Richard MacManus

Tech journalist at The New Stack | Founder of ReadWriteWeb (2003-12) | Author of BUBBLE BLOG, a Web 2.0 memoir: https://cybercultural.com #InternetHistory | 🥝 living in 🇬🇧

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nprofile1qqs9j9y34eem9pmld2p06qaf02068wspdzzvn24yh67yt2v25rutv2spz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qlpn6pa

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npub1ty2frtnnk2rh765zl5p6j75l5waqz6yyex42f04ugk5c4g8ckc4q34u65n

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Last Notes

2024-06-28 16:17:18

In 2006, social networks like Facebook and YouTube ramped up, Twitter was born, Amazon invented cloud computing, web geeks obsessed over RSS, and User Generated Content was king. But it was also the beginning of platform power... https://cybercultural.com/p/internet-2006/ #InternetHistory

2024-06-27 16:42:32

Looks like Mozilla is making friends in the AI world. Get ready for "the AI OS". (from the founder of the AI Engineer World’s Fair 2024, which I'm monitoring via YouTube)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/689/581/304/797/574/original/34abc33dfa8bea30.png

2024-06-18 19:19:23

I’ve just discovered the most 2024 app yet. This is the Worldcoin of this year, I’m calling it now!
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/639/237/384/657/358/original/b815fa55f2598406.png

2024-06-01 14:32:37

:underheart: “This is the mission of the Wayback Machine – be the dependable, accessible connection to web history, and therefore all history. Give the Internet its Memory, which would otherwise be lost.” https://mastodon.archive.org/@textfiles/112539360634774522

2024-05-23 08:37:15

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Here’s the link, sorry it’s an X one (not sure if he posted this elsewhere): https://x.com/jasonfried/status/1793385721581236377?s=46

2024-05-23 08:36:36

Jason Fried from 37Signals announces a “web-based books” product, which I must admit does sound intriguing, even though I already made my own custom book serialization site with Eleventy + Buttondown. Sounds like business books for his main use case, but still, good idea. -> “Workbook […] They have covers, they can have title pages, they can have picture pages, and they can have text pages. Each book gets its own URL, and navigating and keeping track of your progress is all built right in.”

2024-05-02 10:26:04

Well, some good news: the new ReadWrite editor replied to me on X (and yes, I was forced to use *that* app again!) and he's now removed my name from the About page of this version of RW. It's a small win, really, but the idea of them using my name to promote the gambling content they're now running was too much to bear. Now I need to wash my hands after visiting both ReadWrite and X in the same session...

2024-02-07 19:12:30

Surely it’ll be called FediFeed. Someone build this please :) #FriendFeed https://journa.host/@mathewi/111891645542552259

2024-02-06 12:33:49

It's time to take back the internet from those corporate data sharecroppers! For more info, please check out my full-page New York Times advert and ignore the fact I'm a partner at a powerful VC firm in Silicon Valley that funded many of said sharecroppers. *
* Also, that "readwrite" brand name looks familiar...can't quite place it...
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/884/555/217/608/155/original/7f2c1f3bf023570a.jpeg

2024-02-05 17:27:29

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@npub1ndx…w26g interesting to track your thoughts on the Vision Pro, keep it going!

2024-01-25 21:03:46

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@npub1jpp…u59l @npub1p7c…3xp5 We can only hope, re Bluesky

2024-01-25 19:10:29

Personally, I like the word “fediverse”, just like I liked “blogosphere” back in the day. They’re both quirky, slightly ridiculous words, but that just reminds us that we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously. https://indieweb.social/@laurenshof/111816835194366526

2024-01-25 17:41:28

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@npub1xed…yg9w @npub1ap8…e6pt @npub1z9m…rz2z Excellent presentation, but you said the "T" word instead of Mastodon :0 ("Check the Eleventy T****** account"). I'm sure it was just nerves :)

2024-01-22 11:20:41

Bookmarked for later reading https://technologizer.com/2024/01/20/the-inside-story-of-pc-magazine-pc-world-and-macworlds-origins-as-told-by-david-bunnell/

2024-01-19 20:37:48

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@npub1702…q9h2 Interesting you call his site a “newspaper/website”, yours is a blog, and I call my currently-Substack-but-moving-to-Eleventy a “newsletter”. Now that I’m making it a website (same stack as you, except Eleventy not Jekyll), I am pondering if it will be a blog again, or a website, or still a newsletter, or (does it even matter in fedi era)?

2024-01-17 22:43:52

My current main use case for ChatGPT is using it to coach me on improving my WIP Eleventy website (Cybercultural 2.0). Today I added nicely formatted feature images to the homepage and category pages, with help from my “team of assistants”, to borrow @npub1lla…2zhe’s term…although they couldn’t quite get me over the line with image optimizations (eleventy-img). Tomorrow, I try again.

