve commerce.

If you want to read any of the blog posts Greg has done about his early Amazon days, go here.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

58. Robert Levitan of iVillage and Flooz Mar 30, 2015

Summary:

Robert Levitan has been involved in many pioneering tech companies. The two that I wanted to focus on were iVillage, one of the early web community sites, one of the very first sites to engage with women as a segment of the online audience, and arguably, one of the proto-social networking sites. Later, Robert was the founder of Flooz, the most prominent of the dot-com era companies to attempt digital payments and digital currency.

To learn more about Robert's new startup, check out: liveapp.com.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

57. (I Lied) The Special Requests Episode Mar 23, 2015

I lied about there not being a show this week. Except, it's not a show. It's more of a state-of-the-podcast address, celebrating (belatedly) our one year anniversary.

http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/donate/

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

56. Infoseek Founder (and Inventor of the Optical Mouse) Steve Kirsch Mar 16, 2015

Summary:

Steve Kirsch is one of the most fascinating entrepreneurs we’ve been lucky enough to speak to on this show. Going back to the 1980s, he was the inventor of the optical mouse. Back in the days of desktop software suites, he brought FrameMaker to the world. He founded Abaca Technology, the spam filter company and OneId. And today he is the founder and CEO of a really interesting new startup called Token. But we wanted to speak to him about founding the search engine and web portal InfoSeek. Steve recounts all of this and more, in one of the more comprehensive conversations we’ve had with a truly serial web entrepreneur.

As you can hear from the plane noise in the background on the intro, I’ll be on the road for the next two weeks, so the next new episode will be March 30.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

55. The Watershed Year of 1995 with W. Joseph Campbell Mar 09, 2015

Summary:

W. Joseph Campbell is a Professor in the School of Communication at American University. He is the author of six nonfiction books, including Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism. Just this year, he came out with an excellent new book called 1995: The Year the Future Began. As soon as I heard about this book, I read it, because, as you’ve heard if you’ve been listening to this show, 1995 was a seminal year, especially for Internet history. In fact, the conceit of this project, of course, is that the modern Internet Era began in 1995. So, I was thrilled to talk with Dr. Campbell about how 1995 became the year that the Internet entered the mainstream. We also talk about a lot of the other events from 1995 that made that year such a watershed of recent American history.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

54. CDNow CEO Michael Krupit Mar 02, 2015

Summary:

Michael Krupit first joined CDNow as the Chief Technology officer. He soon took over COO duties, and eventually rose to become CEO of the entire CDNow operation. Mike gives us the background on the early days of another early ecommerce pioneer, and he gives us some great insights into attempting to dominate a commerce niche as opposed to Amazon’s “everything store” strategy. But just as fascinating is the fact that around the years 2000-2001, Michael was right there in the thick of it when the MP3 and Napster revolutions first rocked the music industry. This is a fascinating discussion about first being the disruptor and then becoming the disrupted.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

53. Match.com and Sex.com Founder Gary Kremen Feb 23, 2015

Summary:

Gary Kremen is another early internet legend. Kremen was one of the first people to recognize the opportunity that the Internet presented in terms of classifieds advertising. Seizing this opportunity, Kremen founded Match.com, to this day, still the largest player in the online dating space. But Kremen is also famous for the legendary struggle to control the Sex.com domain name, which Kremen registered, lost control of, regained control of (after a lengthy legal battle) attempted to turn into the adult version of Google and eventually sold on to other investors. This is one of the more colorful and fascinating interviews we’ve ever been able to feature on this show.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

52. (Ch 7.1) The Birth of Amazon.com Feb 16, 2015

Summary:

Finally, the long-promised foray into e-commerce, starting with… not the first… but practically the first… player in the space… and ironically enough, the 800 pound gorilla in the space to this day. Amazon. Dot com. We examine Jeff Bezos, the man. We consider Amazon, the idea. We look at e-commerce, the concept. It’s interesting. It’s groundbreaking. It’s available with free 2-day shipping for Prime members. Just kidding.

Bibliography:

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

51. Glenn Fleishman @GlennF Discusses Early Amazon Feb 09, 2015

Summary:

You may know Glenn Fleishman from a bunch of things. He has written for Wired, Fortune, Popular Science, The New York Times, and PCWorld, and contributes regularly to The Economist, The Seattle Times, Macworld, etc. Also, in the last few years, he was the publisher of the Magazine, the iPad publication that we spoke to Chris Higgins about in previous episodes... and he hosted a very popular podcast called the New Disruptors. But for a brief time in the 1990s, he was also the catalog manager for Amazon.com, right around the time of the site launch. Not only was Glenn willing to give us the details on some of the early decisions and processes at Amazon, but he also goes into a frank assessment of Amazon strategy, what the prospects for the company looked like at the time... and even Jeff Bezos himself.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

50. Amazon's Technical Co-Founder and Employee #1, Shel Kaphan Feb 01, 2015

Summary:

Shel Kaphan was the very first person hired by Jeff Bezos to launch Amazon.com. A lot of people consider Shel to be a co-founder in all but name, because he, along with Paul Davis, was largely responsible for the entire technical architecture that Amazon launched with, from the website, to the back-end systems that made selling books on the Internet possible. I was thrilled when Shel agreed to talk to me, because he does not give a lot of interviews, and I knew he could shed some light on some of the earliest Amazon details that absolutely no one else could. Shel gives us the background on everything from the commerce systems to the development of Amazon’s famous review and recommendation systems. This is such a fascinating, detailed look at Amazon’s very beginnings, I think that it reminds me of all the great details we got from Mosaic and Netscape engineering teams we spoke to in the earliest interviews for this project. Enjoy!

