Matt Haughey reflects on running MetaFilter for ten years. MeFi in the early-to-mid 00s was a cesspool; Matt deserves several gold stars for pushing through, somehow making the site better than it ever was in the early days, and turning the site into a thriving business. Over the years as community fads have changed online, people moved from wanting to build their own Slashdot to Gawker to Digg to Facebook to Twitter, but MeFi as a model of online community deserves more scrutiny...people should be trying to make their own MetaFilters but nobody really does.
Anyway, here's to you and The Blue, Matt. Congrats!
Matt Haughey shares some of his favorite weight loss advice for geeks. The moving average advice is particularly useful.
There are many explanations of why one would use a moving average, but I'll just say that it covers your weight trends and lessens the daily fluctuations. This means if you drop 0.1 pounds every day for a week then one morning you weigh in at one full pound heavier than the previous day, your entire week wasn't shot that morning because you'd still be trending downwards. If you stick to your plans you'll often see weight continue to go down even with the occasional hiccup.
Two things of which you should not fret the daily movement: the stock market and your weight.
Matt Haughey lists a bunch of ways that political candidates can get his nerdy vote.
I've been thinking lately about a dream candidate for my nerd habits, my nerdy business, and the way I live my nerdy life. Regardless of party affiliation, if you're running for an office from as small as city council all the way up to president, if you hit on any/all of these things, you just might get my vote.
Universal healthcare, universal broadband, and a renewed commitment to science are on his list...anything missing?
What if you traded Apple stock around Steve Jobs' January Macworld keynotes...would you make any money? Short answer is yes but buying Apple stock 10 years ago and holding would have been the better move. Also interesting is the market's reaction to OS X and Jobs' installment as CEO...Apple lost 7.3% of its market cap the day after the announcement.
Fashion & Style? I don't know... (via matt)
Matt Haughey's seven tips on how to run a successful community, based on his experiences with MetaFilter. "It takes great care and patience to create a space others will share and you have to nurture it and reward your best contributors. It's a decidedly human endeavor with few, if any, technical shortcuts."
Matt Haughey recently launched a new blog about "doing business online" called fortuitous. In his introductory post, Matt describes his job as "professionally screwing around on the web", which is an accurate description of my current vocation as well.
Regarding last week's post about LED lightbulbs, Matt Haughey bought a variety pack of LED bulbs, tried them out, and says "save your money". "The color is definitely blue and the light is dim. There's no way on earth these bulbs are worth running out and spending $30+ per bulb on."
Matt Haughey has a great idea about how to better search for missing persons: fly helicopters with cameras over the suspected locations, upload the resulting video/photos to the web, and an army of volunteers look the video/photos over for possible evidence. With enough eyeballs, all missing people are shallow.
In this interview with .net magazine, Flickr founder Caterina Fake likens building an online community to throwing a party:
According to Caterina: "The most difficult part is not the technology but actually getting the people to behave well." When first starting the community the Flickr team were spending nearly 24 hours online greeting each individual user, introducing them to each other and cultivating the community. "After a certain point you can let go and the community will start to maintain itself, explains Caterina. "People will greet each other and introduce their own practices into the social software. It's always underestimated, but early on you need someone in there everyday who is kind of like the host of the party, who introduces everybody and takes their coat.
I recall those early days of Flickr...Stewart and Caterina were everywhere, commenting on everything. A core group of people followed their example and began to do the same, including Heather Champ, who now manages Flickr's community in an official capacity. Matt did a similar thing with MetaFilter too...he spent a lot of time interacting with people on there, taking their coats, and before long others were pitching in.
Joel Johnson used to work for Gawker, recently quit, and started a smart blog about guy stuff called Dethroner. Matt Haughey noticed the quality and low level of desperation in the tone of the site (I find many of the blogs that are attempting to make money are clingy and nearly pathological in their need for attention) and interviewed Joel about the site. "So I'm just saying, I wish more people would just be happy making a modest living on the web, because I think that it's pretty neat that it can be done."
Matt used MacSaber and his new MacBook to recreate the Star Wars kid video. In related news, the Portland, Oregon area reported a huge nerdquake this afternoon.
Online TurboTax as a text adventure game. "I should write up a complete walkthrough to solve Tax Return 2006 in as few moves as possible."
Matt's first impressions of and experiences with the Web sound a lot like mine (visiting those first few sites with Mosaic was a transformative experience for me, like falling in love), except I did quit grad school.
Matt writes about finding good food in an unfamiliar city. We've been struggling with this on our trip to Asia. Offline approaches (books, recommendations by locals, etc.) seem to work well, as does taking a peek on eGullet or Chowhound.
You can now post from Microsoft Word to your Blogger blog. More interesting to me is how former Pyra folks remember this old idea. Matt says it was "something we talked about building back when the blogger api was brand new" and that Anil Dash, then a Blogger enthusiast, knocked up a working prototype (which I also remember). Ev says it's "a product that I first thought about five years ago". Both accounts are no doubt accurate, but how they're remembered is interesting.
Matt's moblogging the birth of his daughter. We'll soon see the heir to the MetaFilter empire.
"Get over yourself and drop the 'MSM' bullshit, please". "If you use the term 'MSM' in a unironic way to denote the 'Mainstream Media' I will write you off as a quack, unsubscribe from your RSS, and stop reading your blog."
