032. I’m Waiting For The EBITDA: Visiting the ZDE Office 🔗
The due-diligence meetings with Ziff Davis Enterprise would start at midday on Monday. But first, I had arranged to meet Bernard Lunn, a freelance Rea [...]
Cybercultural
Posts
031. Due Diligence Begins in NYC; RWW Gets a Media Award 🔗
As soon as I got back home, RWW made it to the top 10 on Technorati. We were now one of the world’s ten most popular blogs, based on how many websites [...]
On Selling Your Website — It's OK to Be a Lifestyle Business 🔗
Instead of the latest installment of my serialized Web 2.0 memoir, this week I want to talk about the experience of selling a tech blogging business — [...]
030. A Deal Is Done; Trippy Web 2.0 Party at Temple 🔗
Early on Thursday morning, after a phone call with Bernard on the East Coast, I sent my email ultimatum to CMP/TechWeb. “I’ve given this a lot of thou [...]
029. Dinner at TWO, But With Which Acquirer? 🔗
Mike Azzara from Ziff Davis Enterprise had arranged a dinner for three people—he’d be bringing along a new ZDE editor named Stephen Wellman, whom he’d [...]
028. 2008 Web 2.0 Expo, Where M&A Talks Continue 🔗
On the opening morning of the Web 2.0 Expo, I met Marshall Kirkpatrick for the first time in the press room, on the third floor of the Moscone Center. [...]
027. Acquisition Talks: Two Suitors For ReadWriteWeb 🔗
‘Intro to RWW’ slide from a March 2008 presentation. I hadn’t seriously thought of selling ReadWriteWeb before 2008, but I knew I needed help to expan [...]
026. ReadWriteWeb's Big Redesign & The Inaugural Crunchies 🔗
In early November 2007 Mike Arrington and his TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde approached me about participating in a new awards competition they’d come u [...]
025. Stress 2.0: Health Problems & Web Server Issues 🔗
The first sign of health problems came before I went to the 2007 Web 2.0 Summit. Late that September, I was traveling by car to Kaikoura, a scenic coa [...]
024. Read/WriteWeb Makes Key Hire & I Meet Hustle Culture 🔗
In August 2007, I began discussions with Marshall Kirkpatrick, a former TechCrunch lead blogger who was now working for a marketing company. Marshall [...]
023. Las Vegas and the MIX Conference 2007 🔗
After the Web 2.0 Expo, it was off to Las Vegas for Microsoft’s MIX conference, an event to promote the company’s web technologies. My travel, includi [...]
022. Web 2.0 Expo 2007 🔗
In April 2007, I traveled back to San Francisco for the first Web 2.0 Expo, which was being pitched as a trade show. I arrived on Friday, April 13. I [...]
021. Read/WriteWeb Network Launches Amid iPhone Debut 🔗
There had been rumors of a combined phone and iPod device coming from Apple, but what Steve Jobs announced at Macworld on January 9, 2007, blasted awa [...]
020. Betting on Web 2.0: High Stakes Blogging 🔗
On Friday I made my way from San Francisco to the TechCrunch ranch in Atherton, about forty-five minutes south down the 101. Mike was as busy as usual [...]
019. Lou Reed and the Web 2.0 Summit 🔗
In early November I was back in Silicon Valley to attend the annual Web 2.0 Conference, now renamed Web 2.0 Summit, and with the theme of “Disruption [...]
018. The Birth of Cloud Computing and Team Read/WriteWeb 🔗
During the second half of 2006, more and more of my focus was on building up Read/WriteWeb. In July 2006 I announced a major redesign of the site. The [...]
017. Gnomedex 2006 and My Corporate Blogging Adventure 🔗
At the end of June, 2006, I boarded a flight to Seattle for Chris Pirillo’s Gnomedex conference. For the second time, I got lucky with the weather in [...]
016. The Core Values of Blogging 🔗
For the rest of the week after the Digg podcast call, I attended the 2006 Supernova conference, run by a business academic named Kevin Werbach. It was [...]
015. Digg and the Power Laws of Silicon Valley 🔗
In June 2006 I flew to San Francisco for my third US trip. I arrived at SFO just after midday on Monday, June 19, after another sleepless twelve-hour [...]
014. Reluctant Salesman: The Sponsor Ads Era 🔗
After Microsoft Search Champs in Redmond had finished, I began my journey back to New Zealand. My first layover was twelve hours at the San Francisco [...]
013. Visiting the Microsoft Campus in Redmond 🔗
It was a cold but sunny Wednesday morning and a Microsoft charter bus pulled into a complex of red brick office buildings, all no more than three stor [...]
What the Internet Was Like in 2005 🔗
Earlier this week I began chapter 4 of my serialized memoir, Bubble Blog: From Outsider to Insider in Silicon Valley’s Web 2.0 Revolution. There are t [...]