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

49. Lycos Founder and CEO Bob Davis @BobDavisHCP Jan 26, 2015

Summary:

Bob Davis was not only the founder of the search engine/web portal known as Lycos, he was also the CEO, first employee, and for a time, the ONLY employee. Bob recounts how Lycos took technology from academia, turned it into a viable company, and became one of the "four horsemen" of the dot com era. Today, Bob is a partner at the venture capital firm, Highland Capital Partners.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

48. Amazon Director, Customer Service Strategy, Jane Slade Jan 19, 2015

Summary:

Jane Slade joined Amazon.com's nascent customer service team when it was a couple of people, some computers, and one phone line. Over the coming years, she helped to build the customer service operations at Amazon into the enormous team it is today. Jane recalls for was what it was like in the early days and why keeping customer experience central to everything Amazon does is probably the key driver for the company's success.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

47. Analysis Episode with Christina Warren of Mashable.com @film_girl Jan 12, 2015

Summary:

Christina Warren is the Senior Tech Analyst for Mashable.com. She came on the podcast to talk with me about Amazon’s place in the tech universe, Jeff Bezos as an entrepreneur, and to break down what might be the four or five main business models for the internet. Be sure to look for Christina’s work on Mashable.com. You can also find her on Twitter at @film_girl. She also co-hosts a terrific podcast called Overtired.

The two articles we discuss on the episode are:

Amazon Bought This Man’s Company. Now He’s Coming for Them

Facebook is the New AOL

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

46. (Ch 6) A History of Internet Porn Jan 04, 2015

So, I ran across this quote from Star Trek television producer Rick Berman. He said, “Without porn and Star Trek, there would be no Internet.” That’s a notion that I have to say really kind of rang true to me, in a tonge and cheek sort of way. I mean, it’s something you hear all the time. The idea that pornography leads the way with any new technological innovation. That Porn is some x-large percentage of the overall internet Do you ever wonder how much of the internet is actually porn? If it’s such a large amount then wouldn’t it be worth investigating how porn has shaped the web and the internet generally? That’s sort of the thinking that led me to begin thinking about this episode.

Bibliography:

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

45. Excite Co-Founder Ryan McIntyre Dec 15, 2014

Ryan McIntyre, along with his fellow Stanford classmates (Graham Spencer, Joe Kraus, Mark Van Haren, Ben Lutch and Martin Reinfried) was one of the "Excite 6" who founded the Excite search engine in the early 1990s. Ryan recounts what it was like to found a college start-up before that was a "thing," and explains how the technology was developed with the help and guidance of VCs and other early investors. We delve into the "Coke vs. Pepsi" competition with Yahoo, the madness of the "dot-com" era, and analyze the dominance of Google in the search space today.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

44. The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, Co-Founder of Akamai Technologies Dec 08, 2014

Summary:

On HBO, the show Silicon Valley is about a young kid who comes up with a billion-dollar algorithm and attempts to build a company around the technology. Well, there's a real-life parallel, because that is what happened to Danny Lewin in the early 1990s. He co-developed an algorithm that gave birth to the Content Delivery Network industry, and the company that he co-founded on the strength of this technology is Akamai Technologies. To this day Akamai is a major backbone of the entire Internet.

But that is only one of the fascinating things about the story of Danny Lewin. Born in Colorado, Lewin's family moved to Israel at a very young age, and Lewin eventually became an special forces operative in Sayeret Matkal, the elite anti-terrorism unit in the Israeli military.

Tragically, Lewin was one of the passengers on American Airlines Flight 11, which was hijacked on September 11, 2001. There is reason to believe that Danny Lewin was possibly the first person to be killed by the hijackers on that day.

In this episode we talk with author Molly Knight Raskin who has written a book, No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet, which chronicles Danny Lewin's amazing life story. It's a fascinating book, which I encourage you to read for yourself, and this is a fascinating episode.