2024-01-17 22:34:44

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@npub19lt…qfjk Perhaps combine with an open source version of What3Words? “I’m the mayor of embezzled.funicular.rhododendron” :)

2024-01-17 19:33:07

A company called Tembo is encouraging developers to build on top of Postgres, using an ever-growing array of Postgres extensions. My latest for @npub10cr…q72n: https://thenewstack.io/how-devs-can-use-postgres-extensions-including-for-ai-apps/ #Postgres

2024-01-17 10:52:05

Seen in my PR emails this morning: "There’s been interesting discourse in the AI ‘hypefluencer’ space (namely on X) ..."

2024-01-16 08:54:40

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I think Bernard would still make as much, if not more, revenue from Ghost hosting. But I am very aware that for non-tech folks, migrating from Substack is a massive — and intimidating — undertaking. So I can’t say I was surprised by his decision to stay. Substack is the most polished product for professional media people, in terms of ease of use and network effects. My decision to migrate from Substack comes from a position of ‘tech privilege’…so it’s interesting to see what non-geeks decide.

2024-01-16 08:49:22

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Ironically, straight after I left Newsroom in March 2019, I launched Cybercultural on Substack. I remember telling Bernard about Substack and how it was basically a SaaS version of what he had custom built several years before for Hive News. I’m sure he was getting the Substack buzz from other sources too, but in 2019, Substack was a revelatory product for indie media folks like he and I (still is, ethics aside). I never made money from Substack, but I knew he would with his news focus.

2024-01-16 08:17:57

Bernard Hickey, who I used to work for on one of the newsletter products he describes (Newsroom Pro; I was responsible for its development for a year, during 2018-19), lays out his reasons for staying on Substack. I was curious what Bernard would decide, as he runs a thriving business on Substack — over 3k paying subscribers — and he’s not a tech geek like most people I know who are/were on Substack. I am still mulling his email, but wanted to circulate it for comment. https://open.substack.com/pub/thekaka/p/why-the-kaka-is-staying-on-substack?r=4z27&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

2024-01-15 14:53:34

Re Perplexity: @npub1f6a…pnql I spotted this on X. I don't use that site any more, so thought I'd respond here. The impression I got was that Perplexity has its own independent index, but looking through the interview transcript just now Aravind didn't explicitly state this. I said at one point "you're running your own search index, I assume" and he didn't say no to that. I should have actually asked it as a question, in hindsight. Do you have reason to believe it is Bing's index?
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/760/533/930/440/058/original/bc98b94b06cd0b46.png

2024-01-12 17:30:15

My interview with Perplexity, a rather impressive AI chatbot/search engine that actually cites sources -> Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas is a big Larry Page fan. But he thinks he's found a way to compete not only with Google search, but with OpenAI's GPT too. https://thenewstack.io/more-than-an-openai-wrapper-perplexity-pivots-to-open-source/

2024-01-09 15:12:44

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@npub1ndx…w26g I actually don't remember that -- what year are you referring to and what happened?

2024-01-09 15:03:02

Digg was a big driver of traffic to ReadWriteWeb back in 2006. I tried to show my appreciation to Digg CEO Kevin Rose several years later by buying him and his friend a lamb dinner in New Zealand. Sadly Digg imploded soon after. Here’s what it was like in 2006 though! https://www.cybercultural.com/p/015-digg-power-laws-of-silicon-valley #internethistory #web20

2024-01-06 09:13:24

Anatomy of an IT disaster. https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/evidence/witn00620100-david-mcdonnell-witness-statement

2024-01-04 14:16:32

I’ve been pecking away at the Eleventy website that will soon be the new home of Cybercultural.com. I imported my most recent book post from Substack, downloaded the images (since they aren’t part of Substack’s export files), turned the html files into markdown, did a bunch of other necessary tweaks (e.g. images code and permalink matching), and my test post is looking good. I will import the other 17 book posts & do same, then launch (will leave the other 4 years of content for another time!).

2024-01-02 23:46:41

Forecasting web development trends in 2024, I see an increase in fediverse dev, more AI dev tool usage, multimodal AI and less JavaScript. https://thenewstack.io/web-dev-2024-fediverse-ramps-up-more-ai-less-javascript/

2023-12-31 20:00:08

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@npub1pa7…7072 @npub1z9m…rz2z @npub13d7…6dpp I will avidly read that!

2023-12-31 17:36:12

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@npub1pa7…7072 @npub1z9m…rz2z @npub13d7…6dpp That’s exactly what I want to do. Have you per chance written up how you built that?

2023-12-31 13:26:13

Ok the latest idea I am kicking around re finding a Substack alternative: a website built with @npub1z9m…rz2z or WordPress, with email subscription via @npub13d7…6dpp API. I saw something like this at Robin Rendle’s site @npub1z9s…pzd6. He hosts a newsletter called The Cascade, which appears to be hosted on his site and then sent out via email using Buttondown. I don’t yet know if that is automated (site -> BT via api) or a manual copy and paste job?

