I'm sorry, for a second there, I got myself confused with an overly enthusiastic Apple executive.

You don't need tech-industry bombast to state the obvious: ReadWrite looks different than it did yesterday—and we hope you'll think it looks better. We call it ReadWrite 3.0.

Lest you think upgrading the site was a simple, push-button affair, imagine this scene: A war room of designers, engineers and editors gathered in a third-floor conference room at Say Media headquarters in San Francisco. The power goes out.

We regrouped at our homes and kept hacking away at the last remaining bugs. And right after we went live, a tech-ops engineer who stayed behind at HQ announced that the power had leapt back on. No one—not even Pacific Gas & Electric—could stop this launch.

Responding To The Responsive Trend

At a time when a lot of websites were still stuck in the desktop past, ReadWrite took a big leap last fall and embraced one of the transformative changes we'd been writing about—responsive design. Rather than design separate desktop and mobile versions or develop a flotilla of native apps, we created one version of our website that adapts to its environment—large-screen monitors, tablets, and smartphones of all ilks.

(See Also: How An Influential Tech's Site Design Evolved Alongside The Web)

If you're on a desktop, try resizing the browser window. Shrink it a little, and you can see what our tablet version looks like. Shrink it more, and it's as if you're on a phone. 

It would have been easy at that point to rest on our laurels. But we and our colleagues at Say Media, our parent company, whose technology and design teams worked tirelessly on this launch, wanted to keep pushing our design forward and drop the remnants of the '90s-era Web that clung to our site.

What's New In ReadWrite 3.0

Speed. Your time is valuable, and we'd rather you spend it reading and writing, not waiting for page elements to load. We actually think this is the most important feature. (Your mileage may vary, and if you feel like we're not delivering here, let us know.)

Reading cues. On the homepage and on article pages, we prompt you on what to read next. The ReadWrite site is actually smart enough to track what you've read, graying out links and offering a count of unread stories.

Better sharing. We've streamlined ReadWrite's social tools. They now move with you as you read, so you don't have to scroll up to the start just to share a story.

Enhanced visuals. The homepage now features bigger images and a look that's generous to both gorgeous photos and earnest screenshots. But  it's the article pages—where we know you spend most of your time—that really sing. As editors, we now have a variety of layouts available that let us shape the design to the story—short news briefs, long features and everything in between—rather than forcing stories into a single, constrained template.

This Is Just The Beginning

If you're into technology like we are, we know you think change is good. We have aggressive plans to keep adopting the latest tools. The neat thing I see happening, though, is that all these improvements are letting the powerful technologies behind the site fade into the background, bringing the stories and storytellers to the forefront.

What most excites me—sorry, there's that word—is the potential to bring readers more deeply into that storytelling process. That's coming, too. In the meantime, your participation in every imaginable form—comments, emails, tweets and links—is invaluable in shaping our reporting and analysis. Keep it coming. And keep us honest.

Ten years ago, many of ReadWrite's first readers first viewed the site on a CRT display attached to a desktop with a wired Ethernet connection, or via a clunky laptop perched across their knees near an early Wi-Fi router. The Web, then roughly a decade old, was still largely static and flat, excepting the occasional Java applet or Flash animation.

Unsurprisingly, ReadWrite's original design was itself also sort of static and flat, just like the rest of the then-nascent blogosphere. But the same way today's technology now allows our readers to pull up our posts and videos on hi-res tablets or smartphones with 4G wireless data connections, so has ReadWrite's design also evolved in line with changing Web aesthetics and the needs of our diverse audience of developers and technophiles.

What follows is a recap of how ReadWrite's design has evolved along with the Web through the years, via screenshots courtesy of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. (You can also check out a more personal tour ReadWrite founder Richard MacManus authored last year for our ninth anniversary.) Click on any of the images for a larger version.

Of course, ReadWrite's not done evolving. Check back regularly to catch the latest chapter in ReadWrite's visual design.

Year One: 2003, Part 1

Richard started his blog using a borrowed template from Dave Winer's Radio Userland, an early blogging service. Here's what a page from August 2003 looked like:

Year One: 2003, Part 2 

Richard soon followed up with a template of his own design—one that opted for a, shall we say, particular shade of institutional green. That design debuted in September 2003 and looked like this:

Year Two: 2004

By the following year, ReadWrite had added a right-hand column and a header bar that was, if anything, even greener than the previous design. Richard got top billing as producer, arranger, composer and designer of the site—fittingly, as it was still a one-man show at that point: 

Year Three: 2005

This design featured the first graphic element in the site's header—a thumbnail image of a work by conceptual artist John Baldessari, from his exhibition READ/WRITE/THINK/DREAM. Which, oddly enough, was not the inspiration behind ReadWrite's name (a story Richard tells here). The artwork suggests a rather literal interpretation of the "Write" portion—it basically consists of giant pencils.

Year Four: 2006

This design added the yin-yang symbol that would grace the site's header for the next five or so years, eliminated the left-hand column and introduced the red-and-white theme that has been a ReadWrite hallmark ever since.

Year Five: 2007

A further iteration of the previous template doubled down on the red theme and gave prominent placement to the site's sponsors in the right-hand column.

Year Six: 2008

A redesigned logo eliminated the slash between "Read" and "Write," while the design shrank down the text to a narrower left-hand column to make room for a central "Popular Posts" section.

Years Seven & Eight: 2009-2010

Mostly cosmetic changes included the introduction of share buttons in the header and a "Featured Posts" section following the first item on the page:

Year Nine: 2011

Additional minor tweaks expanded the "top story" across what had been a middle column and revised and enlarged the "featured posts" images and headlines.

Year Ten: 2012

Following the site's acquisition by Say Media, a full redesign introduced a much more visually oriented and editorially curated front page of top posts, followed by a reverse chronological listing of recent posts.

Year Eleven: 2013

Stay tuned — our next redesign is on its way.

As ReadWrite founder Richard MacManus noted in observing the site's 10th anniversary, our original goal was "to convert the Web into a two-way system."

Back in 2003, only those with the technical skills to build websites could publish their thoughts. Those walls have broken down. For good or ill, the Web is now clearly a two-way system, and ReadWrite continues to explore what it means to live in a world where every object is something we can all read and write.