Buy The Book:

No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

43. Danny Sullivan @dannysullivan on the History and Future of Search Dec 01, 2014

Summary:

Danny Sullivan is generally acknowledged as THE expert on the search industry (www.searchengineland.com). Danny first got his start coving search all the way back in 1996, and for almost twenty years, he has covered search technology as it has evolved from the likes of Excite and Yahoo into the dominance of Google and the emergence of social and mobile as the new frontier. Danny gives us a bit of his own background before we wade into the 90s search scene. We spend a lot of time discussing how and why Google grew to dominance and toward the end, Danny tells us where search technology might be going in the future.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

42. (Misc 3) Did Al Gore Really Invent the Internet? Nov 24, 2014

As you know, often on this podcast, I run across issues or tidbits from the past that don’t quite fit our overall narrative. But sometimes those tidbits are just too interesting for me to ignore. One of those things I keep running across is Al Gore and his role with the early Internet.

I think it’s something that we all sort of “know.” That Al Gore claimed he invented the Internet. I remember this being a small political issue at the time of the 2000 election, but I honestly never cared enough to investigate the details. Last weekend, however, I went down a research rabbit-hole and decided to find out the truth. Not because I’m a huge Al Gore fan, or because I’m looking to score points against him either. I was just genuinely interested, and wanted to find out the historical truth— not just the partisan-tinged conventional wisdom.

So, here is what I found out.

A full transcript of the CNN interview we talk about can be found here.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

41. Excite.com CEO George Bell Nov 17, 2014

Summary:

George Bell was the CEO of Excite.com, took that pioneering search engine public, and became the CEO of Excite@Home when he oversaw that major merger of the dotcom era. George talks about the development of search technology, the madness of the dotcom bubble and even explains the background to one of the more notorious what-ifs in Internet history: the time that Excite had the opportunity to buy Google for a mere $750,000.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

40. Microsoft and Internet Explorer Executive, Ben Slivka Nov 10, 2014

Summary:

I was absolutely thrilled that Ben Slivka agreed to come on the podcast with us. Obviously, we’ve had plenty of oral histories relating to Netscape and the development of it’s browser. But we’ve only spoken to a handful of people about Internet Explorer thus far. Obviously, Internet Explorer was every bit as vital to the development of the early web so I’ve been eager to get more background from the Microsoft side of the story. And who better than Ben Slivka, who was the leader of the original Internet Explorer project at Microsoft. Ben recounts where Microsoft was at as a company before Windows 95 and the web, and he walks us through the development of Internet Explorer from version 1.0 through 4.0 and beyond. If you’re interested in the technology- and feature-development of the modern web browser, you’re unlikely to hear a better hour of conversation. So, I know you’ll enjoy this conversation with Ben Slivka.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

39. CNET Founder Halsey Minor Nov 03, 2014

Summary:

Halsey Minor is an absolutely legend when it comes to the online era. Along with names like Jerry Yang, Jeff Bezos, Pierre Omidyar and others, Halsey Minor deserves credit for creating one of the first truly great companies on the web: CNet. Halsey recounts the CNet creation story with us, but also goes into his early days on Wall Street, with another entrepreneurially-focused young man named Jeff Bezos. And toward the end of our talk, Halsey talks about the project he’s embarked upon now, which is working in the bitcoin space. Interestingly, Halsey feels that Bitcoin as a technology has the potential to be every bit as revolutionary as the web was, and perhaps even more so. So please enjoy a conversation with Halsey Minor.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

38. An Oral History Of The Web's First Banner Ads Oct 27, 2014

The first banner ads went live on the web 20 years ago today, October 27th, 1994, when the website HotWired.com first launched on the internet. We've spoken to some of the people responsible for the creation of these ads, and so, in honor of the anniversary, I have re-edited their interviews into an oral history that tells the whole story. But in case you think you've heard all this before, please note that there are segments from 4 entirely new interviews that you have NOT heard before. So, if you want to hear the whole story comprehensively, download and listen!

THE FIRST BANNER AD

Please note: The post on the website for this episode has all the ads and graphics we mention throughout the podcast, so please check that out to see the full picture.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

37. Wired Magazine Founding Editor John Battelle @johnbattelle Oct 20, 2014

Summary:

Younger listeners might know John Battelle as being one of the original forces behind the Web 2.0 movement, as the founder of the Web 2.0 Summit as well as Federated Media. But John was also the founding editor of both Wired Magazine and Industry Standard magazine, that great, lost magazine of record for the dot com era. For our purposes, we’ve been focusing more on HotWired, so that’s why I was super excited to speak with John and get some of the background stories from Wired the magazine as well as Industry Standard. Enjoy!

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

36. Talking Early Online Services With Chris Higgins @chrishiggins Oct 13, 2014

Summary:

Another conversation with writer and journalist Chris Higgins. We start up talking about the recent sad demise of the Magazine, a project Chris was heavily involved in. But then we spend most of the episode talking about the early online services and what it was like to go online before online meant the web. If you’re from this era, get ready for a nostalgia bomb. Hope you enjoy.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

35. Joe McCambley Discusses Advertising and the First Banner Ads Oct 06, 2014

Summary:

Joe McCambley is one of the more prominent names in modern digital marketing and advertising. He's had major roles at Digitas, at AOL in it's modern incarnation and he's the co-founder of the Wonder Factory. I wanted to talk to Joe about his time with Modem Media, where he was one of the creative forces behind the development of the first banner ads that premiered alongside the launch of HotWired. The 20th anniversary of these first banner ads is coming up at the end of the month, and I'm putting together a special episode where I'll edit together interviews from several different people all for one comprehensive piece that will tell the story. As I told Joe after this interview, my original intention was just to use this conversation as a part of that piece. But our discussion went in such wonderful directions, delving deep into nature of modern advertising and the future of marketing in the digital age, that I decided this deserved to be it's own stand alone-episode. If you're working in digital media today, I think this is required listening.

