A History of the Internet Era from Netscape to the iPad Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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27. She Gave The World A Billion AOL CDs - An Interview With Marketing Legend Jan Brandt
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
26. Head of Time New Media Executive Linda McCutcheon
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
25. Pathfinder Editorial Executive Craig Bromberg
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
24. (Ch 5.1) Mercury Center and Pathfinder - Big Media's Big Web Adventure
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: http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/realnetworks-inc-history/http://www.cjr.org/feature/the_newspaper_that_almost_seized_the_future.php?page=all http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/07/business/the-media-business-in-san-jose-knight-ridder-tests-a-newspaper-frontier.html Bamboozled at the Revolution: How Big Media Lost Billions in the Battle for the Internet 1st edition by Motavalli, John published by Viking Adult Hardcover There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for the Digital Future http://adage.com/article/news/pathfinder-readies-year/30/ http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/pathfindermuseum/2005/07/new-look-at-pathfinders-new-look.html http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/pathfindermuseum/2005/07/short-history-of-pathfinders.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
23. Co-Founder of FocaLink, Dave Zinman
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
22. Co-Founder of DoubleClick, Kevin O'Connor
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
21. Yahoo Employee #3, Tim Brady
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
20. (Ch 4.2) How Yahoo Became The Web's First Great Company
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
19. Co-Founder of Netgravity, John Danner
SummaryThis 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
18. The True Story Behind Halt And Catch Fire - An Interview With Rod Canion
An Interview With Compaq Co-Founder and CEO Rod CanionThis 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
17. Co-Creator of the First Remote Ad Server, Jason Strober
SummaryIn 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
16. Internet Explorer Team Member, Hadi Partovi @hadip
SummaryHadi 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
15. (Ch 4.1) The Early Search Engines And Yahoo
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: http://cdixon.org/2010/01/03/the-next-big-thing-will-start-out-looking-like-a-toy/ Gainesville Sun, July 31, 1995 http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1320&dat=19950731&id=MENWAAAAIBAJ&sjid=k-oDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3855,7057240 http://stuff.mit.edu/people/mkgray/net/web-growth-summary.html http://www.cybertelecom.org/dns/history.htm http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.01/excite.html http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1996-02-11/what-hath-yahoo-wrought http://www.thinkpink.com/bp/WebCrawler/History.html http://www.wordstream.com/articles/internet-search-engines-history http://web.archive.org/web/20090501140446/http://www.clubi.ie/webserch/engines/infoseek/history.htm http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/18/business/digital-equipment-offers-web-browsers-its-super-spider.html http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2215868/53-of-Organic-Search-Clicks-Go-to-First-Link-Study http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1998/03/02/238576/ “Found You On Yahoo” Red Herring, October 1, 1995 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1998/03/02/238576/ Yang, Jerry; Filo, David; Yahoo! Unplugged: Your Discovery Guide to the Web Reid, Robert H.; Architects of the Web: 1,000 Days that Built the Future of Business Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
14. (Misc 1) The Forgotten Online Pioneer, Bill von Meister
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 MeisterAnd 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:HereHereand HereAlso, the books mentioned as source materials:Kara Swisher: aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads, and Made Millions in the War for the WebMichael A. Banks: On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its FoundersAlec, Klein: Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of AOL Time WarnerAlso, this: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
13. Co-Designer of the First Banner Ad, Co-Founder of Razorfish, Craig Kanarick
SummaryCraig 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:New York MagazineWired60 Minutes II Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.