But it's been a long journey to get there. For our 10th anniversary, we've highlighted the 10 most important stories in the publication's history. Not just posts that generated lots of traffic or whipped up controversy, but the stories that set an agenda and mapped out what was coming next.

These were the stories that helped readers understand the monumental shifts in how we work, how we play, and how we communicate. From the evolution of Twitter as a platform for serious discourse to the steady rise of the Android operating system to rival Apple's iPhone and iPad, these stories highlight ReadWrite's history of invaluable analysis amid uncertain time.  

1. 10 Future Web Trends

By Richard MacManus / September 2007

From Web services to personalization to the rise of Internet TV, our founder called some big shifts early on.

2. The Rise of Twitter as a Platform for Serious Discourse

By Josh Catone / January 2008

Twitter was not barely a year and a half old when writer Josh Catone commented on its potential to go beyond 140 characters. 

3. ReadWriteWeb Interview With Tim Berners-Lee, Part 1: Linked Data

By Richard MacManus / July 2009

Called a "career highlight" by the man who started ReadWrite 10 years ago, Richard MacManus's interview with Internet pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee explored the deeper meaning of the Web.

4. 13 Tools For Building Your Own iPhone App

By Sarah Perez / November 2009

Just as we covered the democratization of Web publishing, we were early in showing how the app economy was an opportunity for anyone.

5. Facebook Wants To Be Your One True Login

By Mike Melanson / February 2010

This story drew a lot of attention because confused search visitors thought this page would help them log in to the social network. What they found instead was a smart and prophetic take on how Facebook would become a universal login service for all kinds of websites and apps.

6. How Old Spice Won The Internet

By Marshall Kirkpatrick / July 2010

Marketing, too, became two-way, as a major consumer product adopted the Internet's real-time ethic. 

7. iPhone to Android: One Month with the Nexus S

By Sarah Perez / January 2011

For ReadWrite, testing gadgets isn't about checking speeds and feeds. It's about living with them.

8. Google to Launch Major New Social Network Called Circles, Possibly Today

By Marshall Kirkpatrick / March 2011

In a major scoop, ReadWrite learned about a key feature of Google's Facebook killer months before its launch.

9. Top 10 YouTube Videos Of All Time

By Richard MacManus / September 2012

To write about a user-generated site, you have to understand the content its community embraces. 

10. Why Are Dead People Liking Stuff On Facebook?

By Bernard Meisler / December 2012

This investigation into possibly bogus "likes" on Facebook raised big questions about the social network's value to marketers.

Image courtesy of Richard MacManus. From the ReadWrite Summit in May of 2010 (from left to right), Frederic Lardinois, Chris Cameron, Richard ManManus, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Sean Ammirati. 

It's hard to believe that ReadWrite went live an entire decade ago. Since founder Richard MacManus first hit the "Publish" button, an impressive roster of writers have contributed to the site in a wide variety of ways. Some have continued successful careers as technology journalists, while others have shifted their work and lives into entirely new directions. 

To mark our 10th anniversary, we reached out to a handful of past writers and ask them about their experience with ReadWrite. What follows is a sampling of the thoughts, recollections and current situations of some of our most noteworthy alumni who responded. We encourage everyone who's been involved with ReadWrite to chime in on the comments and let us know what they're up to.

Richard MacManus (founder) 

Years active: 2003 - 2012
What he's up to now: Writing a book about consumer health technology. 

(See also: RW10: A Decade of Spotting The Future Taking Form.)

What's your most memorable ReadWrite moment? 

There are too many memories to mention—perhaps I'll write a book about it someday! But I'd have to say my favorite moment was meeting Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, in Boston in mid-2009. I interviewed him about a variety of topics, from the Semantic Web to the then nascent Internet of Things.

As I wrote in that post, Berners-Lee's pioneering work and philosophy was a direct inspiration for me when I launched the site as ReadWriteWeb back in 2003. Immediately after shaking hands, I told him that ReadWriteWeb's name was in part inspired by the first browser, which he developed, called "WorldWideWeb." That was a read/write browser, meaning you could not only browse and read content, but create and edit content too. So it was a special moment meeting him in person.

How has ReadWrite changed you?  

ReadWrite has changed me in so many ways. It's fitting, though, that the key lesson I took from ReadWrite is the one that made me start the blog in the first place: to write about things I'm passionate about. Ten years ago, my avenue for writing was a blog called Read/Write Web. Now, it's a book project. But either way, I'm doing what I love: writing.

As ReadWrite starts its next decade, what do you hope to see? 

The DNA of ReadWrite is passion for technology and forward-thinking analysis of it. So I was thrilled to see that the new editor-in-chief, Owen Thomas, had embraced those principles. Also, the Web of 2013 is no longer just about what’s happening on your computer’s Web browser, as it was in 2003. As Owen noted in his debut post, the Internet is everywhere today—in our pockets, on our bodies, in the physical world. So I’m thrilled that the blog I founded will chronicle this new era of the Read/Write Web. Hopefully for at least another 10 years! Because I’m certain the next decade will bring many more exciting innovations and Web developments.

Marshall Kirkpatrick

Years active: 2007- 2012
What he's up to now: CEO and founder of Little Bird, a tool that uses social data and other online signals to identify influencers. 

How did you end up writing for ReadWrite? 

After I was at TechCrunch, I joined a small startup in Portland, writing on their company blog and producing content using their technology.  I was also doing some consulting on the side and some of that took the form of "blogger placement" with other companies seeking people to write on their blogs.  (Mint.com was my biggest success story in that.)  I was getting enough interest in both directions (though admittedly more from people wanting a job) that I put up a post on my own blog saying "OK, everybody, form two lines!  Who wants to hire a blogger? Who wants a job blogging for a company? I will connect you!"  And Richard MacManus reached out to me, asking "how much would it cost to hire someone of ... your caliber?" And I said "oh let's not beat around the bush—here's what it would cost to hire me myself!"  I knew even back then, when ReadWriteWeb had a staff of three, that it was one of only a small number of publications I'd be proud to write for (PaidContent, GigaOm, VentureBeat being among the others). Because Richard is a man who identifies deeply with intellectual exploration—and that's awesome.