Sponsor link:

audibletrial.com/internethistory

The "You Will" campaign can be viewed here.

The first banner ad can be viewed here.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

34. Owen Thomas of HotWired and Suck Sep 29, 2014

Summary:

Owen Thomas is one of the most prominent voices in modern web media. He is currently the editor in chief of ReadWrite.com, but he was also the west coast editor for Business Insider, the founding editor of Daily Dot, executive editor of VentureBeat, managing editor of Valleywag… and I could go on and on… Business 2.0, Red Herring, etc. I was particularly excited to talk to Owen about some of his earliest jobs, at HotWired and at Suck. Owen gives us some more great background about the launch of Hotwired and the inner workings of Suck.

Sponsor link:

audibletrial.com/internethistory

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

33. HotWired CEO Andrew Anker Sep 22, 2014

Summary:

Soon after the founding of Wired Magazine, it was decided that Wired needed a major web presence. Andrew Anker was recruited to write a business plan and launch a website that would become HotWired.com. As we’ve seen in this chapter, HotWired was among the first stand-alone media websites, and pioneered a great many things, not the least of which were the first banner ads. Andrew gives us some wonderful insights into the early days of Wired (going back to the magazine’s funding) as well as the evolution of HotWired, Suck, Hotbot and other early web properties he helped bring to life.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

32. (Ch 5.2) Wired, CNET, Slate, Salon and Suck Sep 15, 2014

Summary:

We continue our survey of early web media plays with some that have lasted the test of time and some that, while not currently extant, were lasting in terms of impact. It’s a big episode. WSJ.com. NYTimes.com. EOnline. The Weather Channel. ZDNet. CNet. Salon. Slate. Wired magazine and HotWired.com. And our long lost, beloved Suck.com.

By the way, as promised, here are some early NYTimes screenshots, compliments of Rich Meislin.

Here is a screenshot of @Times on AOL

And here’s an early NYTimes.com homepage

Bibliography:

31. Real Networks Founder and CEO Rob Glaser Sep 08, 2014

Summary:

Rob Glaser was, and is, the founder and CEO of Real Networks. If you were around in the 90s, you’ll remember Real Audio and Real Video and the Real Media player. In the age before broadband, Real Networks pioneered streaming media on the web. Quite simply, the early web would not have been multimedia without Real, and by the late 90s, fully 85% of the streaming audio and video on the web was Real Media. But Rob was also an early Microsoft Executive, so the interview starts out with Rob giving us some fascinating stories about being recruited to join Microsoft in the early 1980s as well as his work with the successful relaunch of Microsoft Word and Excel in the mid 80s.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

30. (Misc 2) The NSA And The 1990s Debate Over the Clipper Chip Sep 01, 2014

Summary:

What the mid-1990's debate about the so-called "clipper chip" can teach us about our contemporary debates concerning NSA surveillance of the Internet and the Web.

This episode was originally written as a piece on Medium, entitled The NSA Tried This Before, What The 90s Debate Over The Clipper Chip Can Teach Us About Digital Privacy

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

29. Analysis Episode 1 With Chris Higgins @chrishiggins Aug 25, 2014

Summary:

A new kind of episode today. I sat down with writer, blogger and former programmer Chris Higgins to do a sort of analysis episode, expanding on some of the issues covered in Chapters 1 and 2. Hope you enjoy.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

28. Pathfinder Executive Oliver Knowlton Aug 18, 2014

Summary:

Oliver Knowlton is another one of our Pathfinder.com alumni. He’s had a wide and varied career in media, from his role as the General Manager of Sports Illustrated to his current role as the VP of the Digital Portfolio Group at Gannett, he’s been working in various aspects of digital media for two decades. Our previous Pathfinder interviewees have given us bookends of the pathfinder story, its origin story and the denouement, as it were. Oliver’s discussion gives us a great summation of the story from someone who was there for the whole ride.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

27. She Gave The World A Billion AOL CDs - An Interview With Marketing Legend Jan Brandt Aug 11, 2014

Summary:

Jan Brandt is a legend in the world of marketing. She singlehandedly led the famous AOL "carpet-bombing" campaign that put millions of AOL trial discs and CDs in everything from magazines to popcorn boxes to banks. AOL was able to leap to the front of the online pack, over competitors like CompuServe and Prodigy largely on the success of this campaign. Jan tells us how this strategy developed, the thinking that went into it and goes into great detail about what worked and what didn't. But she was also a very early AOL executive, so she is able to give us some fantastic background about AOL the company: its culture, its people and its visionaries–people like Steve Case. She takes us from AOL's beginnings, through its considerable growing pains (remember "America On Hold?") its rise to dominance in the dot-com era, and even gives us her perspective on the legacy of the AOL/Time Warner merger.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

26. Head of Time New Media Executive Linda McCutcheon Aug 04, 2014

Summary:

Linda McCutcheon is another Pathfinder veteran. She came up through Time Inc. on the marketing side, so she was the one responsible for landing the first advertisements that ran on the Pathfinder site. But she also stayed at Time Warner through the entire lifecycle of Pathfinder, eventually rising to head the entire Time New Media operation. Linda gives us a great recap of entire era from the Full Service Network efforts through to the dot com days when she successfully brought Time New Media into profitability. One small note… halfway through we lost our Skype connection, ironically because her Time Warner Cable signal went down in her office. So, there is a bit of an interruption halfway through. But allowing for that, it’s a brilliant conversation about the past, present a future of media.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

25. Pathfinder Editorial Executive Craig Bromberg Jul 28, 2014

Summary:

Craig Bromberg has had a long and fascinating career at the intersection of media and technology. An early adopter of online technologies, Craig was a freelance writer when he was chosen by Pathfinder head Walter Isaacson to become the first editorial director of the Pathfinder project. Craig tells us about the thinking that went into the launch of the website and the strategic goals Pathfinder was intended to achieve. But he was also a participant in the byzantine corporate politics that so hobbled Pathfinder’s trajectory, and he gives us a fascinating first hand account of what it was like to fight for a specific vision inside a big organization like Time Warner. Craig has worked with media from every angle and so the second half of the interview sees us get into a fascinating discussion about where media is doing and how it can succeed in a digital age.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

24. (Ch 5.1) Mercury Center and Pathfinder - Big Media's Big Web Adventure Jul 20, 2014

Summary:

We’ve been looking at how companies were feeling their way into the internet era, trying to create new industries and new mediums without precedent or a road map. But thus far, we’ve mainly been looking at pure-play tech companies. And when the web revolution came, everyone wanted a piece of it, not just the tech world. So, this episode looks at the creative and business efforts of those people companies who came from outside the traditional environs of Silicon Valley.

We’re largely going to look at big media. When the web began, it was considered to be a new medium, and so it was assumed by many if not most people that big media would logically dominate this new medium. The reason this did not come to pass is complicated, and we’ll look at some of the many reasons why. We’ll look at pioneering newspaper efforts like the San Jose Mercury News’ Mercury Center. We’ll examine unlikely big media web properties that got the web exactly right, like the Weather Channel. We’ll look at how one unlikely company, Reuters, singlehandedly disrupted the entire content industry by turning news into an online commodity. And more than anything, we’ll look at the rise and ignominious fall, of Pathfinder, onetime rival of sites like Yahoo, the portal that maybe wasn’t a portal, the greatest website you don’t remember.

I mention the Pathfinder Museum. Go there for great visual and data artifacts from the site.

There is an exceptional (and exceptionally long) profile of the Mercury Center saga from the Columbia Journalism Review.

Bibliography:

23. Co-Founder of FocaLink, Dave Zinman Jul 14, 2014

Summary:

Today we have an interview with Dave Zinman, co-founder of FocaLink Media services, which, if you'll recall, developed the first remote ad server. We previously spoke to his co-founder, Jason Strober. Dave is a long time advertising industry veteran. He was also at Yahoo and is currently the CEO of InfoLinks. I hope we've done a good job in these interviews of giving you a decent understanding of how online advertising developed and how it functions to underpin the internet as we know it today. Dave gives us some fascinating insights on all of this, and especially toward the end of the interview, we get in depth about how modern advertising functions. We get into retargeting, the modern advertising method that represents the the apex of advertising evolution. How does Facebook make all it's money? It's retargeting that makes it possible. So, get ready for an excellent master class on how modern advertising works.

Oh, and there's a bonus story, right at the end, about the founding of eBay.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

22. Co-Founder of DoubleClick, Kevin O'Connor Jun 23, 2014

Summary:

Kevin O’Connor is the co-founder of the granddaddy of all Internet advertising companies, DoubleClick. Chances are, if you’ve seen a banner ad over the last decade or so, it was served up behind the scenes by DoubleClick’s DART technology. Now the backbone of Google’s banner ad inventory, DoubleClick was one of the first internet advertising companies formed, one of the largest of the dot-com era, and as we discuss in this interview, DoubleClick is really the Godfather of the New York City Silicon Alley tech scene.

