The Great Blogfather (Was Slightly Goofy)
Every once and a while it’s worth remember that social media had to be invented. Matt Haughey, MetaFilter founder, “… had to code all the software so he could “blog” in the first place.” Haughey:
And then I made comments. I’d only seen one other site with comments, so I sort of had to invent how blog comments work. I just thought those four or five authors might want to talk to each other. I thought long and hard about how the comments were going to look and be displayed. I always wanted names at the bottom, so that you didn’t prejudice what someone was going to say. I noticed that early systems like [tech blog] Slashdot just put, “Bob says this,” and you’d go, “Fuck Bob—he’s that libertarian psycho! I don’t want to hear a word he says!” So I put them at the bottom so you can be gently surprised.
These Internet traditions that we have that seem so old and so ancient are so new and so man made. Link via Mike Monteiro.