Richard said, "I'm looking for someone who can hit the front page of Digg on a regular basis."  That used to be the standard by which blogging success was judged!  And so that's just what I did, even as I was sometimes critical of the culture at Digg.  This was one of the stories I was most proud of.  And what other tech blog wrote explicitly and critically of Kevin Rose's ignominious introduction of Digg to the world?  But we got on the front page of Digg a lot and we just kept growing beyond the time when that mattered.  After some time working as a contracted blogger, Richard brought me on full time.  I announced that on my blog in the same post I announced that I was getting married to my wonderful wife and now Little Bird cofounder Mikalina.  Our news hit Techmeme and that's something we'll always be a little proud of. 

What's your most memorable post or moment from your ReadWrite days? 

There are far too many to recount.  Every day was an adventure.  

One of my favorite stories was when I was talking with Mike Melanson about a story we were hours late covering after it hit Techmeme and he said, "I don't know why, we've covered that company several times in the past."  I thought that was a great structured criterion for elevating a source's importance, and so we went over to a startup called FluidInfo that said it had a cloud database of all the outbound links in the history of ReadWriteWeb.  I asked if they could populate a field that counted the number of times a particular domain had been linked to over the years. They said yes, so I asked staff hacker Tyler Gillies if he could hit their API and pull down that list.  We got 2,000 domains that ReadWriteWeb had linked to more than two times in the past, we eyeball-edited out 500 competing news sites and personal blogs, and were left with 1,500 companies.  There wasn't a standard place to find their RSS feeds, everybody's blogs were in different places on their site, so we tossed the list up onto Amazon's Mechanical Turk and for $50 overnight got a set of 1.500 RSS feeds from companies we'd written about two or more times.  

Then Tyler wrote a bot that would ping those feeds every five minutes to see if they'd posted anything new, and if they had the bot would send the link into a group Skype chat we called the Bot Room, filled with bots like that and more.  All of our competitors had been getting real time push notifications from 20 or 30 company blogs (since I wrote about the ability to do that when I left TechCrunch). But we found a rational way to identify 1,500 companies worth tracking in real time.  So we ate everybody's lunch for months with real-time notifications of all these high-quality sources.  It was awesome.  We broke a lot of news like that. A lot of people thought that automated data-driven methods of breaking news were somehow less legitimate than other forms of journalism but I think they are wrong.  It was a lot of fun, too. 

What's one lesson or idea that's stuck with you since you left ReadWrite?

I learned that saying "Just go out there and be awesome" is not an effective way to manage people.  It leaves them feeling frustrated, angry and like they don't want to be your friend anymore.  I'm really thankful for learning that and wish I had earlier.  My wife Mikalina was instrumental in helping me learn that, based on our experiences together with ReadWriteWeb staff.

As ReadWrite starts its next decade, what do you hope to see more (or less) of? 

I hope it's epic, risky and filled with thoughtful integrity.  I hope it sticks up for social justice and existential meaning.  And I hope it monetizes well, so everyone engaged in epic, risky and filled with thoughtful integrity can get the double win of being well compensated for it. 

Jolie O'Dell 

Years active: 2009 - 2010
What she's up to now: Writing for VentureBeat, freelancing elsewhere and publishing poetry books at Juniper Press

How did you wind up writing for ReadWrite? 

I had been freelancing for a few tech sites and other blogs—I worked with Allen Stern (God rest his soul) at Center Networks and Steve Hall at Adrants. I was building up my portfolio of professional blogging after being a print journalist for several years. I was introduced to Richard by a mutual friend, and after exchanging some emails, he decided to take a chance on me. I started out at a rate of $25 per story and worked my way up to a full-time position, thanks to lots of coaching from Richard and [co-editor] Marshall [Kirkpatrick]!

What's the most memorable moment from your ReadWrite days? 

Definitely the time the staff met up in Palo Alto and went to Facebook in 2009. There were five or six of us—all alums now—and we had an amazing time riding [public transit] and eating at a cafe outside. But I will never forget how during our Facebook visit, the ever-feisty Marshall Kirkpatrick got "called in to the principal's office" to talk alone with Mark Zuckerberg. He seemed rather abashed when he came out; I can only imagine he was getting chewed out majorly for being one of the first and best writers to really discuss Facebook's privacy issues, especially when it came to children and commercial entities using the service.

What's one lesson from those days that has stuck with you? 

You can't always be first, but you can always try to be best. And sometimes, you can be first and best.

Always think deliberately about what you write, and give every story an extra paragraph or two of analysis, context or background.

ReadWriteWeb changed my career forever. I wouldn't be where I am today—making an obscene amount of money, sitting at the top of a skyscraper in San Francisco, happily married to a technology company founder—if it weren't for Richard MacManus and his willingness to take a chance on me.

As ReadWrite starts its next decade, what do you hope to see? 

I really hope that the ReadWrite spirit of beating the competition by writing better continues. The Internet is so saturated with "breaking" news and briefs and copy/paste fake journalism. ReadWrite has a reputation for being above that, for providing insight, depth and a unique point of view.

I dearly love Owen Thomas. He's a personal friend; he's also surprisingly intelligent. When we end up chatting about tech, he invariably brings up angles I would never have considered otherwise. In that regard, he reminds me a bit of Marshall. I'm so very excited to see what he does with the old place.

Jon Mitchell 

Years active: 2011 - 2013
What he's up to now: Launching an online publication called The Daily Portal.

How did you come to write for ReadWrite? 

In 2011, I was working for a news tech startup experiment that seemed to be winding down, so I was moonlighting as managing editor for a local news site in Portland. Through working on that, I ended up attending events for Portland journalists hosted by Abraham Hyatt, long-time managing editor for ReadWrite. When Abraham posted a new writer job, I saw it very early, and I had the ability to say, "Hi, Abraham. I'm Jon. I helped you clean up after your PDX journo conference a couple months ago." So that got me the interview, and being a bearded dude in Portland sealed the deal.

What was your most memorable ReadWrite moment? 

At SXSW 2012, I caught wind early on of Homeless Hotspots, the ill-advised marketing experiment that became the only story to matter from the whole conference. I bashed out a reaction late at night and the momentum of that post carried me through to the morning. I went out and interviewed one of the homeless workers wearing a Wi-Fi hotspot around his neck, and posted a big second-day update to the post. 

I got the link in Tim Carmody's Wired post because I took a stand, and that pretty much made the week. I did a BBC World News radio interview, I got all kinds of links, it was a great moment. I was happy to be making an impact on a story that wasn't about computers and telephones. 