One of the more interesting things to me, is when Kevin talks about the early controversy that DoubleClick ran into in terms of user privacy and cookies and control of user information. In the late 90s, the firestorm that DoubleClick encountered just for doing basic ad tracking was a huge deal. Now, in the age of Facebook and the NSA listening to everyone, that whole brouhaha seems… I dunno… naive? Were we ever really so young as an Internet? Anyway, Kevin has a lot of good stuff to say about that.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

21. Yahoo Employee #3, Tim Brady Jun 16, 2014

Summary:

When you talk about Yahoo, most people know the names Jerry Yang and David Filo. But if you talk to people who were there at the time, there is another name that everyone mentions: Tim Brady. Tim was Yahoo’s employee number 3. He wrote the original Yahoo business plan. He became Yahoo’s project manager, and as much as anyone, he played a major role in building the company that Yahoo became in the 1990s. Tim was also a college buddy of Jerry Yang’s, so he offers us excellent background on Yahoo’s founding and the thinking that went in to the company’s development.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

20. (Ch 4.2) How Yahoo Became The Web's First Great Company Jun 09, 2014

Summary:

Yahoo became the web’s first truly great company, and in this episode, we examine why. Turning to advertising as a business model, Yahoo was among the first to find a way for the Internet to generate real money. In addition, we look back at the “portal wars” as Yahoo, Excite, AltaVista, et al, competed to become all things to all internet people, and in the process, helped set off the dot com mania.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

19. Co-Founder of Netgravity, John Danner Jun 02, 2014

Summary

This is a wide ranging and fascinating interview with John Danner. John was the co-founder of another of the major internet advertising pioneers, NetGravity. John gives us some more great background on how the technology and culture of the advertising industry evolved, and because NetGravity was the company that built Yahoo's first advertising system, we get some great details about early Yahoo. But John also gives us some incredible insights about what it was like during the dot com era madness. If you're currently an entrepreneur or aspiring to be an entrepreneur, you're going to want to listen closely to the 2nd half of this interview because John speaks some serious truths about the realities of growing a venture backed business.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

18. The True Story Behind Halt And Catch Fire - An Interview With Rod Canion May 26, 2014

An Interview With Compaq Co-Founder and CEO Rod Canion

This Sunday, AMC is premiering a new original series called Halt And Catch Fire. Set in the early 1980s, it tells the story of a band of cowboy entrepreneurs and engineers who join the PC Wars by cloning an IBM machine and taking on Big Blue for control of the nascent personal computer industry.

AMC’s show is fictional, but it turns out, there is a true life story that is similar to this course of events, and it led to the creation of one of the greatest technology companies of all time, Compaq Computers.

Rod Canion was one of the co-founders of Compaq back in the early 80s, and he was there for the real world PC wars. He’s written a book about the time period, Open: How Compaq Ended IBM’s PC Domination and Helped Invent Modern Computing. In the interview below, I spoke to Rod about the book, the process of taking on Big Blue and cloning the IBM-PC, and how a series of incredible calculated gambles paid off to eventually build one of history’s most successful technology companies.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

17. Co-Creator of the First Remote Ad Server, Jason Strober May 20, 2014

Summary

In this episode we continue our exploration into the roots Internet advertising. We’re speaking with Jason Strober, another Internet Advertising pioneer and co-founder of Focalink Media Services, Inc. Focalink was responsible for arguably the first remote ad server, a crucial technical component that made online advertising possible. Jason recounts for us the early, “wild west” days when a small group of ambitious people made an entire industry up from scratch, and with it, laid the financial foundation for the Internet as we know it.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

16. Internet Explorer Team Member, Hadi Partovi @hadip May 14, 2014

Summary

Hadi Partovi was one of the original 9 people on the Internet Explorer project. He left Microsoft in the late 90s to found Tellme Networks, which was eventually acquired by Microsoft for $800 million dollars. This precipitated a second stint at Microsoft where he was General Manager of MSN.com during MSN’s only year of profit, and where he incubated Start.com (which became Live.com, which now points to Microsofts’ online Outlook efforts). After leaving Microsoft a second time, he joined up with his brother Ari to found iLike, which was purchased by Myspace, and both Partovi brothers worked for a time as Senior Vice Presidents at Myspace. In between all this, Hadi and Ari were early investors in Zappos, Facebook and Dropbox, served as advisors to Facebook and still serve as advisors to Dropbox. Hadi is currently the founder and CEO of Code.org, a non-profit working to help schools teach coding to students around the world.

Here is a link to a recent interview with both Partovi brothers.

The post page for this episode is here.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

15. (Ch 4.1) The Early Search Engines And Yahoo May 09, 2014

Summary:

As the early web grows, the explosion of content and websites creates chaos. Early search engines are among the most popular sites on the early web, as users try to find their way around the new medium. Sites like Excite, Lycos, Alta Vista and others try to take an algorithm and data-based route to organizing the chaos, but the site that leaps to the front of the pack, Yahoo!, goes in the other direction, creating a hand-sorted directory.

We learn how Jerry Yang and David Filo started Yahoo! in a trailer on the campus of Stanford University and prepare to make the first great brand of the Internet Era.

