Web Masters

Bruce Judson, the executive who helped establish Time Warner's new media division in the early 1990s, discusses Pathfinder, one of the early Web's most popular content portals and an Internet advertising pioneer.

Show Notes

Despite the fact that magazine industry was one of the industries most likely to be hurt by the growth of the Internet and World Wide Web, the company that led the charge for moving content online was, strangely enough, one of the biggest magazine publishers in the world: Time, Inc.

This episode of Web Masters features one of the people who helped drive that transition: Bruce Judson. Bruce ran the operational side of Time Warner's new media division in the early 1990s, and he and his team launched pathfinder.com. Pathfinder was a one of the early Web's most popular portals sites that allowed people to access part of the companies vast collection of magazine content.

Pathfinder didn't last long online, but, in its few short years, it made a huge contribution to the Web. Chief among those was in advertising, where Bruce and his team established many of the conventions for online advertising that are still followed today.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

What is Web Masters?

Web Masters is an original podcast that explores the history of the Internet through the stories of some of its most important innovators. In each episode, host Aaron Dinin, a serial entrepreneur and digital media scholar, talks with Internet entrepreneurs who created important websites, tools, services, and features. Some are hugely popular, some you’ve never heard of, and all of them have impacted everything you do online. You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at how the Internet has enabled -- and continues to create -- some of the greatest business opportunities in history from the people who have proven they know how to build successful Internet businesses.