A History of the Internet Era from Netscape to the iPad Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
131. Elizabeth Osder on the NYTimes.com, Yahoo and More
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
130. AOL, AIM, Chat Rooms, The Time Warner Merger... AOL's History with Joe Schober
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
129. Michael March on the Indie ISP Industry, and the Birth of Online Spam
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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
128. Jim McCann of 1800Flowers
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
127. The History of the iPhone, On Its 10th Anniversary
"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, 2007Those 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
126. (Ch. 8) How the Dotcom Bubble Happened
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
125. Sebastian Mallaby on Alan Greenspan and the Dotcom Bubble
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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
124. Founder of ReadWriteWeb, Richard MacManus
SummarySometimes 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
123. Founder of Reel.com, Stuart Skorman
SummaryAt 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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
122. The First Web Search Engine? With Oliver McBryan
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
121. Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath on Facebook, AIM and WinAmp
SummaryMost 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
120. Jason Calacanis @jason on Silicon Alley, The Dot-Com Bubble and Web 2.0
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
119. The Story of Slate.com with Julia Turner @juliaturner and Jacob Weisberg @jacobwe
SUMMARYI 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
118. The Birth of Amazon's 3rd Party Platform with John Rossman
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
117. Founder of Friendster and Nuzzel, Jonathan Abrams
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.