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
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128. Jim McCann of 1800Flowers [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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127. The History of the iPhone, On Its 10th Anniversary [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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126. (Ch. 8) How the Dotcom Bubble Happened [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:05:33
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. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California P…
125. Sebastian Mallaby on Alan Greenspan and the Dotcom Bubble [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:36
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…