What's one lesson from those days that has stuck with you? 

"Blogging is a footrace and a beauty contest at the same time," Marshall Kirkpatrick once said in the chat room. That sums up what I learned at ReadWrite. I learned to be plugged into the beating heart of the present, get the story, but never forget to tie it into the past and what it means for the future. A journalist's number one job is to put the facts into context, and ReadWrite was known for that.

What would you like to see more of from ReadWrite in the next decade? 

I want to see more features about the meaning of technology and the people behind it. The ReadWrite team is a bunch of philosophers. I want to see the site use that curiosity to push the medium forward.

Josh Catone

Years active: 2007 - 2008
What he's up to now: Executive Director, Editorial Projects at Mashable.

How did you end up writing for ReadWrite? 

Whenever anyone asks me how I got my start in blogging, I like to say I conned my way into it. While that's not exactly true, it's not far off. Somehow, I was able to go from toiling away at a mid-sized political website, for which only about a third of my writing actually carried a byline, to being lead writer for one of the sites that shaped the early blogosphere. And it all started with a comment.

In January 2007, I left a comment on a ReadWrite post that included an analogy Richard MacManus apparently liked so much that he turned it into a follow-up post a few days later. A month later, I reached out to Richard and offered to write some guest posts.  All three of them hit the front page of Digg (back when that meant something), and in April 2007, Richard offered to let me run the entire site for a week while he was on vacation. When he got back, I hadn't gotten him sued ... so he gave me a job. 

What was your most memorable post? 

My favorite post is one entitled, "There Is No Web 3.0, There Is No Web 2.0—There Is Just The Web." Anyone around the Web in 2008 will remember that defining what made a site "Web 2.0" was a popular pastime. I decided that while the discussions and debates about those definitions were helpful in figuring out where the Web was going, the actual attempt at assigning version numbers was not. This was my well-received rant. 

Perhaps the most fun I had at ReadWrite was when I convinced Richard we should devote an entire week on the site to Facebook in the summer of 2007. I'm not actually sure if Richard was even on Facebook at the time. We spent an entire week writing posts about Facebook—resources, analysis, lists and news. We would later run other themed series as part of a program we called "ReadWriteWeb Files," but Facebook stands out because it was first, and because we were one of the first major tech blogs to really devote significant virtual column inches to exploring the company.

What's one lesson you've carried with you since leaving ReadWrite?

The most important lesson ReadWrite taught me was that it's okay to take your time. It's no surprise that when I was hired at Mashable, I started as Features Editor. That's the ReadWrite influence at work. ReadWrite was built around the idea that thoughtful, deliberate and careful analysis has a ton of value. 

What do you want to see more of on ReadWrite? 

Get back to those roots as the best place for the smartest analysis of Web tech news and trends. News is a commodity; it's an appetizer. ReadWrite should be serving the main course.

Mike Melanson

Years active: 2009 - 2011

How did you wind up writing for ReadWrite? 

I hopped in a van to the Northwest with a guy at a festival and ended up in Marshall's back yard in a tent for several weeks. Marshall and I walked around talking about technology a bunch and then I returned to my life in Austin to finish journalism grad school. When I finally graduated the next winter, I posted something on Facebook to the effect of "I hope this $3 I just spent on the Writers Market was the best $3 ever," and Mikalina [Kirkpatrick] commented saying that Marshall just happened to be looking for a writer. And there it was.

What was your most memorable post for ReadWrite?

My most memorable post is quite obvious: Facebook Wants to be Your One True Login. And its corresponding post: How Google Failed Its Users and Gave Birth to an Internet Meme which sorta tells the story. That morning, when the traffic spike hit (we're talking several hundred thousand pageviews over a couple days, if I remember correctly, with the post continuing to pull traffic for months) we were all in a Skype chat room trying to figure out what had happened. I think one of us had written about 4chan that day or the day before, so we thought perhaps /b [a message board devoted to mischief] was DDOSing us, attempting to bring the site down with an excess of traffic. Frederic [Lardinois] poked around in the stats and finally showed what was really going on—everyone was looking for Facebook. That's when Marshall added the "Dear Facebook Users" message to the top of the post. And here I thought I was just writing an analysis of Facebook. 

How did ReadWrite change you? 

ReadWrite likely changed me in an unexpected way for a tech writer—it drove me back to my roots. When I left ReadWrite in 2011, I moved back to Austin and stopped looking at the Internet almost entirely for a couple months. My main focus on the Internet since those days is managing its ever-present draw. I've turned off the data plan on my phone, I've installed browser plugins to keep me from staring at Facebook and Reddit all day, I've turned off Twitter notifications, all sorts of things. ReadWrite taught me that while technology has its place, it also has a dark, ego-driven, addictive side that lots of the tech world has yet to really acknowledge.

What would you like to see more of on ReadWrite? 

I'd like to see what I always liked to see—more well-sourced analysis and [real] journalism. Less of that other crap people try to pass off as journalism. 

Audrey Watters

Years active: 2010 - 2011
What she's up to now: Freelance writing and running Hack Education, a site about education technology. 

What's one lesson you've kept with you since leaving ReadWrite? 

My most important takeaway from the time I spent at ReadWrite is that being "first" isn't the goal. Rather you should strive to be "best." 

Being "best" doesn't come from rewriting a press release or a company blog post (even if your rewrite hits Techmeme). Being "best" doesn't mean creating a link-baity headline that garners the most clicks or retweets. Being "best" means adding value for your readers—that is, you want to help contextualize the news. You should talk to domain experts. You should add analysis. 

You want to be the tech writer that people want to read on a topic ... because they know that what you'll say will be interesting and smart. "Interesting and smart" were always how I'd describe ReadWrite before I joined the team. It's the lesson that I've carried with me after I left.

Where Are They Now? 

These are only a few of the many great writers who have built ReadWrite over the years. We couldn't possibly include everybody at length, but we would be remiss not to mention Sarah Perez, who  wrote some excellent and widely-read stories during her tenure at ReadWrite. Today, she continues writing about mobile platforms and social media for TechCrunch, a site that also publishes work from ReadWrite alums Frederic Lardinois, Alex Williams and Klint Finley (who also writes for Wired). 

There are many, many more who we couldn't reach or didn't have room to feature. We're hoping to hear from them in the comments.

