Matthew Haughey
Encyclopedia
Matthew Haughey is an American
programmer, web designer, and blogger best known as the founder of the community weblog MetaFilter
, where he is known as mathowie.
, California
. He graduated from the University of California, Riverside
with a B.S. and M.S. in environmental science
.
Haughey designed his first website in 1995. From 1997 to 2000, Haughey was a webmaster and programmer for Social Sciences Computing at UCLA
. In 2000, he moved to the San Francisco Bay area
where, as an employee of Pyra Labs
, he participated in the development of early versions of Blogger. In 2001, he worked briefly for KnowNow and Bitzi
. Haughey then relocated to Portland, Oregon
, and from 2002 to 2005 served as creative director at Creative Commons
.
In 1999, Haughey launched MetaFilter
, a prominent community weblog and internet forum
, which he programmed himself using Macromedia
ColdFusion
and Microsoft SQL Server
, and which he manages with co-moderators Jessamyn West
(2005-), Josh Millard (2007- ), and Ricardo Vacapinta (2008- ). Haughey was featured on the front cover of the May 2001 issue of Brill's Content, illustrating the cover story "Human Portals". MetaFilter was a project he started when there were only "30 or so" blog
s, and he felt that finding "one or two links a day" personally was not enough content, but a blog with four or five people could do better. Haughey had to contribute many of the early posts until "a few hundred people showed up and we had something good." MetaFilter has since been widely recognized as "one of the web's most successful communities". Haughey credits the site's "strong sense of community" for its success, unlike websites that offer social incentives such as karma
. Today, Haughey is recognized as a leading expert on online communities.
Haughey has a personal weblog called A Whole Lotta Nothing and a photoblog
titled Ten Years of My Life, in which he records daily photographs, many of himself. Ten Years was named 3rd-best photo blog by Forbes
in 2004. On his personal blog, he was noted for starting an internet meme
when he annotated Google Maps
images of his hometown. He has helped build MetaFilter workalikes such as SportsFilter and helped instigate the5k.org.
Haughey has also ventured into niche blogging
; his PVRBlog (personal video recorder blog), which he started in 2004, gained attention as the site that first published complaints over copyright protection on TiVo
systems. It was also recognized as an early adopter of Google AdSense text advertising, which according to Haughey allowed him to make enough income to cover his mortgage. In December 2009, Haughey auctioned off PVRBlog on eBay. Haughey had guessed that the site would sell for about $8,500, but after heavy bidding it eventually sold for $12,110.00 to brightfire.net of Austin, TX.
Haughey has been a technical editor of several programming books, and has also contributed chapters to non-technical books in topic areas such as blogging and online community
. Since 2005, Haughey has written a number of pieces for The New York Times
CIRCUITS section.
In April 2007, Haughey launched the blog fortuito.us in order to share his thoughts about supporting himself and his family through online projects.
On November 12, 2009 Haughey posted to Twitter "I passed out at home had a seizure, went to ER, did a cat scan and they found a growth. Awaiting surgery in the next week to remove it." Within hours thousands of people responded with well wishes. Surgery was planned for the following day, but postponed at the last minute.http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2009/11/adventures-in-brain-tumors-part-one-of-many.html On December 29, 2009, Haughey announced that hormone therapy had shrunk the tumor to less than 50% its original size, and that prospects looked good for the tumor to shrink until "nearly disappearing". http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2009/12/adventures-in-brain-tumors-hormone-medications-ftw.html
Haughey lives in McMinnville
, Oregon
with his wife Kay and their daughter Fiona (who has also been the subject of a photoblog, fiona.haughey.com).
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
programmer, web designer, and blogger best known as the founder of the community weblog MetaFilter
MetaFilter
MetaFilter, known as MeFi to its members, is a community weblog whose purpose is to share links and discuss content that users have discovered on the web.-Community:MetaFilter was founded by Matthew Haughey in 1999...
, where he is known as mathowie.