2023-12-30 09:59:13

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@npub10yr…4rgj Jedi bloggers! :)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/668/779/268/444/419/original/578e4e5cbe1dfc0b.mp4

2023-12-28 09:37:24

Why yes, I would like to read an explanatory article on this… https://dan.mastohon.com/@danhon/111627022841507826

2023-12-27 15:46:10

Over 2006, I ramp up Read/WriteWeb's advertising business, by first partnering with John Battelle's FM Publishing and then copying TechCrunch's sidebar ad format. #internethistory #web20 https://www.cybercultural.com/p/014-the-sponsor-ads-era-2006

2023-12-04 19:14:46

I still haven’t worked out how to do QT on Mastodon :/

2023-11-29 11:47:24

Question for #fediverse experts (maybe @npub1xzm…eykm himself?): do we know how many Mastodon users have opted into search indexing across the entire network? I'm writing a post about the open web over 2023, including a section about Mastodon's improvements this year — so I'm curious about the search detail, if it's public yet.

2023-11-12 11:55:53

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@npub10yr…4rgj I was looking for some old early 90s copies of Salient recently, but that era isn’t archived online as far as I could find. Do you happen to know if they are archived anywhere? There was also a lot of admin turmoil around that time, the student committee vs Radio Active, etc

2023-10-26 21:33:50

The big social media questions:
1. When will Threads federate?
2. When will Bluesky open up?
3. When will Mastodon get a decent UX?
4. When will the AI tech crowd abandon X?
5. When will the US government ban TikTok?
Which will happen first?

2023-10-05 06:40:19

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@npub10yr…4rgj ah yes, old CDs that no longer work…alas I have a couple of those too. I also have all the old files (Movable Type and even Radio Useeland), but the one thing I wish I’d done more in the old days was save screenshots. One day I might try and reconstruct some of the early versions of RWW.

2023-09-20 11:16:08

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@npub1psa…xhme yes that's the one

2023-09-20 11:06:33

Ok I have tried to get the new 1.0 version of the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress working, but unfortunately it still has the same bug as 10 months ago when I last tried this (ref https://wordpress.org/support/topic/webfinger-endpoint-unavailable/). @npub1psa…xhme not sure if you have any further suggestions, but it seems like WP sites hosted on Hostinger still cannot use this plugin on Mastodon :(

2023-09-19 17:17:01

Anyone else?
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/092/944/977/052/434/original/571a3c73a8990ecc.jpeg

2023-09-01 11:24:44

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@npub1924…w5ra the choice I've made is to mostly *write* on Mastodon. Admittedly, I still use X extensively to do my job as a journalist and I promote my various pieces of writing there. Maybe the next step for me is to stop posting on X, even if it means less people read my articles. Perhaps I'm a bad person, but I'm not quite ready to do that yet...social media to me is mainly a tool, to both do my job and promote my work. Altho I do use Mastodon to, well, socialize (e.g. sharing my thoughts)

2023-09-01 09:10:08

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4/6 Another reason I still (unfortunately) rely on X is that certain core communities are based there. Much of web dev (although there’s also a growing community of web geeks here on Mastodon) and nearly all of the AI app crowd are still based on X. Maybe that will slowly change, but it’ll be in years not months.

2023-09-01 09:09:57

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3/6 It is good news that Mastodon is rolling out search functionality, incl in the instance I use (.social). I love that the Mastodon project is doing that. However, it will; take quite some time for this to become prevalent, as people basically need to opt-in for search indexing. That’s ok, I have no problem with that approach. Just saying, it’ll still take a long time for Mastodon to become more useful than X, on that account.

2023-09-01 09:09:47

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2/6 Much as I admire those people who have deleted their X a/cs and now exclusively use Mastodon, I am still finding X/Twitter to be of the most value to my job as a journalist. e.g. my latest article, about Vercel’s AI products, could not have been written without info from X — not to mention I DMed its CEO there, for further info. Plus of course: SEARCH. This is a core part of my daily usage of social media. So, I still need/use X.

2023-09-01 09:09:31

1/6 So, how's it going with the Great Migration from X/Twitter? For myself, I now treat Mastodon as my main tool for tooting/tweeting to the world. But I've always been more of a "reader" than a "writer" on social media (i.e. I don't toot every day, but I check social media regularly during each day — mainly for my job as a tech journalist). So a couple of observations about where the Migration stands from my perspective...

2023-08-07 13:40:17

I've been on holiday with my family over the past week, and so have stayed off most social media during that time. But of course I watched the whole X drama unfold and it made me even more sad than I was before about Twitter's demise. I haven't yet been brave enough to delete my entire a/c, like @npub17ge…hgsu and others have. But Andy's post sure resonates...who else here has deleted their "X" a/c? https://andypiper.co.uk/2023/07/31/goodbye-to-my-life-on-twitter-2007-2023/