Bibliography:

14. (Misc 1) The Forgotten Online Pioneer, Bill von Meister Apr 25, 2014

What If I Told You…

… there was a crazy entrepreneur who was the true founder of what would become America Online? He was the guy who hired Steve Case back before AOL was AOL.

What if I told you that same entrepreneur invented true, networked, online gaming—not in the era of the Xbox 360, but back in the days of the Atari 2600?

What if I then told you that same entrepreneur invented a Napster/Pandora/Spotify/Sirius-like music service, all the way back in 1981, before the compact disc was even widely available?

That Man Is William von Meister

And he is the subject of this episode. I’ve enjoyed all of the episodes we’ve done so far, but I have to say this has been the most fun. It’s exciting to shed some light on a bit of history that I think has been criminally overlooked. And to be honest, it’s just such a crazy story, about a hard drinking, heavy-smoking, women-chasing entrepreneur, seemingly from the Mad Men cloth, who was “a pathological entrepreneur” with a “reality-distortion-field” that would give Steve Jobs a run for his money. It’s a story of about a dozen harebrained businesses, none of which were really successful (excepting of course that some or all of them lent their DNA to the company that would become AOL) but all of which were way ahead of their time, and in many ways, presaged technologies we take for granted today.

Details:

Some of the articles I mentioned about the GameLine System:

Also, the books mentioned as source materials:

Also, this:

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

13. Co-Designer of the First Banner Ad, Co-Founder of Razorfish, Craig Kanarick Apr 17, 2014

Summary

Craig Kanarick was one of the people responsible for the first ever banner ad, which appeared on Oct. 27, 1994 on Hotwired.com. As mentioned in the podcast, there’s no “first” ad, as several were launched in a rotation at the same time. But as mentioned on the podcast, a lot of people like to think of the first ad as this one, for AT&T, which you can see here:

And for more information about the “You Will” AT&T campaign, read about it here, or dig this.

Craig went on to found Razorfish, along with his childhood friend Jeff Dachis. Razorfish was a pioneering design, technology and advertising studio that brought many large brands and corporations onto the web for the first time. Razorfish was also a pioneer of the web-tech scene in New York City, which has come to be called “Silicon Alley.” Craig is currently the founder of Mouth.com, headquartered in the DUMBO neighborhood in Brooklyn, as is this podcast (thus, the DUMBO-ish picture I chose above). In our conversation, I mention some contentious media coverage that Razorfish received back in the day, in my opinion, painting them as poster-boys for dotcom-era excess. I offer some of those articles for context:

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

12. (Ch 3.2) The Rise of AOL Apr 11, 2014

Summary:

America Online survives the inevitable run-in with Microsoft, only to come out the other side stronger. The company has to endure major PR fiascos and network capacity issues, but eventually sees itself firmly established as one of the major players of the dot com era.

Bibliography:

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

11. (Ch 3.1) CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL and the Early Online Services Apr 03, 2014

www.InternetHistoryPodcast.com

@brianmcc

@nethistorypod

Summary:

We take a step back to look at the early online services: CompuServe, Delphi, GEine, the WELL and especially, early AOL. Why? Well, because online services very much served as “training wheels” for the Internet. Online services were NOT the Internet, exactly; at least not at first. But they very much helped get people used to living life in an online environment. AOL especially would grow and enjoy success to the point that it became one of the most powerful companies in technology. We take a look at how America Online grew to dominate the online services market before the inevitable showdown with (who else?) Microsoft.

Bibliography:

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

10. Rob McCool, Founding Engineer, Mosaic and Netscape Apr 02, 2014

www.InternetHistoryPodcast.com

@nethistorypod @brianmcc

Summary:

Rob McCool is another of the core group of original Mosaic programmers who went on to found Netscape. Unlike a lot of the others we have spoken to, he worked more on the server side of the equation for both projects. Rob was also the original author of the NCSA HTTPd web server, later known as the Apache HTTP Server, so we can think of him as the Godfather of Apache. He was a contributor to the initial specification of the Common Gateway Interface (CGI), and later what became known as the Netscape Enterprise Server. Rob went on to work at both Yahoo and Onlive. He is currently at Google, where he works on structured Knowledge Bases and semantics.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

9. Jon Mittelhauser, Founding Engineer, Mosaic and Netscape Mar 27, 2014

Summary:

Jon Mittelhauser is another of the core group of original Mosaic programmers who went on to found Netscape. Jon worked on the Windows versions of both Mosiac and Navigator eventually became the project manager for the Netscape Navigator project on the whole. He gives us great background and details about the development of browsers, the creation of features (he is the father of the hand icon, for example, and was instrumental in bringing image support to the web) and early web advancements in general.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

8. Aleks Totic, of Mosaic and Netscape Mar 16, 2014

Summary:

Aleks Totic was one of the original Mosaic engineers at the NCSA, responsible for the Mac version of Mosiac. They don’t call him “Mac Daddy” for nothing. He was then one of the 6 original programmers recruited by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark to form Netscape. Aleks gives us some excellent behind the scenes anecdotes about both projects, and what it was like to head out to California to work on some crazy startup before doing something like that was “cool.”

