Rob Malda's guest appearances

Rob Malda

Internet History Podcast

The Jim Rutt Show

Web Masters

John Danner

Joshua Schachter

Gary Kremen

Gregg Spiridellis

John Battelle

Jason Calacanis

Joey Anuff

Kevin O'Connor

David Bohnett

Justin Hall

Steve Kirsch

Jonathan Abrams

Stefanie Syman

Craig Kanarick

Jason Brennan

OwlTail

Before platforms like Facebook and Twitter, learning about current events online across a range of topics, subjects, and industries required visiting lots of different websites. That began to change thanks to platforms like Slashdot.Slashdot was one of the first -- if not the first -- popular social news aggregators. Readers would submit stories they thought were interesting, and then Slashdot’s moderation team -- headed by Slashdot founder Rob Malda -- would select the best ones and display them on the homepage, which was a constantly updating feed of the aggregated stories. Users could then comment on the stories, discuss them, flag them, etc., and that would impact their popularity and how long they’d be featured.Of course, none of that sounds revolutionary. It was basically just a description of Reddit. But, again, there was a time when that concept didn’t exist, and Rob Malda and Slashdot pioneered it. So why are platforms like Reddit and Twitter worth billions of dollars today and Slashdot isn't? That's what you're going to learn about in this episode of Web Masters.For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

Before platforms like Facebook and Twitter, learning about current events online across a range of topics, subjects, and industries required visiting lots of different websites. That began to change thanks to platforms like Slashdot.Slashdot was one of the first -- if not the first -- popular social news aggregators. Readers would submit stories they thought were interesting, and then Slashdot’s moderation team -- headed by Slashdot founder Rob Malda -- would select the best ones and display them on the homepage, which was a constantly updating feed of the aggregated stories. Users could then comment on the stories, discuss them, flag them, etc., and that would impact their popularity and how long they’d be featured. Of course, none of that sounds revolutionary. It was basically just a description of Reddit. But, again, there was a time when that concept didn’t exist, and Rob Malda and Slashdot pioneered it. So why are platforms like Reddit and Twitter worth billions of dollars today and Slashdot isn't? That's what you're going to learn about in this episode of Web Masters.For a complete transcript of the episode, <a href="https://latonas.com/blog/web-masters-episode-45-rob-malda/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">click here</a>.

Rob Malda @ Slashdot: The CmdrTaco Who Popularized Social News

Rob Malda (AKA: CmdrTaco) talks to Jim about the history &amp; tech of Slashdot while speculating on what social media could learn from it.In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Rob Malda (AKA: CmdrTaco) about the history &amp; creation of Slashdot, its opensource tech, rapid growth &amp; eventual decline, unique moderation system &amp; community involvement, utilization of scarcity, the down-side of open rating systems, the game theory of social media &amp; the evolution of manipulation tactics, moderation trade-offs, the advantages of having a niche audience, implementing innovations inspired by Word of Warcraft, the sheer complexity of the moderation problem, what led to Slashdot's downfall, and more. 	Episode Transcript 	Rob's podcast, Geeks in Space 	JRS: EP71 Philip Howard on Computational Propaganda 	JRS: EP81 Renée DiResta on Social Media WarfareRob Malda, also known as CmdrTaco, is an American Internet content author, and former editor-in-chief of the website Slashdot. After that, he spent his time writing, consulting, and working at the Washington Post’s Labs for a couple years. Today, he’s interested in news aggregation, community moderation, and pretty much all the nerdy techy subject matter he covered at Slashdot.

Rob Malda (AKA: CmdrTaco) talks to Jim about the history &amp; tech of Slashdot while speculating on what social media could learn from it. In this Currents episode, Jim talks to Rob Malda (AKA: CmdrTaco) about the history &amp; creation of Slashdot, its opensource tech, rapid growth &amp; eventual decline, unique moderation system &amp; community involvement, utilization of scarcity, the down-side of open rating systems, the game theory of social media &amp; the evolution of manipulation tactics, moderation trade-offs, the advantages of having a niche audience, implementing innovations inspired by Word of Warcraft, the sheer complexity of the moderation problem, what led to Slashdot's downfall, and more. 	Episode Transcript 	Rob's podcast, Geeks in Space 	JRS: EP71 Philip Howard on Computational Propaganda 	JRS: EP81 Renée DiResta on Social Media Warfare Rob Malda, also known as CmdrTaco, is an American Internet content author, and former editor-in-chief of the website Slashdot. After that, he spent his time writing, consulting, and working at the Washington Post’s Labs for a couple years. Today, he’s interested in news aggregation, community moderation, and pretty much all the nerdy techy subject matter he covered at Slashdot.

Currents 013: Rob Malda on the Slashdot Story

You might know him as Rob Malda, or you might know him as CmdrTaco, but he was the founder of the great geek social website Slashdot. Slashdot recently turned 20 years old, Rob commemorated this in a great Medium post, and so I reached out to him to tell us the story of one of the first great social media websites.See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

You might know him as Rob Malda, or you might know him as CmdrTaco, but he was the founder of the great geek social website Slashdot. Slashdot recently turned 20 years old, Rob commemorated this in a great Medium post, and so I reached out to him to tell us the story of one of the first great social media websites.See <a href="https://acast.com/privacy" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">acast.com/privacy</a> for privacy and opt-out information.

157. Rob Malda (@cmdrtaco) on SlashDot and Social Media