Giphy with Nicole LaPorte
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, …
Most Recent Podcasts
Om Malik on Blogging and Web2.0
Summary: 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 …
The Story of the AOL/Time Warner Merger
Summary: What is generally considered the worst merger of all time, and certainly the crescendo event of the dotcom bubble era, today we take a …
David Shen on Early Yahoo and the Maturation of Online Advertising
Summary: David Shen was employee #17 at Yahoo, where he eventually had a hand in, not only the birth of advertising as the primary business …
Facebook’s First Senior Software Engineer, Karel Baloun
Summary: Karel Baloun was the first senior software engineer hired at Facebook in 2005. This was after the Accel round of funding, when Facebook truly …
Ryan Mac on Soundcloud
Summary: 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 …
Christina Warren on SoundCloud
Summary: Our friend Christina Warren is back for another analysis episode. Christina recently posted a tweetstorm about SoundCloud, and its prospects for the future. So …
Don Melton on Apple, Safari, WebKit and Netscape
Summary 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 …
The First Text Message With Neil Papworth
Summary The first text message (or, to be accurate, SMS message) was sent on December 3, 1992. It was sent by Neil Papworth, and it …
Mike Slade Returns! Steve Jobs and Apple in the 2000s
Summary As promised, Mike Slade is back to tell stories from the period 1998 through 2004, when he was Special Assistant to Steve Jobs. Background …
Brian Merchant, Author of The One Device
Summary Finally! A detailed history of the development of the iPhone inside Apple. But not only that, an extensive history of all the technologies that …
The “First” Blogger, Justin Hall
Summary A lot of people give credit to Justin Hall for being, if not the first, then spiritually, at least, the “first” blogger. Since early …
Neil Hunt on Netflix and the Story of Netflix Streaming
Summary 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 …
Andy Rachleff, Co-founder of Benchmark and Wealthfront
Summary 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 …
The Google Chef, Charlie Ayers
Summary 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 …
The Napster Story with Jordan Ritter
Summary 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 …
The History of Google
When Larry and Sergey first met, they didn’t like each other much. In the summer of 1995, Larry Page was considering a transfer to Stanford …
Petstore.com’s Joshua Newman on the Pets Space During the Dotcom Era
Summary 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 …
The Pseudo.com Story With Dennis Adamo
Summary Before Snapchat Stories, before YouTube, in the dialup era of the 90s, there were a select few who were experimenting with streaming video and …
Yahoo’s Acquisition of Overture (Crossover Ep. With the Acquired Podcast)
Summary 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 …
Blog Posts
The Real Reason Excite Turned Down Buying Google For $750,000 In 1999
It’s an infamous story of Internet history as well as business lore, but in 1999, the search engine Excite.com—then running number two to the reigning champion …
Checking In With iTunes
Nice to see we’re still hanging around the top 10. Thanks again for all the ratings and reviews. If you want to leave us a …
She Gave The World A Billion AOL CDs – An Interview With Marketing Legend Jan Brandt
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 …
The NSA Tried This Before – What the 90s Debate Over The Clipper Chip Can Teach Us About Digital Privacy
We’ve Been Down This Road… Something Something… Forgetting History… Something Something… Doomed To Repeat It There is a concern that the Internet could be used to commit crimes …
Yelp, Facebook, Google and the Intermediation of Small Business
This morning I woke up to find this San Francisco magazine story at the top of Techmeme: In great detail, it describes the rather fraught …
Mmm hmm…
Listening back to the Craig Bromberg episode I posted today. I notice I’m doing a s**t-ton of saying “mmm-hmm” after every sentence Craig says. It’s …
A Question For @monkbent from the @exponentfm Podcast: Making a Case For Corporate Euthanasia?
While I’ve been working on getting the most recent episode out, I’ve been listening to and enjoying the most recent episode of @monkbent‘s podcast. …
New Chapters… Internet Porn?
So, I’m finishing up a couple of chapters on early media responses to the rise of the Internet. Pathfinder, Wired, all that good stuff. Coming …
What Ever Happened To AOL?
Ever since the chapters on AOL I posted last month, I’ve gotten a small but steady stream of emails asking what ever happened to AOL. …
Is Halt And Catch Fire A True Story?
On the Veracity of AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire Ever since I posted my episode last week interviewing Rod Canion with the truth behind the Halt …