{"id":33133,"date":"2022-01-05T19:06:41","date_gmt":"2022-01-05T19:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.blog\/?p=33133"},"modified":"2022-01-05T19:06:41","modified_gmt":"2022-01-05T19:06:41","slug":"a-trip-down-memory-lane-via-this-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2022\/01\/05\/a-trip-down-memory-lane-via-this-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"A trip down memory lane, via this blog"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I recently moved this blog to a new server, so I ‘ve been reconstructing it, and in the process looking through some *really* old posts. It starts in 2005<\/a>, with some columns I reposted from the newspaper I worked for (the Globe and Mail<\/em> in Toronto). At the time, I thought I would create a website where I could cross-post my newspaper work, the way Malcolm Gladwell and others were doing at the time, but then I started actually blogging about “Web 2.0” and cross-posting went by the wayside. One of the first non-newspaper posts was about “the revenge of the blog-o-sphere,”<\/a> sparked by a column in Forbes<\/em> written by Dan Lyons (who would later write The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, among other things) and the negative reaction from people like @om<\/a> and @dangillmor<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From there on, it’s like a time capsule: posts about Yahoo integrating RSS<\/a> into Yahoo Mail, about the rise of Craigslist — which had 9M unique visitors when I wrote about it<\/a> in 2005, and has about 200 million now — and TiVo (remember that?), and the battle of Flickr vs Webshots<\/a>. Other blasts from the past include a post about<\/a> Jason Calacanis selling Weblogs to AOL, one about Google Reader and Bloglines and NewsGator, and one that pits Dave Winer against Nick Carr,<\/a> Paul Kedrosky and others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there’s a classic: me arguing with Dave Winer over whether a blog without comments actually qualifies as a blog or not \ud83d\ude42 It seems like a lifetime ago that this is the kind of thing<\/a> we spent our time worrying about! At some point, my personal blog posts were getting more traffic than the technology page of the Globe and Mail, and I tried to convince the paper to let me create a separate site, the way Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg did with All Things Digital, but the paper balked \ud83d\ude41 Posting got light in 2009, after I became the social-media editor for the Globe <\/em>— the “communities editor,” we called it — in charge of reader comments, and of getting reporters to sign up for Twitter, etc. (explaining the concept of “tweeting” to newspaper execs was so fun).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, having a “social media” editor was such a new concept that no one really knew how it worked, or how it should work. I remember the new social-media editor hired by the New York Times<\/em> called me to get some advice, because I was one of the first to hold that position at a major daily in North America, and I confessed that I had no idea what we were supposed to be doing, but that she should try to convince reporters and editors to get on Twitter \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

in 2010 — 12 years ago this month — I left the paper to join GigaOm<\/a>.<\/a> It seems like a hundred years ago now, not just because of COVID, but because the media landscape has changed so much in the past decade. Do I miss the old blog-o-sphere? (Yes, we actually used that term unironically). I do — mostly because even when there were the same dumb fights and interpersonal BS, they happened more slowly and with fewer participants. But it was also a very male and white and well-off world. Do I regret pushing the message that the social web could help journalism? No. Maybe that makes me a Pollyanna, but I honestly think it has led to good things — more voices, different voices, worthwhile criticism etc. — although that gets lost amid the larger dumpster fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, if anyone is still here, thanks for indulging me in this little trip down memory lane! It has been an interesting time — maybe a little too interesting \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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I recently moved this blog to a new server, so I ‘ve been reconstructing it, and in the process looking through some *really* old posts. It starts in 2005, with some columns I reposted from the newspaper I worked for (the Globe and Mail in Toronto). At the time, I thought I would create a … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “A trip down memory lane, via this blog”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}