When Richard MacManus started this site—then known as Read/Write Web—in 2003, he launched it in a time of technological ferment. Things we now take for granted, like ubiquitous social networks, cloud-based software and electric cars, were just getting started. Here's a look at some of the key innovations that grew up alongside ReadWrite (in alphabetical order):

1. Adobe Creative Suite

Now the de facto productivity suite for Web and graphic designers, Adobe put together the pieces for its collection of software a decade ago.

"Adobe Creative Suite integrates outstanding new product releases and unleashes Version Cue technology that will save creative professionals time and revolutionize interaction within creative teams," said Bruce Chizen, then-president and CEO of Adobe Systems. "With Adobe Creative Suite we are delivering a platform for the future of design and publishing, building on 20 years of innovation and partnership with the creative community worldwide."

They must have been doing something right, because CS, now in version 6, is a key tool in not just Web and graphics design, but video production, too. Depending on what you want to do, there's usually an Adobe tool or two in this suite that you will be using. And it's taking the next big step, moving online as the Creative Cloud.

2. AdSense

It would be folly to underestimate the impact of Applied Semantics' AdSense. Google clearly saw the importance of the content-targeting ad network, since it bought the company in 2003 and rolled it into its own in-house technology, creating the service we know as Google AdSense today.

AdSense fueled the blogging revolution of the early 2000s. With AdSense matching appropriate ads with a blogger's content, even small-time bloggers could generate revenue from their content. Few people got rich doing this, but a few bloggers were able to make a living doing what they loved, while others could at least justify the time they spent on their labors of love.

3. Clearwire

Depending on who you ask, wireless networking provider Clearwire got started in either 1998 or 2003, after a restructuring set up the company in its present form.

We'll go with 2003, since that's the year when Clearwire first made a concerted effort to push high-speed wireless connectivity, a mission that has helped redefine mobile computing. The company launched its first high-speed network in 2004, and now claims to serve 130 million customers.

Today, Clearwire is the object of a complicated, three-way takeover battle with Sprint and Dish. Formerly a wholesale customers of Clearwire's 4G WiMax network, Sprint offered to buy out Clearwire for $2.2 billion, which would give Sprint a big boost in expanding its 4G LTE network. Combined, the Sprint-Clearwire network would have a better chance of standing up to AT&T and Verizon. But Dish first tried to buy Clearwire—and now it's trying to buy Sprint outright, contesting a takeover offer from Japan's Softbank.

4. iTunes Music Store

In 2003, the iPod had taken over the music-player business and put Apple on the comeback trail.

But when Steve Jobs introduced the new iTunes Music Store alongside the third-generation iPod, people could be forgiven for thinking it a little far fetched. A hardware company selling music?

With 200,000 songs in its debut library, iTunes would very quickly prove its detractors wrong, selling a million songs in its first week of sales, and 25 million by the end of 2003. That's a lot of tunes, and a lot of coin for a so-called hardware company. Apple was demonstrating what we would all soon learn: content was king in this nascent mobile age.

Perhaps even more important, the Music Store provided the underpinnings for Apple's App Store, which became key to the iPhone's success.

5. LinkedIn

It's hard to imagine a world without LinkedIn, but before 2003, the business-oriented social media platform was little more than an idea in heads of the company's founders.

The site itself launched in 2003, and quickly became a tool for professionals to share information about themselves. At first, the founders thought it might be about dealmaking, but it quickly proved to be an invaluable recruiting tool.

Today, LinkedIn is a public company that pulls in close to $1 billion in annual revenue. Its members use the site for everything from finding customers to getting training to keeping up on business news.

And sometimes, yes, finding a new job.

6. MySpace

Before Facebook, there was MySpace, the once-cool social media platform that launched in late 2003 and dominated the hearts and minds of the Internet—at least for a couple of years.

The MySpace era was a heady time, when the idea of a social network platform hadn't quite gelled; but people knew there was money to made helping people get together online, and that was enough. MySpace would grow fast, eclipsing competitors until it was itself eclipsed in 2008 by Facebook's rise. Along the way, it was acquired by News Corporation, a purchase that may not have saved MySpace from its eventual fate, but did at least solidify the idea that social networking, in some form or another, was here to stay.

Bogged down by an overabundance of ads and problems with user privacy, MySpace shed most of its users. The site lives on today, owned by entertainer Justin Timberlake, and is trying to reestablish itself as a niche social network for artists and musicians.

7. Tesla Motors

If you ever went to Disney's EPCOT as a kid, you may have had a notion that electric cars of the future would be boxy and slow.

In 2003, Tesla Motors' founders upended that idea, founding a company that would eventually launch first the Roadster sports car and then the Model S sedan, two hot commodities that everyone would have wanted to drive even if they weren't electric.

These aren't cheap vehicles, though, and their high price tag puts them out of reach of typical drivers. But Tesla's cars show us a clear future that electric vehicles don't have to sacrifice style or speed to save on gas.

You may never own a Tesla, but the company's pioneering work may mean that one day you will own an electric car that delights you.

8. TypePad

TypePad was one of two big blogging platforms that got its start in 2003. (It’s one that’s near and dear to us here at ReadWrite, since our parent company Say Media owns the platform today.)

TypePad was a way to get the functionality of SixApart's Movable Type without having to install software on a server.

TypePad never enjoyed the broad consumer adoption of competitors like WordPress or Google's Blogger, but it's still popular among independent bloggers.

9. Weblogs Inc.

You can't talk about blogging in the early 21st century without mentioning the start of blog-publishing networks like Weblogs Inc.

Founded by Jason Calacanis and Brian Alvey, Weblogs grew to include popular blogs like Engadget, TUAW and Joystiq in its stable. America Online acquired Weblogs in October 2005 for a reported price between $25 million and $30 million. Along with some of AOL's own sites, Weblogs provided the nucleus for AOL's media strategy, the focus of the company today.

10. WordPress

WordPress is the only open-source project on this list, but its reach is probably the broadest of all of the launches we've mentioned.

Started as a stand-alone blogging platform, WordPress would eventually grow into a full fledged content-management system, able to manage sites that were more than “mere” blogs. Along the way, its creator, Matt Mullenweg, started a company, Automattic, and launched a Blogger-like site, WordPress.com, that now hosts more than 64 million blogs.