Life and career
Haughey grew up in PlacentiaPlacentia, California
-Local: Placentia is a Charter city with an elected city council and professional city manager. Placentia City Council*Mayor- Scott W. Nelson*Mayor Pro Tem- Jeremy Yamaguchi*Council Member- Joe Aquirre*Council Member- Constance Underhill...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. He graduated from the University of California, Riverside
University of California, Riverside
The University of California, Riverside, commonly known as UCR or UC Riverside, is a public research university and one of the ten general campuses of the University of California system. UCR is consistently ranked as one of the most ethnically and economically diverse universities in the United...
with a B.S. and M.S. in environmental science
Environmental science
Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physical and biological sciences, to the study of the environment, and the solution of environmental problems...
.
Haughey designed his first website in 1995. From 1997 to 2000, Haughey was a webmaster and programmer for Social Sciences Computing at UCLA
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
. In 2000, he moved to the San Francisco Bay area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
where, as an employee of Pyra Labs
Pyra Labs
Pyra Labs is the company that coined the word Blog, creating the service Blogger.The co-founders were Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan, and the company's first product, also named 'Pyra', was a web application which would combine a project manager, contact manager, and to-do list...
, he participated in the development of early versions of Blogger. In 2001, he worked briefly for KnowNow and Bitzi
Bitzi
Bitzi is a website where volunteers share reports about any kind of digital file, with identifying metadata, commentary, and other ratings.Information contributed and rated by volunteers is compiled into the Bitpedia data set and reference work, described by Bitzi as a "digital media encyclopedia"...
. Haughey then relocated to Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
, and from 2002 to 2005 served as creative director at Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
.
In 1999, Haughey launched MetaFilter
MetaFilter
MetaFilter, known as MeFi to its members, is a community weblog whose purpose is to share links and discuss content that users have discovered on the web.-Community:MetaFilter was founded by Matthew Haughey in 1999...
, a prominent community weblog and internet forum
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
, which he programmed himself using Macromedia
Macromedia
Macromedia was an American graphics and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California that produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005 and controls the line of Macromedia...
ColdFusion
ColdFusion
In computing, ColdFusion is the name of a commercial rapid application development platform invented by Jeremy and JJ Allaire in 1995. ColdFusion was originally designed to make it easier to connect simple HTML pages to a database, by version 2 it had...
and Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database server, developed by Microsoft: It is a software product whose primary function is to store and retrieve data as requested by other software applications, be it those on the same computer or those running on another computer across a network...
, and which he manages with co-moderators Jessamyn West
Jessamyn West (librarian)
Jessamyn Charity West is an American librarian and blogger, best known as the creator of librarian.net and for her unconventional views of her profession...
(2005-), Josh Millard (2007- ), and Ricardo Vacapinta (2008- ). Haughey was featured on the front cover of the May 2001 issue of Brill's Content, illustrating the cover story "Human Portals". MetaFilter was a project he started when there were only "30 or so" blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
s, and he felt that finding "one or two links a day" personally was not enough content, but a blog with four or five people could do better. Haughey had to contribute many of the early posts until "a few hundred people showed up and we had something good." MetaFilter has since been widely recognized as "one of the web's most successful communities". Haughey credits the site's "strong sense of community" for its success, unlike websites that offer social incentives such as karma
Reputation
Reputation of a social entity is an opinion about that entity, typically a result of social evaluation on a set of criteria...
. Today, Haughey is recognized as a leading expert on online communities.
Haughey has a personal weblog called A Whole Lotta Nothing and a photoblog
Photoblog
A photoblog is a form of photo sharing and publishing in the format of a blog. It differs from a blog through the predominant use of and focus on photographs rather than text...
titled Ten Years of My Life, in which he records daily photographs, many of himself. Ten Years was named 3rd-best photo blog by Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
in 2004. On his personal blog, he was noted for starting an internet meme
Internet meme
The term Internet meme is used to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet. The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although the latter concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.-Description:...
when he annotated Google Maps
Google Maps
Google Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, free , that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit, and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API...
images of his hometown. He has helped build MetaFilter workalikes such as SportsFilter and helped instigate the5k.org.
