139. The Napster Story with Jordan Ritter

139. The Napster Story with Jordan Ritter

Author: Brian McCullough April 16, 2017 Duration: 1:21:44
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.

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Brian McCullough's Internet History Podcast digs into the foundational stories of our digital world, exploring the pivotal moments and forgotten detours between the rise of the first mainstream web browser and the dawn of the modern mobile era. This isn't just a dry recounting of dates and corporate maneuvers. Instead, the podcast weaves together the intersecting threads of technology, business, and the profound societal shifts they triggered. You'll hear about the personalities, the breakthrough products, the spectacular failures, and the cultural phenomena that collectively built the internet as we know it. Each episode serves as a chapter in a larger, ongoing narrative about how connectivity reshaped everything from commerce and communication to creativity and community. For anyone curious about how we got here, this series provides essential context, revealing the human drama behind the code and the hardware. Tune in for a deeply researched, engagingly told chronicle of the forces that defined a generation and continue to shape our future.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Internet History Podcast
Podcast Episodes
164. How the Web Came to Germany, With Thomas Ganter [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:17
Podcast listener Thomas Ganter gives us a first person, anecdotal account of how the web came to Germany in the 1990s. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/…
163. The History of Online Video with JibJab's Gregg Spiridellis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:04:09
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…
161. Jeff Bussgang on Open Market and early eCommerce [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 39:20
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. J…
160. Growing Up With The Web With Desiree Garcia @thedezzie [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:36
An exploration of what it was like to come of age in the early web era. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https:…
159. The Forgotten Story of PLATO, with Brian Dear [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:08:42
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 s…
158. Bob Stein of Voyager and The Criterion Collection [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 59:31
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 Co…
157. Rob Malda (@cmdrtaco) on SlashDot and Social Media [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:20:17
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, a…
156. Dave Winer on The Open Web, Blogging, Podcasting and More [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:37:22
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-ran…