Building Passionate Communities the Slashdot Way
For geeks of a certain age, Slashdot was a revelation. Founded in the late 90s, the site aggregated news and views about software, science, gadgets, tech policy and more, all under the umbrella of its tag line: “News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters.”
In a Web before social bookmarking and user generated content, Slashdot was (and still is) a rolling curation of the nerdiest news found online.
Behind all this was Slashdot’s creator, Rob Malda, who was known on the site as CmdrTaco, and his classmate at the time, Jeff Bates.
But after fourteen years, thousands of posts and the sale of the site to Andover.net (which later became Geeknet), Malda had enough and moved on to announce that he was moving on.
He is now Chief Strategist and Editor at Large for the Washington Post Company’s WaPo Labs, a team of technologists and journalists exploring new ways to create, work with and present information.
Here, Rob discusses what he learned running Slashdot, and how to create and nurture passionate niche communities. The long and short of it is be authentic, follow your passions and an audience will follow.
