Cybercultural
Cybercultural
Richard MacManus
Cybercultural chronicles internet history and its cultural impact, from the pre-web era to the dot-com boom, Web 2.0, and beyond. Written by pioneering tech blogger Richard MacManus.
Latest Posts
Leading my posse into a Web 2.0 party… no, just kidding, this was someone much cooler than me; photo by Kris Krug. 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...
Web 2.0 Conference signage; photo by Gen Kanai. 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 of the round high tables in the foyer,...
My press badge for the Web 2.0 Conference, October 2005. 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 Caltrain earlier in the week,...
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 stream on the bottom of my screen all day and I click things that catch my eye,” he told...
For two weeks in October 2005, this room was where TechCrunch, Read/Write Web, WeBreakStuff and tech.memeorandum were published. On a Friday afternoon at the end of September 2005, I stepped foot on American soil for the first time. I...
My Tim O’Reilly interview after the first Web 2.0 Conference, Nov 2004. 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 on the web, so...
Marc Andreessen, bare feet and all, on the cover of TIME magazine in Feb 1996. At the beginning of 2004, Netscape founder Marc Andreessen was doing just fine financially and had no shortage of attention. But he was trying to adapt to a...
A scene from the first Web 2.0 Conference in Silicon Valley, October 2004. 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 Marc Canter, a...
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 blond hair that I obsessively brushed to keep neat, innocent-looking blue eyes covered...
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 following chapter will have a number of sections, which you’ll receive as posts via...
My book, Bubble Blog: From Outsider to Insider in Silicon Valley's Web 2.0 Revolution, was serialized on Cybercultural over 2024 and is now available to purchase: Paperback, US$19.99: Amazon; Bookshop.org eBook, US$9.99: Amazon Kindle...
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 2.0 Revolution. I will be serializing the book here on Cybercultural, starting this...
While I was in San Francisco for a tech conference this month, I took the opportunity to visit the Internet Archive — the actual physical archive in the California town of Richmond, about twenty minutes drive from San Francisco. I’d...
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 September 2005 (US). I was thrilled to come across this, for several reasons: It’s a rare...
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 months; every weekday, before breakfast in the early morning. My plan is still to...