WordPress powers some of this most popular sites on the Web, and has put website management and creation within easy reach of people with all levels of technical backgrounds.

These 10 notable products launched, like ReadWrite, in 2003. Did we miss any of your favorites from that era? Let us know in the comments.

On Saturday, this website turns 10 years old. The changes its writers and editors have witnessed and chronicled have come fast and furious—the creation of Facebook, YouTube and the iPhone; the seemingly inexorable rise of Google and Apple; and the growth, everywhere, of connectivity.

At ReadWrite, we continue to grapple with the deeper implications of technological change. We make annual predictions about the future of technology, many of which have proven prescient and timely. But now, at the verge of ReadWrite's second decade, it makes sense to look even farther forward and imagine what ReadWrite will cover in 2023. Expect to hear a lot about these trends from us in the years to come.

Something To Anticipate

Think of anticipatory systems as really smart artificial intelligence. Computers won't wait for explicit inputs, like search queries; instead, they will draw on internal and external data—your entire history of interactions—to supply context and predict what you'll need. Google Now, the intelligent assistant function on Android, and Apple's Siri provide glimmerings of such functionality today.

A decade from now, anticipatory systems won't just predict your next move; they'll smartly feed data back into the system to improve themselves. There will no longer be a concept of a check-in, for example; some future version of a Foursquare-like app will simply know where you are and for what purpose, and they'll log that and share that appropriately across your social graph, which they will likewise adaptively update as your social connections shift and change.

Kill Your Gadget

We won't own smartphones, tablets, or smart watches. There will be a surfeit of screens at our disposal that roll up into a watchband form or roll out and stiffen to form a screen. Or ring-sized computers will project an image on any available surface. This will have an impact on architecture: White walls will be everywhere, with colors or patterns seen as either an indulgence or a countercultural statement.

Ambient Electricity

Moore's Law, the dictum that processors improve continuously will every generation, will continue to thrum. But instead of using these improvements to process bits faster, we'll harness them to lower power consumption and extend battery life. Meanwhile, innovations like radio-wave battery charging will mean we'll never have to plug things in again.

Park The Car 

Self-driving cars will peak in 2020, when they will start being seen as an inefficient use of resources. Why, for example, do they still have a driver's seat and a steering wheel when no one even remembers how to activate manual driving mode? Post-car vehicles will link themselves into trains on dedicated lanes—or even tracks.

A Nation Of (Unemployed) Programmers 

All those efforts to teach people how to code will succeed past their creators' wild dreams, to the point that it will be hard to find work as a professional coder. Meanwhile, new programming languages will have added so many layers of abstraction that the act of coding will resemble a formal mode of speech—or just a drag-and-drop process that's not much more complicated than downloading an app.

Undersea Data 

We'll be generating and processing unfathomable amounts of data in 10 years. The so-called "cloud" comes to ground in the form of data centers, where all these bits are stored and shuffled. The challenge is finding spots with lots of land and cheap electricity or other means of cooling servers. The answer: the sea.

Google started using ocean water to cool its data centers in 2011. A dozen years later, this will be commonplace—and we'll start putting data centers not just next to the water, but under it.

What Else?

There will be changes born out of current trends that seem obvious. There will also be surprises along the way. One thing, though, I believe will be true of ReadWrite in 2023 as it is now—we will find our way through the change with each other's help, through an interplay and exchange of ideas.

Tell me yours.

Ten years ago, I published the first post on this weblog. Entitled simply "The Read/Write Web," it was a manifesto of sorts. The first era of the Web, from the 1990s to the early 2000s, had been largely read-only. It was stuck in the old broadcast model: professionals published the content, the rest of us merely read it.

But in 2002 and 2003, I could sense that a sea change was near. Tools were being developed that empowered everyone—including me—to publish to the Web.

"The goal now is to convert the Web into a two-way system,” I wrote in that debut post. “Ordinary people should be able to write to the Web, just as easily as they can browse and read it.”

ReadWrite’s Predictive Powers

Well, that goal was well and truly achieved! While nobody could have predicted in 2003 the scale of innovation that would occur, I’m proud that over the years ReadWrite did predict many technologies that people take for granted today.

For example, I remember writing a lot about the Web Office over the first five years of this blog. In our end-of-year predictions post in 2006, I wrote: “The consumerization of the enterprise trend will start to infiltrate corporate IT, in the form of Web-based office apps and more collaborative systems.” Scan your typical office in 2013 and you will see Google Docs, corporate versions of Twitter, Evernote Business, and many more applications that came from the consumer world.

Also look at the rise of Amazon Web Services, a cloud-computing platform from the online retailer that was well ahead of its time and which we wrote about extensively (mostly thanks to Alex Iskold, one of our earliest feature writers).

Our 2006 predictions post stated:

“We also think there will be moves toward an Amazon-like web services stack from other players, particularly Google. For example Google may want to catch up with Amazon’s S3 – EC2 services. And where Google goes, you can expect Microsoft to go too.”

Since 2006, not only have Google and Microsoft created cloud-computing platforms, but so have Apple, Oracle, HP, Rackspace and many other companies.

I’m also proud that ReadWrite wrote about some trends long before they became popular. For example, The Internet of Things—when real-world objects get connected to the Internet. ReadWrite was the only tech blog exploring that trend back in 2009, when only a few brave developers and startups were building consumer products. Fast forward to 2013 and the market for Internet-connected cars, thermostats, security systems, watches and other real-world objects is thriving.

A Decade of Astounding Innovation

In April 2003, I was an unknown 31-year old website manager from New Zealand, about as far away from Silicon Valley as you can get. I may not have been in the right place, but I was certainly at the right time. Over the next ten years, I got to explore and help chronicle the emergence of first the Social Web (2003-2005), then the Mobile Web (2007-2008)—arguably the two biggest waves of technology innovation over the past decade.

ReadWrite has witnessed—and written about—the creation of many revolutionary technologies:

• MySpace, the first mass-market social network, launched in August 2003.
• Flickr, which became the leading photo-sharing website of the era, launched in February 2004.
• Facebook launched to Harvard students in February 2004 and eventually opened to the wider public in September 2006.
• YouTube, the video-sharing phenomenon, opened as a beta site in May 2005.
• Twitter was created in 2006 and had its first tipping point in March 2007 at SXSW.
• The iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs in January 2007.
• Google announced its open-source mobile operating system, Android, in November 2007.
• Apple launched the App Store in July 2008.
• The first Android phone, the HTC Dream, was released in October 2008.
• The iPad was released in April 2010.
• Google+ launched in June 2011.

