Description
In this episode, I explore the history and evolution of digital media— from the dot come bubble, to blogging, to personality-driven media brands like Buzzfeed, and now to citizen journalism on platforms like TikTok and YouTube. I look at how the quest for information online went from active to passive, largely thanks to the introduction of algorithms and Big Tech's obsession with finding The Next Revolutionary Thing, and end by questioning the impact that AI will have on the industry.
Timestamps:
3:00 The rise of domain names & URLs
5:56 Dot com bubble & burst
8:38 The rise of search engines
10:00 History of blogging
14:13 How blogging & personality-driven content impacted digital media
15:14 The Buzzfeed revolution
18:00 The Try Guys
18:43 Ladylike
19:17 Tasty
19:52 Buzzfeed Unsolved
20:57 News aggregators & citizen journalism
22:42 The AI boom
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Sources:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/04/domain-names-obsolete/678000/
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-yahoo-is-good-but-may-get-worse/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/dec/30/internetnews.business
https://www.wired.com/2014/12/da-bom/
https://nymag.com/news/media/15971/
https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0009693/#:~:text=Summary,later%20becoming%20a%20group%20blog.
https://medium.com/the-business-of-content/how-boing-boing-adapted-to-the-social-web-e6c2e4008e46
https://www.fastcompany.com/1702167/inside-wild-wacky-profitable-world-boing-boing
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/hogan-thiel-gawker-trial/554132/
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/06/hulk-hogan-gawker-lawsuit-first-amendment-trial
https://gizmodo.com/this-is-how-gizmodo-started-5934312
https://www.wired.com/story/buzzfeed/
https://nymag.com/news/features/buzzfeed-2013-4/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/business/media/ben-smith-buzzfeed-new-york-times.html
https://centennialworld.com/the-try-guys-ned-fulmer-cheating/
https://www.tubefilter.com/2019/05/24/tasty-long-form-making-it-big/
https://www.reuters.com/markets/echoes-dotcom-bubble-haunt-ai-driven-us-stock-market-2024-07-02/
https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-internet-dotcom-bubble-tech-stocks-nvidia-market-crash-gordon-2024-5
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-07-31/three-big-differences-between-the-ai-and-dot-com-bubbles
https://www.wired.com/story/dial-up-phil-lewis/ https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web/short-history-web#:~:text=Where%20the%20Web%20was%20born,and%20institutes%20around%20the%20world.
https://gizmodo.com/what-did-people-use-before-google-to-search-the-web-1843750339