Home Top 10 ReadWriteWeb Quotes of 2011

Top 10 ReadWriteWeb Quotes of 2011

An intern once asked me, what’s the difference between a “journalist” of my day and a “blogger” of his? I laughed and told him my day ain’t over yet. Then I followed up by saying that journalism is something I do on a blog, and there are many other things one can do on a blog, only a few of which I’ll allow.

The thing journalists still do today is extract and present the viewpoints of people who matter more to the business they cover than the journalists themselves. Here now in living color are a handful of the most revealing, poignant, and on occasion, truthful statements made to ReadWriteWeb journalists in the year about to pass.

#10

After people finish college, they probably grow (in their professional capacity) about 10% a year – learning and earning double in 7 years. As a startup, you can’t afford to do it that way. You need to invest in them and get them to grow faster. Spending time with them is key.

Auren Hoffman, CEO, Rapleaf, a personal data aggregation service, to RWW’s Marshall Kirkpatrick, September 8, 2011.

#9

I see the platform business being in a once-in-a-decade transformation. That transformation is driven by the move to cloud, to build social apps, mobile apps, real-time applications. Developers are saying, “Look, the ten-year-old technologies from .NET or Java Enterprise Edition weren’t really designed for this new world.”

Byron Sebastian, CEO, Heroku

, in an interview with RWW’s Scott M. Fulton, III, October 28, 2011.

#8

We’re faced with a real challenge of covering an entirely new coverage area. A lot of the tried and true methods don’t work anymore. I remember being a cub reporter and going in at 5 am to write up the police blotter. There are no media rooms in what we’re trying to cover. No one is faxing us things. There are so much less formal systems; everything’s out there but it’s an enormous mess. When someone walks down the street it doesn’t leave a path of 1s and 0s but when someone walks down the street on Twitter, it does.

Nick White, CEO, The Daily Dot, to RWW’s Marshall Kirkpatrick, August 23, 2011.

#7

I think one of the real challenges was not knowing what the challenges were going to be and kind of uncovering a lot of new problems here that no one has solved in the past. So, it requires a lot of new solutions that no one has never thought up. It is a lot of hard work.

Mat Marquis, principal designer, The Boston Globe, discussing the paper’s “responsive redesign” project with RWW’s Dan Rowinski, September 14, 2011.

#6

A lot of us are too willing to accept roles as consumers in society. I understand the economic reasons for that, but I don’t think it leads to a fulfilling life or a sustainable community. The best way out of this is to deconstruct what you’re consuming, or better yet to become a creator yourself. I’m trying to help people see their own creativity.

Douglas Roshkoff, author, Program or Be Programmed, to RWW’s Klint Finley, May 26, 2011.

#5

There are literally 100 million people who are building software in one way, shape, or form. One of the things that we want to do, particularly in this world of connected devices and continuous services, is to say, how can we make our platforms and our tools desirable and relevant to the broader development community? At the same time… we absolutely want to keep in mind that there is a set of people who we call “the existing Microsoft developer base,” and we actually want to figure out how to move them forward into this new world. When you have a .NET or a .NET code base, how do you bring that forward into the new world? Do you want to run it as a Windows Desktop application, or into the Metro world? We want to make it easy for people to bring their skill set, their expertise, and their code forward into this new world.

S. Somasegar, Senior VP, Microsoft Developer Division, to RWW’s Scott M. Fulton, III, September 14, 2011.

#4

The concept of journalism is going away. It is not enough to be a writer. You need to be a writer and an expert.

Jason Calcanis, CEO, Weblogs, Inc., to RWW Managing Editor Abraham Hyatt, June 13, 2011.

#3

It’s astonishing to me that, when we see certain people with some of the quality that Steve Jobs undoubtedly had, we reject them out of hand because they stand against the tide. Their “hell-no-ness,” if you will, gets on our nerves. I dare say, especially if they’re women. And that’s a little sexist.

Carmi Levy, contributing analyst, CTV News Channel, to RWW’s Scott M. Fulton, III, November 24, 2011.

#2

BROWSER SHOULD BE WINDOW TO INTERNET. IT NOT JOB OF WINDOW TO BREAK THING YOU LOOKING AT DEPENDING ON WHAT WINDOW YOU USE.

@FAKEGRIMLOCK, GIANT ROBOT DINOSAUR MAKE COMMENT IN COMMENTS, AT JON MITCHELL, OTHER DAY IN 2011.

#1

It became too much of a tangle. At the end of the day the focus on what was important was lost, and what is important are the developers.

Carlos Icaza, CEO, Ansca Mobile

and former Flash engineer for Adobe, to RWW’s Dan Rowinski, November 9, 2011.

About ReadWrite’s Editorial Process

The ReadWrite Editorial policy involves closely monitoring the tech industry for major developments, new product launches, AI breakthroughs, video game releases and other newsworthy events. Editors assign relevant stories to staff writers or freelance contributors with expertise in each particular topic area. Before publication, articles go through a rigorous round of editing for accuracy, clarity, and to ensure adherence to ReadWrite's style guidelines.

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