Here’s To The Next Decade!

When I started ReadWrite in 2003, the Web was primarily about what was happening on your home computer. And as outlined above, a lot of innovation happened in that era of the Web—Flickr, YouTube, Facebook and more.

But today, the Internet is everywhere. As Owen Thomas wrote in his introductory post as ReadWrite’s new editor-in-chief, the Internet is now in our pockets, on our bodies, scattered around the physical world. So I’m thrilled that the blog I founded will chronicle this new era of the Read/Write Web—a world where everything is read/write.

Photo composite by Madeleine Weiss.

It’s a natural reflex to ask, “Who’s this new guy, and what’s he going to do with the place?” Since Richard MacManus founded the site 10 years ago, ReadWrite has been telling the story of the makers of the modern Web. The way I see it, my first job is to tell ReadWrite’s story, every day — its past, its present, and its glorious future. 

Last year, ReadWrite dropped the “Web” from its name. That made perfect sense to me, because the two-way communication medium that MacManus wrote about has grown beyond the boundaries of the Web to take over not just the Internet but the physical world as well.

Every aspect of the world we inhabit is becoming readable and writable — not just as text, but as code as well. Ubiquitous connectivity and computing power is hitting an inflection point of ever more rapid change. Just as media has become a business driven by conversation, not broadcasting, we now can all be contributors to the open-source project called Earth.

We just need a map to where we’re going. And a guide. That’s ReadWrite.

So what’s coming next? There will be new technologies, and ReadWrite will be here to explain them and grapple with their implications. There are a host of hardcore technical resources out there. We don’t aim to become one of them. But we won’t be afraid to geek out when a story calls for it — and break things down so everyone can take part.

Mapping this newly programmable world, and everyone who’s helping to make it, is the chief project of ReadWrite, as it has been since its inception. That mission still guides us. Let’s read. Let’s write. And let’s execute.

Photo via Flickr user eridony, CC 2.0

When did you first hear about ReadWrite? 

In 2003, I first heard about a guy named Richard MacManus who started a site called ReadWriteWeb. This idea of two-way conversations was in the very first spec for the Web, but it’s ultimately larger than the Web itself. When you think about what ReadWrite was trying to do, it was all about building. You can read and consume content online, but you can also write to publish your own views. The third thing that was implicit there was execute, as in “execute code.” That’s all about action, and for me that’s the next big thing in ReadWrite’s mission.

Where are you from?

I’m from Northern Virginia. I come from a family of programmers. My mother was a programmer at IBM. My dad was a computer hobbyist. My brother was a serious programmer - he won a supercomputer for our high school the summer after he graduated. He also ran a bulletin-board service - a kind of precursor to Internet chat forums. For so many of us who grew up in this networked culture, it was so apparent to us how much better it could be – in a heartfelt way.

Where did you work before coming to ReadWrite? 

I’ve worked at Business Insider, Suck.com, the Red Herring, Time Inc., Valleywag, VentureBeat and numerous other publications. I got my start as an intern at Mother Jones - I just met one of the current editors and regaled her with tales of what it was like to put one of the world’s very first magazines on the Web.

What’s your favorite video game?

I’m a big fan of classic strategy games, like Civilization. I also love the Sims. It’s all about building for me. We all want to build a better world. 

You’re known as one of the pioneers of “snark.” What does that word mean to you? 

I hate that word! I don’t think it means anything. But people have applied it to a lot of places I’ve worked at, going all the way back to Suck.com in the ‘90s. What people forget is the true spirit of Suck. It was a scathing critique of the Web, but not from a malicious perspective – it was all about the idea of the Web as a place for dreamers, where people had perfect freedom to express themselves and realize the greater vision of what the Internet could be. And how far short we fell from that vision. And how frustrating that can be.

What do you do for fun on the weekends?

My husband and I are actually pretty boring. I spend a lot of time going to the gym. I actually registered the site “fitnessdouchebag.com.” We’re gay, so we brunch. Otherwise, we really enjoy going to Crissy Field with our Jack Russell mix, Ramona the Love Terrier. 

What’s your favorite spot in San Francisco? 

I have a key to Jack Early Park right near our home. I had been walking Ramona there for so long that neighbors decided to give me the key to the park’s gate. I’m responsible for opening the park every morning. It’s a really beautiful spot. You can see everything from there. The Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate are both visible, fog permitting. I wrote about Jack Early on question-and-answer site Quora, and now wedding planners call me when they talk about planning engagements!  

In recent weeks and months, as part of this exploration, we've deliberately taken a fairly broad approach to our Facebook page. On any given day, a visit will turn up not only links to many of our stories, but also the occasional Internet meme, comics, and tech-related quips.

Unexpectedly, some of the biggest responses we've seen to date have involved beautiful images. Whether awesome tech-related photos or astonishing natural images, many of these pictures those strike a chord with us — not to mention with others who share them widely across not only on Facebook, but also Instagram, Flickr, Reddit, and many other photography-centric communities.

And that's all pretty awesome. But we are a tech news website, and we want to make sure that you don't feel we're distracting you from the things you care about most at ReadWrite — in particular, the tech news, features, analysis, and opinion that ReadWrite delivers every day. You may not want our core coverage overshadowed by off-topic photos, or to see the ReadWrite editorial voice diluted across various social fees with non-tech-related postings.

So we wanted to ask you all what you think. Please take a moment to vote in the poll above and then, if you like, sound off in comments as to what you'd like to see more of (or less of). Consider this your chance — and not your last one, either — to help us figure out how to best shape our ReadWrite social presence. Thank in advance for your help.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

We are now ReadWrite. In many ways, that is both extremely exciting and kind of sad. We have a beautiful, newly designed website, a core group of highly intelligent writers and a dynamic new leader in Dan Lyons. On the other hand, the ReadWriteWeb of old is gone, along with many people that made it what it was. 

The founder of ReadWriteWeb, Richard MacManus, started the site as his own personal technology blog from his home in New Zealand on April 20, 2003. Richard quickly became known for his deep insight and passion about all things innovation, from the rise of Web 2.0 to the future of publishing, the Internet of Things and the new Mobile Revolution.