012. The Gift Basket; Seattle, January 2006 🔗
In the second week of January 2006, I got married to my partner of nine years, Maria. We had a 4-year old daughter, Rosabelle, who was one of the flow [...]
011. The Web 2.0 Illuminati 🔗
By October 2005, I was making a reasonable living from the web as a freelancer. I’d quit my New Zealand day job in August and was now earning income f [...]
010. Spicy Noodles 🔗
During my stay at the TechCrunch ranch, Mike Arrington, Fred Oliveira and I had been discussing how to better team up. At the time, creating a network [...]
009. Richard Goes to Yahoo! 🔗
Earlier in 2005, I had made some contacts inside of Yahoo! and had begun to think about trying for a job there. One of my contacts was a search engine [...]
008. The Colors of Web 2.0 Party 🔗
The Colors of Web 2.0 Party was held on Thursday, October 6, 2005, at Swig — a modern bar spread over two floors in Geary St, a few blocks up from Uni [...]
007. Day 2 of the 2005 Web 2.0 Conference 🔗
When I walked into the Web 2.0 Conference at the Argent the next morning, a Thursday, I poured myself a cup of hotel coffee and wandered over to one o [...]
006. Revving Up at the Web 2.0 Conference 🔗
The Web 2.0 Conference kicked off on Wednesday, October 5, 2005, at The Argent Hotel on Third Street in San Francisco. I’d gone into the city on the C [...]
Growth of Web 2.0 & RWW in 2005, Before My US Trip 🔗
A reader emailed me this screenshot of RWW in March 2005, in order to point out the MyYahoo Ticker at the bottom of the screen. “My RSS headlines stre [...]
005. Arriving at the TechCrunch Ranch 🔗
On a Friday afternoon at the end of September 2005, I stepped foot on American soil for the first time. I was greeted at San Francisco Airport by a bi [...]
004. A Call With Tim O'Reilly 🔗
I hadn’t gone to the first Web 2.0 Conference in October 2004, but I monitored it from afar. I was intrigued by the potential start of a new movement [...]
Why Marc Andreessen is a Key Character in My Book 🔗
Marc Andreessen, bare feet and all, on the cover of TIME magazine in Feb 1996. When I was planning the book that turned into Bubble Blog, Marc Andrees [...]
003. The First Web 2.0 Conference 🔗
In-between trying to get linked to by an A-Lister in the blogosphere, I inadvertently turned myself into a journalist. In March 2004, I interviewed Ma [...]
002. The Early Years of ReadWriteWeb 🔗
I was a long way from Silicon Valley at the beginning of 2004, both geographically and in frame of mind. I’d recently turned 32, had fine strawberry b [...]
Roadmap (Table of Contents) 🔗
If you are looking for a good overview of my book project, see my launch post. The following is a chronological table of contents for my book, Bubble [...]
001. Introduction to Bubble Blog 🔗
Welcome to the first post in the serialization of my Web 2.0 memoir. This is the introduction, which sets the scene for the 20 chapters to come. Each [...]
Welcome to Bubble Blog, My Web 2.0 Memoir 🔗
I’m excited to launch a project I’ve been working on for over a year now: a book called Bubble Blog: From Outsider to Insider in Silicon Valley’s Web [...]
Comparing Wayback Machine Copies of ReadWriteWeb to Old Screenshots 🔗
While preparing for the publication of my “Web 2.0 memoir” here on Cybercultural, I was fortunate to discover a screenshot of ReadWriteWeb from 24 Sep [...]
Book Update + My Thoughts on Generative AI and Writing 🔗
This month I finished the first draft of my “Web 2.0 memoir,” which weighed in at 153,000 words. I’ve been working on this book for the past eight mon [...]
Twitter in 2007: The Open Platform That Wasn't 🔗
The first wave of people to join Twitter was in March 2007, when it became the trendy app at the annual SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. I hadn’t gon [...]
ReadWriteWeb Turns 20 🔗
Twenty years ago, on 20 April 2003, I published the first post on a blog I had just started. Entitled The Read/Write Web, it was a manifesto of sorts. [...]
The Golden Age of Microblogging, with Soup.io and Tumblr 🔗
Microblogging was a trend that emerged in the second half of the 2000s, after long-form weblogs had become established in the culture. Microblogging i [...]
Foursquare Raps by the Go-Bang Mayor 🔗
I recently had occasion to write about Foursquare, the once popular location check-in app. I’d been emailed by its PR firm about a potential Machine L [...]
Flickr Before Smartphones and Instagram 🔗
As I’ve been writing my “Web 2.0 memoir” this year, I’ve been using Flickr a lot to look at old photos from that era — mainly conferences I went to, p [...]
BowieNet: The Inside Story of its Creation 🔗
In late 1996, just before his 50th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden and before his latest album ‘Earthling’ was released, David Bowie had qui [...]