151. Facebook's First Senior Software Engineer, Karel Baloun

151. Facebook's First Senior Software Engineer, Karel Baloun

Author: Brian McCullough August 13, 2017 Duration: 1:02:48

Karel Baloun was the first senior software engineer hired at Facebook in 2005. This was after the Accel round of funding, when Facebook truly began to staff up and grow up. Baloun was only at Facebook for a year, from 2005 to 2006, but he provides some amazing insights about the company. What was Facebook’s culture like in 2005? What were the key innovations that ultimately let Facebook succeed where others failed? Would Zuckerberg make a good President of the United States? What became of Pokey, the mascot Facebook once considered launching?

You can buy Karel’s 2007 book here.


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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…