David Bowie on a computer in 1994; photo by Dave Allocca. In March 1994, Brian Eno traveled to David Bowie’s studio in Montreux, Switzerland, to work with him for the first time since the “Berlin Trilogy” of albums in the late-70s. It was just like old times, with Eno setting rules for improvisations — guided by his...

Total Distortion CD-ROM, a "music video adventure game"; screenshot via Internet Archive. In April 1994,⁠ the PBS tv series Computer Chronicles devoted an entire show to multimedia. “The personal computer revolution started about 40 miles south of here in an area now called the Silicon Valley,” said the show’s host...

2011 was the year Facebook, the world’s leading social network, launched Timeline and introduced its algorithmic feed. These changes were partly influenced by a formidable new competitor: Google+. Meanwhile, Android overtook Apple's iOS as the leading mobile platform, Microsoft and Amazon battled it out in cloud...

The first Web 2.0 Conference program and the author in early Web 2.0. Web 2.0 was well and truly over by the time I left ReadWriteWeb. There had been no Web 2.0 conferences in 2012, and by the end of the year, even O’Reilly Media — the company that had coined the term Web 2.0 — had stopped using it. It’s no...

Interim redesign for ReadWriteWeb in July 2012, before the domain name change. The pressure certainly came off me in 2012, after I'd sold the business, but I still had a job to do as ReadWriteWeb’s editor in chief. I traveled back to San Francisco for a week in February, during which I went to SAY Media’s office...

I’m thrilled to announce that my book, Bubble Blog: From Outsider to Insider in Silicon Valley's Web 2.0 Revolution, is now available to purchase as a paperback or eBook. Click on any of these links to buy your copy: Paperback, US$19.99: Amazon; Bookshop.org eBook, US$9.99: Amazon Kindle Store; Apple Books; Google...

When I arrived in San Francisco on Saturday, December 3, I was hoping to close the deal with SAY Media by the end of the week. Sean and I would be in meetings with them from Monday to Wednesday, and I would fly back to New Zealand on Friday (I’d added Thursday just in case it was needed). The contract talks weren’t...

SAY Media's Troy Young at the company's Create 2011 event; image via YouTube. It was Thursday, October 20, 2011, and I only had one meeting on my schedule: SAY Media at 9:00 a.m. The Web 2.0 Summit had ended yesterday, but with all the business meetings and M&A talk with Sean, I’d hardly noticed. I would be on a...

2011 edition of the Web 2.0 Map; via Wayback Machine. To prepare for the San Francisco M&A meetings, I’d created a ReadWriteWeb Vision presentation and Sean had created a slide deck about our business growth. Mine was all about our brand and editorial vision, starting with the mission statement for RWW: “Where...

Marshall and I reflecting on our ReadWriteWeb adventure at the Green Dragon pub, Portland, October 2011. Note: I'm not sure who took this photo, but I found it via Wayback Machine. An opportunity arose to discuss a possible sale of ReadWriteWeb when Sean got back from a trip out west at the end of August, during...

ReadWriteWeb homepage, August 2011; image via Wayback Machine. After the 2WAY Summit (in June 2011), I confirmed with Marshall that he was okay with me announcing the new editorial structure to the team. He’d been noticeably unhappy about it during our management meetings — and a couple of times we had argued, with...

Jason Calacanis and Abraham Hyatt at the 2WAY Summit; photo by Shashi Bellamkonda. We couldn’t have asked for a better venue. The Roone Arledge Auditorium at Columbia University had a full stage, sprung wooden floors, round tables decorated in elegant white cloth, and a huge digital screen onstage that said,...