Web Masters

You're probably used to getting your news via social media. But there was a time, early in the age of social media, when news and social media weren't so deeply integrated. Instead, Internet users flocked to social news websites.

One of those websites was Newsvine. It was a creator platform for citizen journalists, and it paid people anywhere in the world for writing and sharing the news they witnessed.

Since the peak of Newsvine's popularity, social media platforms have merged with news platforms, and, for better and for worse, lots of people get their news from social media websites. But, in this episode of Web Masters, you'll learn about Newsvine's different approach to social news alongside Newsvine co-founder Mike Davidson.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Rotten Tomatoes began as a hobby project. Senh Duong, the original creator, started posted reviews for movies he enjoyed on a small, personal website. Pretty soon after he began, lots of people started relying on those reviews in order to choose the movies they wanted to watch, and the site's traffic began growing exponentially.

Unable to handle the growth by himself, Senh turned to two friends he used to enjoy watching movies with back in college -- Patrick Lee and Stephen Wang -- and, together, the three college buddies decided to turn the little move review website into a business.

That business became RottenTomatoes.com, which is still one of the most popular and trusted online resources for movie reviews. You can hear the story of how all three original founders built it on this special, 75th episode of Web Masters.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

The Internet has always been a place to learn about new things. But, in the early days of the Web, one writer took that opportunity for learning to an extreme by creating an entire website devoted to explaining how stuff works. His name is Marshall Brain, and he named his website -- quite appropriately -- HowStuffWorks.com.

HowStuffWorks became a popular online destination for people to learn about the inner works behind everything from internal combustion engines to water towers. It eventually expanded from the Web into books, magazines, TV shows, and even podcasts. In fact, even now it remains a popular infotainment websites.

On this Web Masters episode, Marshall shares the story of building and growing HowStuffWorks, from writing his first article to leading the company to a successful acquisition.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Flight tracking might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about how the Internet has changed the world, but, as with so many other industries, the Web changed commercial aviation forever. However, it didn't change it the way you might think.

FlightAware made the data for all flights publicly available. By doing that, it gave people access to valuable information they were able to use to make airline travel more efficient and more comfortable. The team at FlightAware took advantage, selling their data for all sorts of purposes they never imagined.

In this episode of Web Masters, Nugget McNett, one of FlightAware's founders, shares the story of how he and his co-founders built FlightAware and how it helped revolutionize the commercial aviation industry.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Shutterstock probably isn’t the first company that comes to mind when most people think of successful, billion dollar New York tech companies. Instead, the list includes names like BuzzFeed, Rent the Runway, and WeWork. But that’s only because most people don’t spend much time trying to find stock photography.

However, if you’re one of the few people in the world who regularly needs high quality photos, you know how important they are. You also understand and appreciate the challenge of getting good images.

Getting good images used to be a lot harder and more expensive until Jon Oringer, founder of Shutterstock, introduced the first subscription marketplace for stock photography. Even if you've never personally needed stock photography, the story of Shutterstock is important because it introduced a new concept of online, creator marketplaces. That concept has permeated dozens of other industries, from web design to music, meaning if you've ever downloaded so much as a song from your favorite band, you're benefitting from the model Shutterstock pioneered.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

In the early 1990s, emerging digital and Internet culture weren't mainstream, but it was clear they were going to change the world. People wanted to understand how these new technologies were going to impact them, so they turned to a technology they were already familiar with: magazines. Leading the charge was the most popular publication about the digital age: WIRED Magazine.

Launched just as the World Wide Web was first gaining traction, WIRED Magazine quickly became the mouthpiece of the digital age. It was the resource people relied on when they wanted to understand not just what was happening with digital technology, but also the people behind it.

On this episode of Web Masters, we hear the story of how -- and why -- WIRED got started from its co-creators, Jane Metcalfe and Louis Rossetto.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

If you need to find something on the Web, it's as simple as going to Google and typing whatever you're looking for. You don't even think twice about whether or not you'll get useful results. Heck, you don't even think twice about whether or not the Google webpage will actually load. But early search engines weren't nearly as reliable.

Before Google perfected web search, lots of search engines were trying to figure out the best way to help people find what they needed online, and they weren't always reliable. To help solve that problem, a graduate student at the University of Washington named Erik Selberg developed a different type of search engine. It was a search engine that searched other search engines -- a "metasearch engine" -- aggregating results across the different platforms and pulling them together in one place. For users, this meant if one search engine wasn't working or giving good results, they could still find what they needed.

Sure, the idea of a metasearch engine seems strange today, but MetaCrawler solved a critical problem in the early days of the Web. On this episode of Web Masters, you'll learn how -- and why -- Erik built it.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

How do you get your website listed at the top of Google? It's a simple question with an answer so difficult and complex that Rand Fishkin built an enormous company around it. It's called MOZ, and it's the world's premier search engine optimization (SEO) company.

On this episode of Web Masters, you'll learn about how Rand built MOZ as he describes his entrepreneurial journey from optimizing client websites for early search engines all the way up through building a venture backed company around a sophisticated software capable of helping improve SEO for thousands of customers.

Along the way, Rand shares some of the difficult lessons he learned about being an entrepreneur, building companies, and taking care of yourself and your own mental wellness.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

You might think "Zoom Classrooms" and #EdTech are new things. They're a byproduct of ubiquitous computers and faster Internet connections. But that's not actually the case.

Even before the World Wide Web existed, creative teachers were figuring out how to use the Internet to engage students and enhance the types of learning possible in the emerging digital world. Leading the charge was Dr. Yvonne Marie Andres. In the early 1980s, Yvonne found herself with a computer in her classroom and no clue what to do with it. So she decided to figure something out.

Her efforts soon grew into a global communications network, video classrooms, and students collaborating around the world. All of this happened before most people even had Internet accounts. She's a pioneering voice in the e-learning industry, founder of Global SchoolNet, an inductee in the Internet Hall of Fame, and you'll hear her story on this episode of Web Masters.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

You may or may not know what Drupal is. However, when you're using a website, there's a decent chance you're using it. It's one of the Web's most used open source content management platforms, and it's currently being used to operate millions of sites.

But Drupal didn't start as a content management system. It began as a way for Drupal's creator to tell his friends the status of their shared, high-speed Internet access. As more and more people suggested ways of expanding the software, Dries decided to open source code, and a huge community grew around it.

Today, Drupal is one of the largest and most popular open source software platforms in the world. Find out how that happened on this episode of Web Masters where Dries Buytaert, Drupal's founder, tells the story of building Drupal.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.