Haughey has also ventured into niche blogging
Niche blogging
Niche blogging is the act of creating a blog with the intent of using it to market to a particular niche market. While it could be argued that every blog is, in some form, a niche blog, the term as it applies to marketing refers to a particular kind of blog....
; his PVRBlog (personal video recorder blog), which he started in 2004, gained attention as the site that first published complaints over copyright protection on TiVo
TiVo
TiVo is a digital video recorder developed and marketed by TiVo, Inc. and introduced in 1999. TiVo provides an on-screen guide of scheduled broadcast programming television programs, whose features include "Season Pass" schedules which record every new episode of a series, and "WishList"...
systems. It was also recognized as an early adopter of Google AdSense text advertising, which according to Haughey allowed him to make enough income to cover his mortgage. In December 2009, Haughey auctioned off PVRBlog on eBay. Haughey had guessed that the site would sell for about $8,500, but after heavy bidding it eventually sold for $12,110.00 to brightfire.net of Austin, TX.
Haughey has been a technical editor of several programming books, and has also contributed chapters to non-technical books in topic areas such as blogging and online community
Online community
An online community is a virtual community that exists online and whose members enable its existence through taking part in membership ritual. An online community can take the form of an information system where anyone can post content, such as a Bulletin board system or one where only a restricted...
. Since 2005, Haughey has written a number of pieces for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
CIRCUITS section.
In April 2007, Haughey launched the blog fortuito.us in order to share his thoughts about supporting himself and his family through online projects.
On November 12, 2009 Haughey posted to Twitter "I passed out at home had a seizure, went to ER, did a cat scan and they found a growth. Awaiting surgery in the next week to remove it." Within hours thousands of people responded with well wishes. Surgery was planned for the following day, but postponed at the last minute.http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2009/11/adventures-in-brain-tumors-part-one-of-many.html On December 29, 2009, Haughey announced that hormone therapy had shrunk the tumor to less than 50% its original size, and that prospects looked good for the tumor to shrink until "nearly disappearing". http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2009/12/adventures-in-brain-tumors-hormone-medications-ftw.html
Haughey lives in McMinnville
McMinnville, Oregon
McMinnville is the county seat and largest city of Yamhill County, Oregon, United States. According to Oregon Geographic Names, it was named by its founder, William T. Newby , an early immigrant on the Oregon Trail, for his hometown of McMinnville, Tennessee...
, Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
with his wife Kay and their daughter Fiona (who has also been the subject of a photoblog, fiona.haughey.com).
Publications
- Interviewed in Design for Community: The Art of Connecting Real People in Virtual Places, Waite Group Press (2001). ISBN 0-7357-1075-9
- Co-author, We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs, Wiley (2002) ISBN 0-7645-4962-6
- Co-author, Usability: The Site Speaks for Itself, Peer Information (2002). ISBN 1-904151-03-5.
- Co-author, We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture, Perseus Books Group, 2002 ISBN 0-7382-0741-1
- Co-author, Hacking Movable TypeMovable TypeMovable Type is a weblog publishing system developed by the company Six Apart. It was publicly announced on September 3, 2001; version 1.0 was publicly released on October 8, 2001. On 12 December 2007, Movable Type was relicensed as free software under the GNU General Public License...
(ExtremeTech), Wiley (2005) ISBN 0-7645-7499-X
Further reading
- Building an Online Community: Just Add Water. 2001 essay by Haughey in Digital WebDigital WebDigital Web was an online magazine intended for professional web designers, web developers and those who practice information architecture. The magazine consisted primarily of work contributed by web authors, as well as by others who occasionally delve into the web realm. They put emphasis on and...
.
External links
- MetaFilter
- A Whole Lotta Nothing
- Ten Years of My Life
- When you're at the helm of a shitstorm
- Blogging for Dollars - convinced many bloggers to add Google AdSense to their websites.
- Matt's Vox Blog
- fortuito.us
- Dan Benjamin's The Pipeline: Matt Haughey Interview