176. The Epic Fail of Digg V.4 With Will Larson

176. The Epic Fail of Digg V.4 With Will Larson

Author: Brian McCullough August 6, 2018 Duration: 49:56
This story has gone down in Silicon Valley lore as the ultimate cautionary tale. Digg was the earliest high flying startup in early social media. But then, other startups like Facebook and Twitter started to steal the limelight. So Digg tried to keep up by launching the infamous Digg version 4. And… it’s a disaster. Users hate it. So much so, that many people feel that the reason Reddit is Reddit today is because the Digg community fled their en-masse. Digg Version 4 has become a much cited horror story for when a redesign can be so disruptive it can kill a company. So, what’s the real story behind this urban legend? Today, we talk to Will Larson, who today is at Stripe, was a young engineer working on the launch of Digg version 4. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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
173. Netscape's Rosanne Siino [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:01:44
Rosanne Siino has been on my list to talk to from day one of this podcast. As you know, I started by reaching out to Netscape folks and Rosanne was the head of communications for that very first dotcom company. She saw i…
HUGE Podcast Announcement [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 3:07
HUGE Podcast Announcement! Details on how to pre-order the podcast book! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
172. How Politics Came to the Web With Karl Mattson [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:34
Today we're going to go back to take a look at early journalism on the web. Karl Mattson helped launched one of the first political news websites, ElectionLine. He helped cover the 1996 election when covering an election…
171. Claude Shannon, Father of Information Theory [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 59:57
Claude Shannon was a mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as "the father of information theory." In the pantheon of cool people who made the modern information era possible, he’s right up there. To…
170. The Godfather of Streaming Music, Robert Reid [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:29:15
Summary: Robert Reid, the founder of Rhapsody, can be considered the Godfather (founding father?) of the streaming music reality we now live in. But guess what? That's only half of this episode! Because it turns out, Rob…
169. Kottke.org's Jason Kottke, @jkottke [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:03:48
Jason Kottke, of kottke.org fame, was one of the early bloggers, one of the first bloggers to go pro, and one of the few solo bloggers still going. If you know Kottke.org, then you love it. How could you not? If you’ve n…
168. The History of Java With Todd Sundsted [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:21
People have been yelling at me for years that I’ve not covered more technical aspects of the web’s history, especially things like Java. Specifically Java. The argument can be made that Java helped the web evolve into wh…
167. NYTimes Tech Columnist, Farhad Manjoo @fmanjoo [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:40
Today, a man who needs no introduction: New York Times Technology Columnist Farhad Manjoo. This episode was recorded about two months or so ago, so we talk about the book leave Farhad is on that he only recently made pub…
166. Amazon, Hulu and Oculus with Eugene Wei [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:13:48
No joke, this is one of my favorite episodes we've ever done. Eugene Wei was an early employee at Hulu, so we get some details on that company for the first time, and he also worked at Flipboard and Oculus, so we get som…