Bringing on new talent

In a couple of years, Richard was able to hire some brilliant writers who took up the torch of championing and enlightening people on new innovations. The most prominent was Marshall Kirkpatrick, the first son of tech blogging and one of the first employees at both RWW and TechCrunch. Other great writers have crossed through ReadWriteWeb at some point or another, such as Jolie O’Dell, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Josh Catone, Mike Melanson, Audrey Watters and countless others.

Some people behind the scenes did not achieve the same type of public recognition, but were no less influential: Webmaster Jared Smith, engineer Tyler Gillies, managing editor Abraham Hyatt and former COO Sean Ammirati. We call these folks ReadWriteAlum and they were a huge part of the dynamic publication that Richard created and grew for almost 10 years. 

The original Read/Write Web started by Richard in 2003

All of these people have come and gone from ReadWriteWeb, and each left an indelible mark on what the publication became. As we transition to ReadWrite, some people might think that the site is diminished without those people. Simply, this is not true. Just as the BlackBerry was a stepping stone to the iPhone, and the iPhone was a stepping stone to a booming mobile industry, the writers who came before us at ReadWriteWeb lend us their legacy. Today, at ReadWrite, we stand on their shoulders. 

RWW went red around November 2005

Some things are going to change around ReadWrite. Some things are not. We will remain a core group of technology enthusiasts who champion innovation and creativity with passion, insight and analysis. We will continue to be thought leaders, helping both technology professionals and consumers make decisions. 

Today, we thank those who have come before us, the ones who made this great publication what it is. Special thanks to Richard and his vision. We will do our best to honor your legacy. 

We might have a new name, new faces and a new website, but the core passion that started with Richard in 2003 will remain. Welcome to the new ReadWrite.

Change, For The Better

First: I know change is scary. But if you’re one of ReadWriteWeb's devoted long-time readers, please know that we remain committed to delivering the kind of smart, thoughtful analysis that you’ve come to expect from the site since its inception in 2003. We hope to build on that legacy and add to it.

As for our new name, the rationale for the change is pretty simple. Technology has evolved beyond the Web, and we’re adapting to keep up with the changing digital media landscape.

The new design is fresh, clean and modern, and easy to navigate. The top box lets us highlight a story that we think is really important, and enables us to run big, beautiful photos and illustrations.

Tablet First

What you might not notice at first is that the site has been rebuilt with a tablet-first approach, meaning that instead of starting with a PC and browser as our reference and then scaling that design down to mobile devices, our designers and engineers used mobile as a starting point and worked out from there. We’ve built a proprietary publishing system called Orion that has been developed under the direction of the experienced and talented John Vars and Eric Dahl.

You’ll find that as you move across your various devices - laptop/desktop, tablet, smartphone - the site seamlessly adapts itself to where you are, rearranging itself as if by magic. It’s incredibly responsive and smooth, and boasts slick new features like variable scrolling, contextually aware smart feeds, deeper social integration and improved navigation. This new design was dreamed up and brought to life by our creative director, Alex Schleifer, and the world-class designers and engineers on his team.

ReadWrite's Expanded Coverage

But all that stuff has to do with how you read. Let’s talk about what you read. We have a great core staff of writers, and over time you’ll start to see some evolution in the tone and scope of our coverage.

We’re doubling down on mobile, because that’s where the action is. The mobile computing wave is the biggest thing that’s happened in the 25 years that I’ve been writing about technology. But it’s more than that. Mobile devices combined with social networks are evolving into a new mass medium that will displace television and define our age.

As for the tone: We want to turn our writers loose and let them write from the heart, in ways that are more personal, passionate, provocative and fun than ever before. We want ReadWrite to be a lively place filled with wit and energy, a place where you find great stories told in a convincing, engaging way, with brains and a point of view.

We also plan to bring in a wider mix of voices, inviting interesting people from across our industry to share their ideas and opinions. These will include entrepreneurs, investors, authors, academics, industry executives and, most of all, readers.

The best thing about digital publishing is that the audience can be part of the show. We really want to find ways to turn readers into contributors, so that ultimately the site belongs to them as much as to us. In our vision of success, ReadWrite becomes not so much a publication as a conversation.

The Say Media Connection

ReadWriteWeb was launched in 2003 by Richard MacManus, a visionary writer and pioneer of online publishing who built a devoted global following. Richard remains a hero to us, and every day we remain mindful of the need to live up to the standards he set.

Last year ReadWriteWeb was acquired by Say Media, a forward-looking media company from San Francisco that operates a stable of properties including XOJane, Dogster, Catster, Remodelista and Gardenista. Say Media started out as an advertising network, so it understands the business side of the equation as well as the importance of powerful content that keeps readers coming back for more. 

Also part of the Say Media family (we call ourselves “Sayers”) is an incredibly talented engineering team behind our award-winning Orion publishing platform. As the media business increasingly becomes a technology business, teaming up with this kind of visionary talent gives us a huge advantage. We're able to optimize the way you view the site to ensure an amazing experience online and on mobile devices.

SAY’s management roster reads like an all-star team of digital publishing. These folks really get the Internet. Our CEO and co-founder, Matt Sanchez, is a techie who studied engineering and computer science at Yale. Our president, Kim Kelleher, was previously the publisher of Time magazine. (Yes, that Time magazine.) See why we’re excited?

The History Of Dan Lyons

As for me, I’m joining from Newsweek, where I was technology editor. Before going to Newsweek I spent a decade at Forbes. I also created The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, in the persona known as Fake Steve Jobs. Fake Steve will not be making any appearances on ReadWrite. But his spirit of candor and irreverence remains part of everything I write.

So: we are blessed to have the best of both worlds. We have a great brand built on the legacy created by Richard MacManus; and we have the support of a smart, growing, tech-savvy parent company. Now it’s up to us - and to you - to figure out what ReadWrite will become next. The only way to find out is to leap into the digital stream and start experimenting. Some stuff will work, some stuff won’t. We’re pretty sure you’ll tell us which is which.

We promise you that we will do our best to find great stories, to be entertaining, witty and passionate, to write from the heart, to tell you what we really think, to admit mistakes when we make them and to deliver the best coverage of the digital revolution that we can. We hope you will come along with us and become part of creating the future.