A few fun nuggets of history we mention in the conversation:

Click to hear Marc Andreessen ask, “What is global hypermedia?” back in 1993.
The famous whiteboard. They packed up the truck and moved to Beverly Mountain View
Original Mozilla t-shirt designs.
20-year old photos of the NSCP team.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

7. (Ch 2.2) Bill Gates "Gets" The Internet Mar 13, 2014

Summary:

Microsoft was on top of the world at the dawn of the Internet Era… but like Jack Dawson in Titanic? Microsoft would pivot, and pivot hard, once it realized that the Internet was The Next Big Thing. This episode outlines how younger Microsoft employees agitated for a greater focus on the Internet, and how Bill Gates “got” the Internet religion. Microsoft’s embrace of the Internet is truly one of the greatest acts of agility in corporate history. Windows 95 and Internet Explorer are launched, and the seeds are sewn for the great anti-trust battle to come.

Bibliography:

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

6. Mosaic and Internet Explorer Engineer, Chris Wilson Mar 10, 2014

Summary:

Chris Wilson has been working on browser technology for the better part of two decades. A member of the original Mosaic team, he went on to work first at Spry (producing Internet in a Box) and then later at Microsoft, where he was a major developer of Internet Explorer for almost 15 years.

Chris tells us about developing the first Windows port of Mosaic, describes how he was one of the original champions of CSS as a technology, gives us more background about the evolution and life cycle of Internet Explorer, and even described his brief tenure working on Microsoft's first foray into search engine technology!

The quora thread I mention briefly can be found here.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

5. Netscape and Mosaic Founding Engineer, Lou Montulli Mar 06, 2014

Summary:

Lou Montulli is a web pioneer. In 1991 and 1992 he co-authored a text web browser called Lynx with Michael Grobe and Charles Rezac while he was at the University of Kansas. This web browser was one of the first available and is still in use today.

In 1994 he became a founding engineer of Netscape Communications (employee number 9) and programmed the networking code for the first versions of the Netscape web browser.

He is also responsible for several browser innovations, such as HTTP cookies, the blink tag, server push and client pull, HTTP proxying, and the implementation of animated GIFs into the browser. While at Netscape, he also was a founding member of the HTML working group at the W3C and was a contributing author of the HTML 3.2 specification. He is a member of the World Wide Web Hall of Fame.

Lou was also a co-founder of Epinions.com. He was the CEO of Memory Matrix, and when that company was purchased by Shutterfly, he served as Shutterfly’s Vice President of Engineering. He is currently the co-founder and Chief Scientist at Zetta.net.

More about Lynx here.
Here is the famous fishcam!
Here is the post we discuss where Lou lays out the reasoning behind the birth of the browser cookie.
The birth of the tag.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

4. (Ch 2.1) Microsoft At The Dawn Of The Internet Era Feb 26, 2014

Summary:

Netscape has set the standard and taken the lead. But how long will it last? We take a step backwards in this episode and examine why Microsoft was so dominant at the beginning of the Internet Era. We ask the questions: Did Bill Gates really miss the Internet? And: Was the Information Superhighway and the Internet one and the same thing? And we look back on all the things that were distracting Microsoft at the dawn of the Internet Era.

Bibliography:

3. (Ch 1.3) Netscape's IPO As The Big Bang Feb 20, 2014

Summary:

Netscape launches and is a smashing success. Jim Barksdale officially comes on as CEO. Netscape fights off legal threats from the NCSA and the University of Illinois. Despite it’s young age and lack of profits, Netscape files to go public in THE historic IPO of the era. Flush with cash, flush with fame, Netscape girds for battle with a new foe: Microsoft.

Bibliography:

Image Credit:

Assorted Materials

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

2. (Ch 1.2) The Creation of Netscape Feb 19, 2014

Summary:

Marc Andreessen heads out to Silicon Valley. He hooks up with startup legend Jim Clark. They decide to form a company, Netscape, to build upon Mosaic’s previous success. They “get the band back together” by recruiting most of the original Mosaic development team. Netscape Navigator is developed. The company hustles to establish itself before other, larger competitors catch on to the opportunity that is the web browser market.

Bibliography:

Image Credit:

Start-Up: The Book

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

1. (Ch 1.1) Mosaic - The "First" Web Browser Feb 11, 2014

Summary:

Ayoung Marc Andreessen and a team of programmers at the NCSA on the campus of the University of Illinois create and publish the Mosaic browser, thereby creating the world wide web’s first killer app. Mosaic enjoys meteoric, overnight discuss. But the higher ups at the NCSA take the project away from the “kids” who created it. Examining Mosaic as the “trial run” for the product that would eventually be called Netscape Navigator.

Bibliography:

Image Credit:

Kottke

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected