Most Popular - Anil Dash

Tech and the Fake Market tactic

In one generation, the Internet went from opening up new free markets to creating a series of Fake Markets that exploit society, without most media or politicians even noticing. 1. The open internet markets American culture loves to use the

It's time to discover Prince

With the return of Prince’s classic 80s and 90s catalog to the most popular streaming services, now’s a great time to (re?)discover the breadth of Prince’s incredible body of work. The full scale of Prince’s

On Being and Tech's Moral Reckoning

Back in November, I got to sit down with the amazing Krista Tippett for a lengthy interview in front of an incredibly warm crowd in Easton, MD. Now, that interview has been edited down and is available as the latest

Forget "Why?", it's time to get to work.

There are going to be endless think-pieces and armchair analyses about why America elected Donald Trump as its next President. But you already know why. Don’t waste a single moment listening to the hand-wringing of the pundit class about

Beyond Doing Half the Parenting

Doing my fair share for my son means I have to start carrying my weight in other areas at home. (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s)

Nobody Famous

What it’s like to have the social network of a celebrity, without actually being famous I’ve got more Twitter followers than you. I’ve got more Twitter followers than Ted Cruz, and I’m only a little bit

Peak Dad Twitter

Hot on the heels of Vanity Fair referencing my dad-ness on Twitter comes this Daily Dot piece examining Dad Twitter. I loved this part: If that sounds too cheesy, it’s on purpose. Displaying sincerity can feel like a radical

15 Lessons from 15 Years of Blogging

This summer marked 15 years since I first started blogging here, and I’m happier than ever that I’ve chosen to live so much of my life in this place, with all of you. Nearly everything has changed for

I Know Times Are Changing

0:00 — 0:10 In the summer of 1983, Wendy Melvoin was just 19 years old. She’d flown halfway across the country from Los Angeles for her first professional gig as a guitar player, joining her girlfriend Lisa Coleman

One Simple Trick Worked to Improve Headlines, and You Won't Believe What Happened Next

Upworthy is barely over two years old, and it’s among the top 50 most visited sites in the United States. But its perception among the self-involved media discussion class is entirely defined by its headlines. Those headlines typically reference

What I Learned From Twitter's Leaders

[This piece was originally written for CNN on the occasion of Twitter’s IPO.] The Internet is buzzing with news of Twitter’s initial public offering on Thursday, inspiring enough enthusiasm from investors to push the company to a $23

Bringing Water to A Town Like Ours

I’ve had the good fortune to get to speak in public hundreds of times, about any manner of subjects. But I’ve never, never had the moments following one of my talks bring me to tears. Until yesterday. I

A Brief History of Apple's iWatch

A brief timeline of Apple iWatch’s entrance to the market. September 10, 2013: As key members of the tech industry and trade press gather on a clear Tuesday morning, Tim Cook leads much of Apple’s senior management in

Shushers: Wrong about movies. Wrong about the world.

There’s been a delightful debate the last few days about how to accommodate the increasing number of people who want the experience of watching movies in public theaters to fit in with the way they live the rest of

10 Rules of Internet

In my years working in technology, I have learned a few things. These lessons have become oft-repeated refrains when speaking to people, so I thought I’d collect them so I have a link to send folks when needed. Given

How We Lost the Web

When I wrote about the web we lost a few months ago, I thought the idea that we’d strayed from some of the philosophical and cultural underpinnings of the social web’s early days would be of note to

Ten Tips Guaranteed to Improve Your Startup Success

Having had the good fortune to work with a broad range of entrepreneurs and get a front-row seat to the foundations of their success, I thought it’d be good to share 10 key tips that I’ve found work

What It's Like Being Verified on Twitter

Update: After this post was published, I had a chance to talk about Twitter verification at a live show of the Untitled Kondabolu Brothers Project, with Hari and Ashok Kondabolu. It turned out pretty well. Twitter verification is an interesting

All Dashboards Should be Feeds

Last week, we announced the new beta release of ThinkUp (if you’re a geek or developer, try it out!) and one of the reasons I was most excited to talk about the new release is because it has a

The Web We Lost

Update: A few months after this piece was published, I was invited by Harvard’s Berkman Center to speak about this topic in more detail. Though the final talk is an hour long, it offers much more insight into the

How To Fix Popchips' Racist Ad Campaign

Update: I just got off the phone with Popchips founder Keith Belling, who was sincere and contrite as he offered a thoughtful, apologetic response that indicates he understood much of what I was trying to say here. I’m cautiously

Why you can't trust tech press to teach you about the tech industry

If there were one lesson I’d want to impress upon people who are interested in succeeding in the technology industry, it would be, as I’ve said before, know your shit. Know the discipline you’re in, know the

Readability, Instapaper, the Network and the Price we Pay

This is a long-ass post. In summary: Readability and Instapaper are two awesome reading tools that actually aren’t in competition since Readability is mostly a network and Instapaper is mostly an app. But, foolish fanboy enthusiasm on both sides

Facebook is gaslighting the web. We can fix it.

Facebook has moved from merely being a walled garden into openly attacking its users’ ability and willingness to navigate the rest of the web. The evidence that this is true even for sites which embrace Facebook technologies is overwhelming, and

How the 99% and the Tea Party can Occupy WhiteHouse.gov

The conventional wisdom is that the American people are too cynical, too jaded, and too burnt out on politics to ever engage with the actual governance of our country by getting involved in discussions of policy. I don’t believe