Speaker 1: Get in tech with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works and I love all things tech and
Speaker 1: happy tenth anniversary. That's right. The show began ten years ago.
Speaker 1: We launched tech Stuff and we are almost a thousand
Speaker 1: episodes into this run, which is pretty incredible. And uh,
Speaker 1: today I'm gonna look at stuff that launched in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight and how all that stuff has changed
Speaker 1: in the last ten years. I thought that would be
Speaker 1: a fun way to kind of break down the tenth anniversary.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to pick just a topic a company
Speaker 1: or a person or anything like that, because I didn't
Speaker 1: feel like there was anything that would really encompass all
Speaker 1: that tech Stuff is. So instead, we're gonna look at
Speaker 1: stuff that was going on in two thousand eight and
Speaker 1: then kind of compared to what's going on today. The
Speaker 1: first thing I wanted to talk about, however, was the
Speaker 1: show itself. The very first episode of Tech Stuff that
Speaker 1: ever aired, and that's an important designation, was on Tuesday,
Speaker 1: June tenth, two thousand and eight, and it had the
Speaker 1: title how the Google Apple Cloud computer will work? Say what.
Speaker 1: It was based off an article that was written by
Speaker 1: Chris Pallette. He was my original co host on tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: He's also one of the editors I used to work
Speaker 1: with back when I was a writer for the house
Speaker 1: Stuff Works website. And this, uh, this episode. First of all,
Speaker 1: it was very short. It's about five minutes long. Uh.
Speaker 1: The early episodes of tech Stuff were all that short.
Speaker 1: Maybe some of you really wish for those days to return,
Speaker 1: but back then we were told we could not go
Speaker 1: longer than five minutes, and that was really really hard.
Speaker 1: This particular episod it was again about this article, and
Speaker 1: the article was about a hypothetical partnership that could happen
Speaker 1: between Google and Apple, and this was something that was
Speaker 1: being talked about by various analysts, but there weren't any
Speaker 1: you know, hard evidence to point out to say, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a this is absolutely happening. But the guess
Speaker 1: was that Google and Apple were going to work together,
Speaker 1: with Google providing the back end computing system for an
Speaker 1: Apple based lightweight computing product, possibly a portable one, so
Speaker 1: something along the lines of like the iPad, but where
Speaker 1: all the computing elements would be handled over the cloud,
Speaker 1: sort of like netbooks and later the Chrome books that
Speaker 1: would come out, and as it turned out, that never
Speaker 1: really materialized in the way that people were suggesting, although
Speaker 1: we did see that model of cloud computing start to
Speaker 1: take shape, so it's not like it was totally off base.
Speaker 1: But that was the very first episode, and of Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff as a podcast has changed dramatically since those days.
Speaker 1: Um Obviously, one thing is that it's now a single
Speaker 1: host show, and that happened after Chris Pollette after several years,
Speaker 1: decided he wanted to go pursue other career opportunities. He
Speaker 1: was not terribly interested in being in the limelight. I
Speaker 1: can't necessarily blame him for that. He wanted to kind
Speaker 1: of separate that from his life. He wanted to have
Speaker 1: a more uh private life, and so he left the
Speaker 1: show and pursued his other interests and is doing quite well.
Speaker 1: And then Lauren Vogelbaum joined the show for a while
Speaker 1: as co host, and then she too wanted to go
Speaker 1: and launch some new shows, work on some other projects
Speaker 1: and how stuff works, and she couldn't do all that
Speaker 1: and be co host of Tech Stuff, so she also left,
Speaker 1: and since then it's been pretty much just me with
Speaker 1: occasional guest co hosts and uh and obviously the show
Speaker 1: has changed quite a bit in length as well. When
Speaker 1: we first started, like I said, was about a five
Speaker 1: minute long show per episode. We eventually got the um
Speaker 1: the notification that we could go to ten or fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: and then eventually they said just go as long as
Speaker 1: you need to go for whatever the topic happens to be,
Speaker 1: and that's when we started seeing episodes get into that
Speaker 1: forty minute to an hour long range. And we were
Speaker 1: publishing twice a week. Then for a while we were
Speaker 1: publishing for just once a week, and now we're publishing
Speaker 1: five times a week, with classic episodes running on Fridays.
Speaker 1: So the show keeps on changing, except I've been on
Speaker 1: every single one of them, so I guess I'm the
Speaker 1: one constant in all of tech stuff. And uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're almost up to a thousand, and by the way,
Speaker 1: just in case you guys are worried, there are no
Speaker 1: plans to get rid of tech stuff. We're going to
Speaker 1: keep on going. We're gonna keep on making shows about technology.
Speaker 1: There's no shortage of topics to cover, and I'm really
Speaker 1: looking forward to doing more of those. But now to
Speaker 1: talk about some other stuff that was going on in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. So one thing that happened in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight was the high definition War sort of came
Speaker 1: to an end. Leading up to two thousand eight, there
Speaker 1: were two big formats that were really battling it out.
Speaker 1: H D DVD, which was sort of championed by Toshiba,
Speaker 1: and Blu Ray, which was championed by Sony, and the
Speaker 1: two different standards had been fighting it out in the
Speaker 1: marketplace for a while. Both companies have been luring various
Speaker 1: movie studios and television production companies to provide content for
Speaker 1: their particular platform exclusively. It was pretty ugly, and in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight it ended up being kind of concluded.
Speaker 1: H D DVD ended up bowing out to Blu Ray. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're wondering what the difference was between the two formats, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, they were not compatible. So unless you
Speaker 1: had one of just a couple of pieces of equipment
Speaker 1: that could play both, you had to choose one or
Speaker 1: the other. The HD DVD could hold about fifteen gigabytes
Speaker 1: of data on a single layer of a h D DVD.
Speaker 1: You could do multiple layers and increase that but uh,
Speaker 1: it was fifteen gigabytes for just a standard single layer
Speaker 1: h D DVD. Blue Ray could hold twenty five gigabytes
Speaker 1: on a single layer h D DVD was less expensive
Speaker 1: than Blu ray, but Sony was able to lure more
Speaker 1: major studios to support Blu Ray over to h D DVD,
Speaker 1: and in January eight just before c e S, in fact,
Speaker 1: Blu Ray was able to lure Warner Brothers away to
Speaker 1: jump ship because they had been with HD DVD, but
Speaker 1: then they switched over to Blu Ray, and then HD
Speaker 1: DVD would cancel their c E S press conference. In
Speaker 1: the wake of that news, they said, well, we really
Speaker 1: need to reevaluate things. We can't just go ahead with
Speaker 1: our press conference anymore. It was a real sabotage of
Speaker 1: h D DVD and Blu Ray one out, and usually
Speaker 1: lack of competition is a bad thing for consumers, but
Speaker 1: in this case, what it meant was that more people
Speaker 1: ended up by Blu ray players because it was really
Speaker 1: the only platform that was going to actually continue to exist.
Speaker 1: H D DVD was going to go away, and with
Speaker 1: more people buying it, that actually helped bring the price
Speaker 1: down on Blu rays and make it more affordable, because
Speaker 1: before that only really early adopters with a good deal
Speaker 1: of disposable income had bought into the system. Next, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about an SLR camera because this is
Speaker 1: kind of a funny story. This is two thousand eight, remember,
Speaker 1: and that's when the Nikon D nine D came out,
Speaker 1: and the D ninety was a twelve point three megapixel
Speaker 1: digital camera. Still is I guess it's an SLR. SLR
Speaker 1: stands for single lens Reflex and it was the first
Speaker 1: digital SLR to feature video recording capabilities. YEP, and two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, this was brand new. It was a DSLR
Speaker 1: capable of shooting video. Before that was all just still images.
Speaker 1: It could record video up to seven P resolution with
Speaker 1: twenty four frames per second and only mono sound. So
Speaker 1: the camera also had an auto focus feature whenever you're
Speaker 1: using it for still images, but if you wanted to
Speaker 1: use it for video you had to use manual focus tracking.
Speaker 1: I just thought that was interesting that it wasn't until
Speaker 1: two thousand eight that we had a digital SLR that
Speaker 1: could take video. And of course now it's a standard
Speaker 1: feature that you're gonna find on all DSLRs. Pretty much.
Speaker 1: And it's just interesting to me because some of the cameras,
Speaker 1: in fact, a lot of the cameras we use here
Speaker 1: at hell Stuff Works are DSLRs, and it's just one
Speaker 1: of it's funny to think of a time when that
Speaker 1: was new, and funny to think that that was the
Speaker 1: same year that tech Stuff came out. Also in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, USB three point oh was completed as a standard,
Speaker 1: and actually happened in November two thoight, so it happened
Speaker 1: after tech Stuff launched. The three point oh standard for
Speaker 1: USB represented a huge jump from USB two point oh.
Speaker 1: It allowed for data transfer speeds of up to five
Speaker 1: gigabits for a second, plus included two unidirectional data paths.
Speaker 1: This made USB three point oh about ten times faster
Speaker 1: than USB two point oh for unidirectional data transfers. It
Speaker 1: was even faster if you wanted to exchange data between
Speaker 1: two devices. So what I mean by that is with
Speaker 1: USB two point oh, you had one pathway and it
Speaker 1: was one way per data transfer, so you could send
Speaker 1: data from one device to another device in a single direction.
Speaker 1: Then you could stop and send data back the other way,
Speaker 1: but you could not do it simultaneously. You only had
Speaker 1: the one channel. USB three point oh had two unidirectional pathways,
Speaker 1: so it's like you have a pathway from device one
Speaker 1: to device two and a different pathway from device two
Speaker 1: back to device one, and you could send data back
Speaker 1: across each device simultaneously, so it could be much much faster.
Speaker 1: The first products to feature USB three point oh would
Speaker 1: not come out until two thousand nine, and even those
Speaker 1: weren't really consumer products. The consumer products wouldn't come out
Speaker 1: until two thousand ten. In so it's still a couple
Speaker 1: of years out before USB three point I would really
Speaker 1: fall into the hands of consumers. Bill Gates retired as
Speaker 1: Chief Software Architect for Microsoft in June two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: I actually remember the c E S presentation where he
Speaker 1: and Steve Balmer came out and they even showed a
Speaker 1: video of what Bill Gates's, uh, the last day in
Speaker 1: the office would be like. It was very comedic. It
Speaker 1: was a very funny, little self deprecating video. He would
Speaker 1: stay on as chairman of Microsoft until two thousand fourteen.
Speaker 1: They would he would then hand over the role of
Speaker 1: chairman to John W. Thompson. Steve Balmer, who was the
Speaker 1: CEO of Microsoft since two thousand would also step down
Speaker 1: in two thousand fourteen and was replaced by Satya Nadela,
Speaker 1: and Microsoft went on to acquire Nokia in two thousand
Speaker 1: fourteen for seven point two billion dollars. Also, but mo
Speaker 1: Yang or Mojang for a two point five billion that's
Speaker 1: the game company that created Minecraft. Uh. Microsoft has of
Speaker 1: course been struggling a little bit, especially in areas like mobile.
Speaker 1: They were never really able to crack mobile in a
Speaker 1: significant way. They weren't able to go up against iPhone
Speaker 1: and Android in a way that was really meaningful. And
Speaker 1: the cloud has also changed the way the company does
Speaker 1: business significantly. It's not only Microsoft is in danger of
Speaker 1: just going away, but they've certainly kind of lost some
Speaker 1: steam with the domination that the company had had back
Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties. Also in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: in March, just a little bit before we started tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: Hulu launched for public access. Now the site actually went
Speaker 1: live in two thousand seven, and originally when it went live,
Speaker 1: it was a website that didn't have any content. You
Speaker 1: just went there and it said it was coming soon.
Speaker 1: But then a private beta test followed in late two
Speaker 1: thousand seven early two thousand and eight. The actual service
Speaker 1: would not launch until the spring of two thousand eight.
Speaker 1: It was a joint venture still is a joint venture
Speaker 1: between lots of different media companies, but originally it was NBC,
Speaker 1: Universal and Fox, and they've been in the works of
Speaker 1: designing this project for a couple of years. It launched
Speaker 1: with shows and movies from around fifty media companies. There
Speaker 1: were a couple of notable absences from that group, CBS
Speaker 1: and ABC. We're both absent from that. Of course, CBS
Speaker 1: and ABC are competing broadcast networks with NBC and Fox,
Speaker 1: so it's not a huge surprise. But in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: the Walt Disney Company announced it would purchase a twenty
Speaker 1: seven percent steak in Hulu, and later when Disney announced
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen that it intended to acquire twenty first
Speaker 1: century Fox, it would mean that Disney would end up
Speaker 1: having a thirty percent additional steak in Hulu because Fox
Speaker 1: ownedtent of Hulu, so that would give Disney controlling interest
Speaker 1: in Hulu. And two thousand and sixteen, Hulu would end
Speaker 1: its free ad supported service because up until then you
Speaker 1: could actually log in and watch television shows and movies
Speaker 1: with ads without having to make an account or anything.
Speaker 1: You could just watch it. Then it would require users
Speaker 1: to sign up for either a seven dollars and ninety
Speaker 1: nine cent tier of service that had limited commercials, or
Speaker 1: an eleven dollar and ninety nine cent tier for an
Speaker 1: ad free service. I remember when this happened, a lot
Speaker 1: of users got upset because they didn't like the idea
Speaker 1: of having to pay for a subscription service where you
Speaker 1: still had ads at all, even if there was another
Speaker 1: option to pay a little bit more and get an
Speaker 1: ad free experience. The idea was, hey, I already had
Speaker 1: an ad an ad experience that was otherwise free. Why
Speaker 1: am I now having to pay for that? So there
Speaker 1: was a bit of a backlash on that. Hulu announced
Speaker 1: in January two eighteen that had seventeen million subscribers at
Speaker 1: the end of two thousand seventeen, which is about a
Speaker 1: third of what Netflix had at that same time in
Speaker 1: the United States. Also, Hulu and Netflix are very different things.
Speaker 1: Netflix is a global entity. It's got a lot of
Speaker 1: services and a lot of different countries, whereas Hulu is
Speaker 1: US centric but still even in the United States, Netflix
Speaker 1: is about three times more popular than Hulu right now.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, Tesla began production on the
Speaker 1: Tesla Roadster, and there's a sports car that was an
Speaker 1: electric sports car of very fancy, kind of sleek looking
Speaker 1: sports car. But they had a lot of issues before
Speaker 1: it came out, had a really rocky journey to production,
Speaker 1: and the company nearly collapsed in on itself several times
Speaker 1: before the Roadster ever went into mass production. The company
Speaker 1: held a launch party for the Roadster back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and six. This was sort of a preview event
Speaker 1: with prototype Tesla Roadsters, and they were meant to kind
Speaker 1: of show off to investors and potential customers and give
Speaker 1: people rides in these prototypes. Elon Musk, who who is
Speaker 1: frequently cited as a co founder, though he really came
Speaker 1: on board after the company had already been founded, but
Speaker 1: was able to propel it towards its actual eventual ability
Speaker 1: to do business. He later said that the earliest versions
Speaker 1: of the Roadster were quote completely unsafe end quote, and
Speaker 1: that they quote broke down all the time end quote.
Speaker 1: The Roadster could accelerate from zero to a hundred kilometers
Speaker 1: an hour or at sixty two miles per hour in
Speaker 1: four seconds, with a top speed of two d one
Speaker 1: kilometers per hour or hundred twenty five miles per hour,
Speaker 1: and on a full battery, it was said to be
Speaker 1: able to travel about two miles or three two kilometers.
Speaker 1: It costs just a touch less than a hundred grand
Speaker 1: if you weren't getting any options on it, and the
Speaker 1: first Tesla Roadster was delivered to Elon Musk. Big surprise,
Speaker 1: it's the same car that is now in outer space.
Speaker 1: Musk's other big project is SpaceX, and SpaceX launched his
Speaker 1: Tesla into heliocentric orbit on February six, two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: using a Falcon heavy rocket. So the car is supposed
Speaker 1: to end up in the neighborhood of Mars, and it's
Speaker 1: blasting David Bowie on the radio, which is pretty appropriate.
Speaker 1: In two thousand eight top Gear gave the roadster a
Speaker 1: bit of a shakedown on their program. They claimed that
Speaker 1: it ran out of juice a little early, and Tesla
Speaker 1: ended up suing the BBC for libel, but British courts
Speaker 1: decided against Tesla and in favor of the BBC. Tesla
Speaker 1: sold fewer than two thousand, five hundred roadsters during the
Speaker 1: run of cars which stretched hill two thousand twelve, and
Speaker 1: today Tesla has produced more than three hundred thousand vehicles.
Speaker 1: The company recently held a press conference where it revealed
Speaker 1: it was closing in on its production goal of five
Speaker 1: thousand vehicles per week for the Model three series, and
Speaker 1: the company still has some analysts concerned because it burns
Speaker 1: through a lot of cash and it may require more
Speaker 1: funding to day in business. So it's it's not all
Speaker 1: the woods yet. Next, I want to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about Spore. Spore was a real time strategy game
Speaker 1: in which you would shape the evolution of life forms
Speaker 1: that came out in two thousand and eight. It was
Speaker 1: highly anticipated and it actually experienced several delays before it
Speaker 1: finally came out. But it also included some digital rights
Speaker 1: management technology called secure rom s e c U upper
Speaker 1: case r o M like read only memory, and that
Speaker 1: potentially could open up the possibility of security risks to
Speaker 1: users computers. That was later revealed, So that was a
Speaker 1: bit of a black eye against the game. Uh. It
Speaker 1: got decent reviews, good critical reception, but it well largely
Speaker 1: it underperformed. That same year, Blizzard announced Diablow three, which
Speaker 1: ended up being a big hit. Games that came out
Speaker 1: that year included stuff like Burnout, Paradise, Super Smash, Brothers, Brawl,
Speaker 1: Ti Rock, Army of Two, Command and Conquer three, Assassin's
Speaker 1: Creed for Windows, Mario Kart, we Grand Theft Auto four,
Speaker 1: Mass Effect, Ninja, Guidan To Star Wars, The Force Unleashed
Speaker 1: Bioshot came out for the PS three. It had already
Speaker 1: come out for Xbox the year before Fallout three came out,
Speaker 1: and Left for Dead came out. So it was a
Speaker 1: good year for games. And that's just a tiny sample
Speaker 1: of the games that came out. I picked and chose
Speaker 1: from a huge list. Those are pretty good year for games.
Speaker 1: I fall Out three and Left for Dead or two
Speaker 1: of my favorites. So and I actually really like Grand
Speaker 1: Theft Auto four, although it has a much darker and
Speaker 1: more grim tone than a lot of the other entries
Speaker 1: in that series. Also in two thousand and eight, Nintendo
Speaker 1: would release the we Fit. This was a very very
Speaker 1: good selling peripheral for the Nintendo we This was the
Speaker 1: little balance board that you could play with and uh
Speaker 1: play various games. And the we Fit, a game where
Speaker 1: you would use it to exercise, was really popular. So popular,
Speaker 1: in fact, that it was really hard to find a
Speaker 1: we Fit it even months after a debut. Nintendo is
Speaker 1: pretty famous for producing fewer units than what demand calls for,
Speaker 1: and the we Fit was no exception, and I remember
Speaker 1: when I was looking for one, it took months before
Speaker 1: I finally found one. Um I think it's the third
Speaker 1: best selling video game peripheral of all times, so it's
Speaker 1: pretty impressive. Also in two thousand eight, the Intel Core
Speaker 1: to duo was the state of the art in microprocessors
Speaker 1: at the time, and the york Field quad core processor
Speaker 1: from Mentel had forty five nanometer components came out in
Speaker 1: March two thousand and eight. The state of the art now,
Speaker 1: if you were to compare it to the top of
Speaker 1: the line of Intel, would be the I nine seven
Speaker 1: nine eight x C processor, which has eighteen cores, and
Speaker 1: that will set you back nearly two thousand dollars now.
Speaker 1: Earlier in eighteen, there was a report that revealed that
Speaker 1: two security flaws and Intel chips called Specter and Meltdown
Speaker 1: were in practically every process are made by Intel for
Speaker 1: the last twenty years, and to be fair, they don't
Speaker 1: just affect Intel processors more than that in a second.
Speaker 1: So meltdown is a problem where you're you're supposed to
Speaker 1: have isolation between applications and a computer's operating system. They're
Speaker 1: supposed to be bits that prevent data exchanges from happening.
Speaker 1: Willy nilly. It protects data from one app from being
Speaker 1: accessed by other apps. But this flaw in various processors
Speaker 1: breaks this down. So potentially you could create a program
Speaker 1: that would be able to access the information generated by
Speaker 1: other programs, and it's possible that since the information could
Speaker 1: be sniffed out and leaked. Specter is kind of similar,
Speaker 1: but using a different vulnerability. Specter is harder to implement,
Speaker 1: but it's also harder to fix, so if you can
Speaker 1: effectively leverage Specter, it's harder to fix it. Jan Horne,
Speaker 1: who worked on Google Project zero, was one of the
Speaker 1: individuals to report these flaws. They were report did by
Speaker 1: others independently around the same time. It's interesting that Horn
Speaker 1: was able to find both of these on Intel chips,
Speaker 1: and the vulnerability would allow an attacker to see all
Speaker 1: sorts of sensitive information, including passwords and log in information,
Speaker 1: not to mention sensitive stuff you've stored on your computer.
Speaker 1: Now the meltdown vulnerability affects all Intel processors that were
Speaker 1: produced since n with the exception of Intel Titanium and
Speaker 1: the Intel Atom processors from before specters. Even worse, it
Speaker 1: affects Intel A and D and ARM processors. Now, this
Speaker 1: is a problem that affects MAX and PCs, and it's
Speaker 1: likely to be an issue for a really long time,
Speaker 1: and there's not an easy fixed respector various operating system
Speaker 1: builds can be patched against meltdown. However, now I have
Speaker 1: a lot more to say about what happened in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight and how it's changed in the ten years since.
Speaker 1: But before I get into that, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. Okay, so Twitter. Now, Twitter
Speaker 1: was already a thing in two thousand and eight. It
Speaker 1: had had a soft launch in two thousand six. It
Speaker 1: got bigger in two thousand seven after it had a
Speaker 1: good showing at south By, and it continued to grow.
Speaker 1: In two thousand eight, Jack Dorsey stepped down from his
Speaker 1: role as the Twitter CEO and Evan Williams would take
Speaker 1: over and Twitter would experience rapid growth. So Twitter had
Speaker 1: a pretty good year in two thousand eight. Now it's
Speaker 1: interesting because Jack Dorsey would become the interim CEO again.
Speaker 1: In July two thousand fifteen, he would take over, and
Speaker 1: then he was named permanent CEO in October two thousand fifteen.
Speaker 1: So Dorsey started as CEO, stepped down, took over as
Speaker 1: an interim CEO in twenty fifteen, and now as CEO
Speaker 1: of the company once more. Twitter's revenue depends almost entirely
Speaker 1: a UoN advertising, so here's a quick rundown of how
Speaker 1: it's been doing recently. From the two thousand eighteen financial report,
Speaker 1: the company states that more than eighty five of all
Speaker 1: revenue comes from ads, and that nearly all that revenue
Speaker 1: comes from promoted tweets, promoted accounts, and promoted trends, and
Speaker 1: the net income for seventeen was sixty one million dollars
Speaker 1: with a margin of nine monthly active users. During the
Speaker 1: first quarter of two thousand eighteen, earnings Call was cited
Speaker 1: at three d thirty six million people, with sixty nine
Speaker 1: million of those in the United States. So not the
Speaker 1: dominant factor that it once was, maybe, but still doing
Speaker 1: quite well. One thing that debuted in two thousand eight
Speaker 1: that really helped shape the way our world works today
Speaker 1: was the iPhone three G and the App store as well.
Speaker 1: Apple's iPhone three G was actually the second generation iPhone,
Speaker 1: and the name refers to the cell net work technology
Speaker 1: it was compatible with, not the generation of the iPhone,
Speaker 1: and that caused some confusion at the time because obviously
Speaker 1: it was the second iPhone. It was called the iPhone
Speaker 1: three G, and so there had some people wondering, well,
Speaker 1: what happened to the iPhone two, Well, it is the
Speaker 1: iPhone two. It's just it's called the three G because
Speaker 1: the three G network provided faster data transfer speeds than
Speaker 1: the edge network that the original iPhone depended upon. The
Speaker 1: price tag for the phone was just a hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: This was a big price cut from the previous iPhone,
Speaker 1: although that came along with some pretty hefty UH contract requirements,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't like you were really saving money in
Speaker 1: the long run. The money was just shifted to a
Speaker 1: monthly fee as opposed to the upfront fee. The iPhone
Speaker 1: three G was in many ways similar to the first iPhone,
Speaker 1: apart from this three G capability. For example, had the
Speaker 1: same sort of camera, a two megapixel camera. There was
Speaker 1: no additional camera, just the one, and it didn't have
Speaker 1: video capabilities. At that time, it didn't look that different
Speaker 1: from the original iPhone. If you put them side by side,
Speaker 1: they look very similar, although the iPhone three G had
Speaker 1: a slightly thicker black border around the perimeter of the screen,
Speaker 1: and also the back of the iPhone three G was
Speaker 1: in plastic. It was either in white or black plastic.
Speaker 1: The original iPhone had a recessed three point five millimeter
Speaker 1: headphone jack, which meant that it was really kind of
Speaker 1: hard to use third party headphones with it. Because of
Speaker 1: that recessed uh nature, you couldn't a lot of the
Speaker 1: plugs wouldn't reach, and it frustrated a lot of people
Speaker 1: who didn't want to just have to buy Apple products
Speaker 1: to to use the iPhone. So the iPhone three G
Speaker 1: no longer had a recessed three point five millimator headphone jack.
Speaker 1: It was flush with the end of the phone, so
Speaker 1: it made it easier to plug stuff into. The three
Speaker 1: G also included GPS hardware in the phone, and that
Speaker 1: would pretty much foretell the beginning of the end of
Speaker 1: stand alone GPS devices. It's not like they've all disappeared.
Speaker 1: There's still stand alone GPS devices on the market, but
Speaker 1: they've been largely replaced by smartphones, and the iPhone three
Speaker 1: G was kind of the harbinger of that. So for
Speaker 1: those people who still have a stand alone GPS receiver,
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting. But most people, I think have
Speaker 1: switched over to smartphones. Just as I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people have decided to depend upon their smartphones as
Speaker 1: their MP three player they're streaming video device, they don't
Speaker 1: tend to have as many people depending on stand alone
Speaker 1: dedicated devices. I used to be a holdout for that.
Speaker 1: If you've been listening to tech stuff for a long time,
Speaker 1: you know that. Chris and I when we would have
Speaker 1: these discussions, I would talk to them about how I
Speaker 1: don't want to have all my music on my phone
Speaker 1: because at that time phones had very limited storage space,
Speaker 1: and there weren't a lot of streaming services that you
Speaker 1: could use to listen to music. Uh and if you
Speaker 1: did want to do that, you were eating up a
Speaker 1: lot of data. And if you didn't have a really
Speaker 1: good network nearby or Wi Fi hotspots you could connect to,
Speaker 1: then you have a lot of interruption in your service.
Speaker 1: So I preferred having a dedicated MP three player and
Speaker 1: a dedicated GPS. But these days the technology has improved
Speaker 1: so significantly over the last ten years that I can't
Speaker 1: imagine having carrying around extra MP three player or having
Speaker 1: an extra GPS system to UH to depend upon in
Speaker 1: a vehicle. There's just no need for it anymore. Today's
Speaker 1: iPhones are, of course, way more advanced and sleek than
Speaker 1: the iPhone three G was. They also did away with
Speaker 1: that three point five billimeter headphone jack entirely. Of course,
Speaker 1: the iPhone is not alone in this, A lot of
Speaker 1: phones have gotten rid of that as My Android phone,
Speaker 1: for example, doesn't have a three point five millimeter jack either,
Speaker 1: So I can't just point fingers at Apple for this.
Speaker 1: Apple also launched the apps door in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, kind of hard to believe. It
Speaker 1: didn't exist during the original iPhone run. For the full
Speaker 1: year iPhone was out and there was no app store
Speaker 1: at all. Initially, the app store had about five apps available,
Speaker 1: and today it's more than two million, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: always a guarantee that we would get an app store.
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs initially opposed the idea of allowing third party
Speaker 1: developers to create applications for the iPhone. He was worried
Speaker 1: that it would negatively impact the Apple experience. It's a
Speaker 1: very Apple thing, and a very Steve Jobs thing to
Speaker 1: want to control that experience precisely to deliver to the
Speaker 1: user what Steve Jobs felt was the ideal experience. Jobs
Speaker 1: was not about giving the user what he or she wanted.
Speaker 1: Jobs was all about giving the user what Jobs wanted,
Speaker 1: and he was worried that allowing third party developers to
Speaker 1: create apps would fracture his device, it would make it
Speaker 1: uh do things that it wasn't intended to do and
Speaker 1: perhaps dilute the experience. But eventually he was convinced to
Speaker 1: do otherwise, and it ended up being a incredibly profitable
Speaker 1: decision for Apple because Apple would take about thirty of
Speaker 1: the revenues generated from apps, whether it was a purchase
Speaker 1: price upfront or an ongoing subscription fee or whatever it
Speaker 1: might be. Apple would get a thirty percent take, so
Speaker 1: developers would take the other sevent This made Apple truckloads
Speaker 1: of money, like massive truckloads. A Forbes piece from January
Speaker 1: two eighteen stated that the App Store earned eleven point
Speaker 1: five billion dollars in revenue for Apple in two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: So it ended up being an incredibly beneficial decision for
Speaker 1: Apple to go with this app store approach. It's a
Speaker 1: very uh low cost way for Apple to make a
Speaker 1: huge amount of money. Google Android came out in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. We even did an episode titled how
Speaker 1: the Google Android Phone will work back in the early
Speaker 1: days of tech Stuff. Android was revealed in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: but the first device running on Android did not come
Speaker 1: out until the fall of two thousand eight. Android had
Speaker 1: started out as a startup in two thousand three. It
Speaker 1: was founded by Rich Minor, Nick Sears, Chris White, and
Speaker 1: Andy Ruben. Reuben wanted to create an operating system platform
Speaker 1: for mobile devices that would allow for more rich experiences
Speaker 1: and one's the largely depend upon context like the location
Speaker 1: of the user, for example, and Google would acquire Android
Speaker 1: the company in two thousand five for a bunch of money,
Speaker 1: but it was kind of a private affair, so that
Speaker 1: number has never been officially acknowledged. Most estimates put somewhere
Speaker 1: around fifty million dollars. The first phone to feature the
Speaker 1: Android operating system was the HTC Dream a k a.
Speaker 1: The g One on the T Mobile network. I don't
Speaker 1: think I had a g One. I remember I got
Speaker 1: the HTC G two. I don't remember event HTC Dream,
Speaker 1: but the HTC G two, which came out in I
Speaker 1: definitely had. And both of those featured a screen that
Speaker 1: would slide up to reveal a physical keyboard underneath, and
Speaker 1: I really like that. I don't like on screen keyboards,
Speaker 1: even though I've had phones for the last several years
Speaker 1: and that's the only kind that I've bought were the
Speaker 1: ones with on screen keyboards. I've always preferred the physical ones.
Speaker 1: I just felt like it gave a better experience. Android
Speaker 1: would trail a year behind iPhone and the iOS obviously
Speaker 1: that came out in two thousand seven, and Android didn't
Speaker 1: have a phone out till two thousand and eight. But
Speaker 1: Dad didn't hurt Android very much. In the Android operating
Speaker 1: system accounts for nearly eighty six percent of all smartphone
Speaker 1: operating system market share worldwide eight six percent. Compare that
Speaker 1: to iOS is about fourteen percent. Pretty Much everything else
Speaker 1: is scrambling for less and a per cent of the share.
Speaker 1: So it's down to mostly Android, a little bit iPhone,
Speaker 1: and then everybody else. So why did Android dominate? It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily a sign that it's a superior operating system.
Speaker 1: Now I prefer Android to iOS, but I think Apple's
Speaker 1: smartphone operating system is pretty amazing, and I don't deny
Speaker 1: that it's it's fantastic. It really is great. I just
Speaker 1: prefer Android. But I think the reason why Android outperforms Apple.
Speaker 1: In fact, i'm pretty sure this is the reason, is
Speaker 1: that Google allows numerous handset manufacturers to use the Android
Speaker 1: operating system on their products. You just license it from Google,
Speaker 1: and if you want an iOS device, you have to
Speaker 1: go through Apple for hardware. Apple is the only company
Speaker 1: that makes devices that run iOS, so there's a limitation
Speaker 1: on what sort of models and which price points you
Speaker 1: can get if you want an iOS device, Whereas with Android,
Speaker 1: there's an entire spectrum. You can expands everything from budget
Speaker 1: smartphones to high end models. So there's a lot more
Speaker 1: availability there, and I think that's the secret to why
Speaker 1: Android is such a dominant player in the operating system space.
Speaker 1: It's not that Android is necessarily superior, although I definitely
Speaker 1: prefer it. It's that Android is available on a lot
Speaker 1: more products than iOS is, and that's the real reason. Now,
Speaker 1: something else that came online in September two eight, and
Speaker 1: also was from Google, was the Chrome browser. It is
Speaker 1: hard for me to believe that tech stuff is older
Speaker 1: than Google Chrome. So what the heck was I using
Speaker 1: to do research back then? That's a rhetorical question. Actually,
Speaker 1: remember it was Firefox. But Chrome's big innovation was that
Speaker 1: every tab was to run as a separate instance, which
Speaker 1: meant that the overall browser was much more stable. All
Speaker 1: processes were isolated, so if something went wrong in one tab,
Speaker 1: it would not cause the entire browser to fail, so
Speaker 1: you can keep your other tabs active. So let's say
Speaker 1: that you have a plug in that has a compatibility
Speaker 1: issue or something, and one tab ends up giving you
Speaker 1: an error. The other tabs would still be fine, so
Speaker 1: you could close out the problematic tab and everything else
Speaker 1: would still be there. Chrome combined a search and address
Speaker 1: bar into a single bar, and that also got people
Speaker 1: confused at first, but that was a very new innovation.
Speaker 1: You could either type a web address directly into the bar,
Speaker 1: or you could just type in some search terms and
Speaker 1: it would pull up a Google search related to that.
Speaker 1: This is, of course, the way Google Chrome still works
Speaker 1: to this day. According to stat Counter, which aggregates data
Speaker 1: to determine market share percentage of various products, Chrome is
Speaker 1: the dominant web browser out there today, accounting for nearly
Speaker 1: six of all browsers. The next highest is Safari, which
Speaker 1: is around four. All other browsers each command ten percent
Speaker 1: or less of the market, so Chrome now dominates. But
Speaker 1: when our show launched, there was no such browser in existence.
Speaker 1: In October two thousand eight, Spotify would launch, so our
Speaker 1: show is actually older than Spotify as well. Now. The
Speaker 1: domain Spotify was registered all the way back in two
Speaker 1: thousand six, and it was founded by Daniel Eck and
Speaker 1: Martin Lawrence En in Stockholm. The service ran a beta
Speaker 1: test that started back in two thousand seven, so that
Speaker 1: predates my show that included running test ads in early
Speaker 1: two thousand eight before they had their official launch. Now
Speaker 1: upon launch, Spotify was initially only available in Scandinavia, the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom, France, and Spain. What's more, the free service
Speaker 1: was invitation only. Now anyone could sign up for a
Speaker 1: premium service that was like a subscription based service, but
Speaker 1: to use just the free ad supported one you had
Speaker 1: to get an invite first. Spotify landed licensing deals with
Speaker 1: most of the major music studios out there, so they
Speaker 1: were able to play lots of music. Apparently it took
Speaker 1: a really long time, like two and a half years
Speaker 1: to get all of that signed up and and sealed
Speaker 1: up before they could launch. Spotify would end up getting
Speaker 1: a bit of a boost from Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame,
Speaker 1: but Spotify just didn't become available in the United States
Speaker 1: until two thousand eleven, and by then the company was
Speaker 1: already valued at one billion dollars. In April two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: Spotify filed for a direct listing on the stock market
Speaker 1: rather than an initial public offering. This involves doing away
Speaker 1: with intermediaries like underwriters and selling shares directly to the
Speaker 1: public without issuing new shares of stock, so those who
Speaker 1: held stake in the company when it was a private
Speaker 1: entity are free to sell their shares to the public.
Speaker 1: At that point, Reuters calculated Spotify's value at nineteen billion dollars.
Speaker 1: And now let's talk about one of my favorite technologies
Speaker 1: that really came online into the sand eight, the Large
Speaker 1: Hadron Collider. It started up at ten a m September
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. It fired a proton beam around the
Speaker 1: twenty seven kilometer collider for the very first time. And
Speaker 1: the Large Hadron Collider is a particle accelerator and collider.
Speaker 1: It uses very narrow beams of particles moving at very
Speaker 1: fast speeds, like near the speed of light, in this
Speaker 1: massive circle, going around and round and round, until two
Speaker 1: beams going in opposite directions are directed to have collisions
Speaker 1: at one of several detectors. There. There are several major
Speaker 1: detectors around this circumference of this device, and there you
Speaker 1: have these particles slamming into each other at very high
Speaker 1: velocity and they break apart, and then we pay attention
Speaker 1: and see what happens. Very those magnets are have to
Speaker 1: be super cool. They have to be cooled with first
Speaker 1: liquid nitrogen and then liquid helium to get them so
Speaker 1: cold that they are super conductors. They they you don't
Speaker 1: lose any energy to resistance at that temperature. And the
Speaker 1: collisions produced information about the very basic stuff of our universe.
Speaker 1: Since it came online, and it took a while before
Speaker 1: the Large Hadron Collider was actually able to do collisions
Speaker 1: that would produce data. The online process was a very long,
Speaker 1: laborious one, but since then they were able to prove
Speaker 1: or at least a show evidence for the Higgs boson
Speaker 1: particle that have been hypothesized up to that point but
Speaker 1: never proven. And now we've thought that we've observed it.
Speaker 1: You've got very good proof that we've observed it to
Speaker 1: to a very high degree of certainty. And this particle
Speaker 1: is why matter has mass. It's predicted by the Standard model,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty cool. Also, the Large Hadron Collider in
Speaker 1: general has shown that the Standard model of physics is
Speaker 1: really really good. That there's no stic decays, there are
Speaker 1: no fundamental rules of the Standard model that don't appear
Speaker 1: to hold up. There are no deviations significant deviations from
Speaker 1: the standard model. And in case you're wondering, the standard
Speaker 1: model covers three of the four fundamental forces in the universe,
Speaker 1: and those would be the strong and weak nuclear forces.
Speaker 1: That's two of them, the electromagnetic force that's the third.
Speaker 1: But the fourth one, gravity is not included in the
Speaker 1: standard model. So the Center model is not a complete
Speaker 1: model of how our universe works. It's more of a
Speaker 1: model of how a bunch of our universe works. And
Speaker 1: there's a whole lot left unexplained, including stuff like dark energy.
Speaker 1: So while the LHC has done a lot to reinforce
Speaker 1: the standard model, we still have a lot of questions,
Speaker 1: which is one of the reasons science is so freaking cool.
Speaker 1: Some people are a little disappointed that the LHC hasn't
Speaker 1: turned up stuff outside the standard model, but it has
Speaker 1: only collected about two percent of all the data it
Speaker 1: will generate during its life time, so it's still incredibly
Speaker 1: early in the process. Also, just so you know, it
Speaker 1: did not create an enormous black hole and destroy all
Speaker 1: of us, So that's good. I've got a little bit
Speaker 1: more to talk about with two thousand and eight, but
Speaker 1: before I do, let's take another quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor. All Right, here's something else that happened in
Speaker 1: two thousand night that I thought was pretty cool. The
Speaker 1: white paper Bitcoin, a Peer to peer Electronic Cash System
Speaker 1: was published in November two thousand eight, written by someone
Speaker 1: or possibly more than one someone using the pen name
Speaker 1: Satoshi Nakamoto. This was the white paper that explained the
Speaker 1: principles behind Bitcoin. And in case you don't remember what
Speaker 1: bitcoin is, it is a digital currency and it relies
Speaker 1: upon a system that puts all of the transactions of
Speaker 1: bitcoin into blocks of data, and those blocks end up
Speaker 1: forming a chain we call it blockchain, and the the
Speaker 1: process of verifying a transaction is UH, and it involves
Speaker 1: solving a really difficult math problem. And if you have
Speaker 1: the computer that solves that math problem first and verifies
Speaker 1: those transactions, you're rewarded with some bitcoins. It's a process
Speaker 1: called mining. The number of bitcoins you're rewarded with decreases
Speaker 1: over time. After a certain number of bitcoins are released
Speaker 1: out into the wild, UH, you get a reduction by
Speaker 1: about half. Actually it is half of the number of
Speaker 1: bitcoins that are released after the next series of successful verifications.
Speaker 1: And this goes on for quite some time until you
Speaker 1: hit another limit, and that's halved again, and so on
Speaker 1: and so forth, until eventually you have all the entire
Speaker 1: supply of bitcoins that will ever exist out in circulation.
Speaker 1: And from that point forward, when you verify a block
Speaker 1: of transactions, you are awarded a small amount of mone
Speaker 1: me as a transaction fee sort of. You're you're rewarded
Speaker 1: for the verification, but you're no longer getting new bitcoins
Speaker 1: at that point, you're just getting a portion of the
Speaker 1: bitcoins that were used in whatever the transaction happened to be.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like getting a charge to run a
Speaker 1: credit card scan. So that's typically how Bitcoin works are
Speaker 1: from a very high level, and no one was really
Speaker 1: sure if it was going to take off or not,
Speaker 1: or if it was just going to be kind of
Speaker 1: this weird scheme. I mean, it's a decentralized currency, there's
Speaker 1: no government agency that dictates what it should be. And
Speaker 1: it's value has changed dramatically over time. So since bitcoin
Speaker 1: became a real thing, well I mean as as real
Speaker 1: a thing as digital data gets anyway, it's value has
Speaker 1: gone from less than less than a dime per bitcoin
Speaker 1: to a high of nearly twenty thousand dollars per bitcoin
Speaker 1: in December two thousand seventeen. Now, as I researched the
Speaker 1: show the value was closer to seven thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars per bitcoin. That was in early juneens. That's pretty
Speaker 1: wild to think that it used to be twenty grand
Speaker 1: per bitcoin. Now it's per bitcoin, and who knows what
Speaker 1: it will be next month. Now. Recently, a report that
Speaker 1: relied on stylo metric analysis of Nakamoto's white papers, concluded
Speaker 1: that Gavin and Reason, a lead developer on bitcoin, is
Speaker 1: actually Satoshi Nakamoto, saying that Andreason's writing and the white
Speaker 1: papers that were attributed to Nakamoto share a lot of
Speaker 1: similarities and and reason denies that claim. Stylometry, as the
Speaker 1: name implies, compares the writing styles of multiple pieces of
Speaker 1: work in an effort to determine if those pieces were
Speaker 1: in fact written by the same person. Stylometry looks at
Speaker 1: word choice and vocabulary and some other elements, and it's
Speaker 1: not an exact science style of metric. Results can be
Speaker 1: easily influens by tweaking a few different inputs, and that's
Speaker 1: led some people to dismiss the strategy, saying it's not
Speaker 1: really reliable. You can't really be sure that the outcome
Speaker 1: is is truly evidence that two pieces of work were
Speaker 1: written by the same person. But what's the big deal?
Speaker 1: Why why do we care who Knakamoto is anyway, because
Speaker 1: after all, we just need to know the currency works well.
Speaker 1: Nakamoto is believed to own about five percent of all bitcoins,
Speaker 1: which would make him a multibillionaire at this point, at
Speaker 1: least on paper, But there's a generally held belief that
Speaker 1: if Nakamoto were to cash in on this five percent,
Speaker 1: it would be viewed as a vote of no confidence
Speaker 1: in the virtual currency, and the value of the currency
Speaker 1: would plummet. As a result, so Nakamoto would make out
Speaker 1: like a bandit that everyone else would see their currency
Speaker 1: start to lose value, and it could create a sort
Speaker 1: of a run on the currency as everyone tries to
Speaker 1: cash in before the currency is valueless. On a related concern,
Speaker 1: there are these entities called bitcoin whales, and these are
Speaker 1: people or organizations that own a relatively large number of bitcoins.
Speaker 1: According to Bloomberg, about one thou people own of the
Speaker 1: entire bitcoin market. Now that could spell trouble. The worry
Speaker 1: is that if these whales were to sell off a
Speaker 1: significant portion of their holdings, it would precipitate a steep
Speaker 1: drop in bitcoin value, just like I was talking about
Speaker 1: with Nakamoto, and if they all corroborated to cash in
Speaker 1: at the same time, it could cause a total collapse
Speaker 1: of the system. So let's say that you are one
Speaker 1: of these whales. Let's say that you own a significant
Speaker 1: number of bitcoins and you notice that the value has
Speaker 1: crept as high as it's ever been, maybe it's not
Speaker 1: that twenty dollar mark, and you think, I want to
Speaker 1: cash in now because my investment has grown so much
Speaker 1: it's gonna make me a multi millionaire. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: do me any good just to hold onto bitcoins. I
Speaker 1: would rather have quote unquote real currency, because is it's
Speaker 1: hard to spend a currency, a unit of currency if
Speaker 1: its value fluctuates so dramatically so quickly. If one day
Speaker 1: it's worth in the next day it's worth twenty dollars
Speaker 1: and you spend it back when it was, you can't
Speaker 1: help but think, wow, I lost thousands of dollars on
Speaker 1: that transaction because I spent it too quickly. But if
Speaker 1: you trade it in for a more stable currency, then
Speaker 1: you might feel better about it. So if you did that,
Speaker 1: if you went and traded this in, other people might
Speaker 1: see it as a sign that you feel the value
Speaker 1: of bitcoin is as high as it's ever going to be,
Speaker 1: and other people might want to cash in as well,
Speaker 1: And pretty soon you've got a lot of people selling it,
Speaker 1: not a whole lot of people buying, and the value
Speaker 1: of the coin drops as supply greatly outpaces demand, and
Speaker 1: then eventually the value could collapse in on itself. So
Speaker 1: it's a dangerous thing. Hasn't happened yet, though, and at
Speaker 1: least not on that scale. We've definitely seen massive fluctuations
Speaker 1: in value. But some people say it's just little market
Speaker 1: corrections that have returned it to a more stable bitcoin
Speaker 1: per dollar exchange rate. Still astronomical, I mean, for a
Speaker 1: bitcoin is pretty incredible. Also, in two thousand eight, Facebook
Speaker 1: launched a major site redesign that forced all users to
Speaker 1: opt in by September of that year, and people hated it.
Speaker 1: And of course the same thing has happened several times
Speaker 1: since then. Whenever Facebook does a redesign, you can expect
Speaker 1: the next month to be filled with people talking about
Speaker 1: how much they hate the redesign. And these would be
Speaker 1: the same people who hated the last redesign. So eventually,
Speaker 1: what happens is people get used to the redesign. They
Speaker 1: might not love it, but they get used to it,
Speaker 1: and then they hate change anyway. Facebook would turn cash
Speaker 1: flow positive for the very first time in two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: The Social Network, A film about Facebook's early days, would
Speaker 1: debut in two thousand ten. Google Plus would launch in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven. I'll talk more about that in our
Speaker 1: next episode. Facebook Messenger would launch in two thousand eleven.
Speaker 1: Facebook would acquire Instagram in two thousand twelve for one
Speaker 1: billion dollars. I talked about that recently in the Instagram episodes,
Speaker 1: and Facebook would hold its initial public offering in two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve, and it would be valued at one hundred
Speaker 1: four billion dollars upon opening of the stock market. In
Speaker 1: Facebook acquired Oculus Virtual Reality and also acquired the messaging
Speaker 1: service WhatsApp that year for a massive amount of money.
Speaker 1: My Space was way ahead of Facebook in traffic up
Speaker 1: through the beginning of two thousand and eight until April nineteen,
Speaker 1: and that was the first time when Facebook would take
Speaker 1: the lead in traffic, and then Facebook pretty much kept it.
Speaker 1: So it's hard to remember that now. It's hard to
Speaker 1: believe it, really, but in two thousand eight when tech
Speaker 1: Stuff launched, my Space was a real contender with Facebook.
Speaker 1: It was it was doing well, or at least it
Speaker 1: was on the tail end of doing well. It was
Speaker 1: just on the precipice of dropping off the map. So
Speaker 1: News Corps, which had bought my Space in July two
Speaker 1: thousand five for five hundred eighty million dollars, would hold
Speaker 1: onto the site until two thousand eleven, and at that
Speaker 1: point they tried to sell it, and their first attempts
Speaker 1: to sell it failed. They were looking to get somebody
Speaker 1: to at least put in a bid of fifty million
Speaker 1: dollars and that didn't work. Eventually, they were able to
Speaker 1: sell my Space to a company called Specific Media for
Speaker 1: an undisclosed amount, although it was rumored to be around
Speaker 1: thirty five million. So News Corps bought it at five
Speaker 1: eight million and sold it at thirty five million. Ouch. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Time Inc. Bought my Space in and it used to
Speaker 1: be the most visited site on the Internet, at least
Speaker 1: for US users. Now it's ranked below one thousand, six
Speaker 1: hundred in the United States. And that's just kind of
Speaker 1: a quick overview of some of the things that were
Speaker 1: going on in two thousand eight and how they've changed
Speaker 1: in those ten years. In our next episode, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: dive into this a little bit on a different different path.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna look at things companies that did not exist
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight but they do exist today
Speaker 1: and tell you a little bit about those. So stuff
Speaker 1: that popped up in the decades since we started doing
Speaker 1: this show, stuff that launched after tech stuff did but
Speaker 1: did not stick around. So I'll talk about companies like
Speaker 1: Pebble and Cool and Yik yak, stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: then the stuff that existed before tech Stuff launched but
Speaker 1: don't exist no more, stuff like Jawbone companies that had
Speaker 1: been around but no longer exist today. So make sure
Speaker 1: you tune into that next episode. It will be kind
Speaker 1: of a part two celebration of tech Stuff's ten years
Speaker 1: to talk about how time has really made a huge impact,
Speaker 1: how technology changes as years pass, and how things that
Speaker 1: we kind of count on one year can go away
Speaker 1: another year and then five years later you don't even
Speaker 1: think about it anymore. But guys, I want to thank
Speaker 1: you for listening to tech Stuff, for supporting this show.
Speaker 1: Some of you have been with me since the very beginning.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks to you, guys. Some of you have probably
Speaker 1: started listening pretty recently, and thanks to you as well.
Speaker 1: I'm glad all of you can be part of this community.
Speaker 1: I really look forward to doing a ton more shows.
Speaker 1: We've got a lot of really cool things coming down
Speaker 1: the line that I think you guys will be excited about,
Speaker 1: including you know, have you ever wanted to buy like
Speaker 1: a tech stuff T shirt? Stay tuned, guys. That's all
Speaker 1: I can say about that, But I'm really excited to
Speaker 1: keep on working on this show and to do brand
Speaker 1: new episodes about all sorts of technology topics. If you
Speaker 1: have a suggestion for something I absolutely should cover, whether
Speaker 1: it's a technology, maybe it's a person that I should
Speaker 1: I should profile, or a company, let me know, or
Speaker 1: maybe there's someone you would like me to interview or
Speaker 1: have on as a guest host. Send me a message.
Speaker 1: The email address for the show is tech Stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line
Speaker 1: on Twitter or Facebook to handle it both of those
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff H s W. Don't forget to follow
Speaker 1: us on Instagram and I'll talk to you again really
Speaker 1: soon for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff works dot com.