Meg Hourihan

Meg Hourihan
Name	Meg Hourihan
Occupation	Software developer; entrepreneur; writer
Known for	Co‑founder of Pyra Labs; co‑creator of Blogger

Meg Hourihan is an American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer best known as a co‑founder of Pyra Labs and a co‑creator of the Blogger software platform. Her work in the late 1990s and early 2000s intersected with early weblogging communities, Silicon Valley startups, and internet culture, influencing platforms and companies in the web publishing and social media ecosystem.

Early life and education

Hourihan grew up in the United States and pursued studies that led her toward computing and writing, with influences from institutions and communities associated with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Harvard University, University of California, Berkeley, and regional technology hubs such as Silicon Valley, Cambridge, Massachusetts, New York City, Seattle, and San Francisco. Her formative experiences connected her to figures and movements around RFC 822, Usenet, Slashdot, Wired (magazine), and the early web communities that included contributors to Lycos, Yahoo!, AOL, and Netscape Communications Corporation. Associations with developers and writers active on platforms like LiveJournal, Xanga, Friendster, Myspace, and Six Apart shaped her outlook during the rapid expansion of web publishing.

Career

Hourihan's career spans software development, startup leadership, editorial work, and advocacy, involving collaborations with engineers, designers, and entrepreneurs connected to organizations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple Inc., Amazon (company), Mozilla Foundation, Apache Software Foundation, WordPress, and Drupal. She engaged with communities and events including Web 2.0 Expo, TechCrunch Disrupt, O'Reilly Media, South by Southwest, and TED Conferences. Her professional network intersects with notable technologists, writers, and investors linked to Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Eric S. Raymond, Tim O'Reilly, Caterina Fake, Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Jack Smith (computer programmer). Contributions to open source and internet culture associated with projects like GitHub, SourceForge, Perl, Python (programming language), PHP, Ruby on Rails, and Node.js are part of the broader milieu in which she worked.

Pyra Labs and Blogger

Hourihan co‑founded Pyra Labs alongside collaborators including Evan Williams during a period when blogging and web publishing tools evolved rapidly. Pyra Labs developed Blogger, a platform that helped popularize personal weblogs alongside contemporaries such as TypePad, Movable Type, LiveJournal, WordPress.com, and Tumblr. The project intersected with industry events and entities like Google, which later acquired Pyra Labs's product, and contemporaneous services from HotWired, Salon (magazine), Slashdot, and Sucks.org. The growth of Blogger paralleled developments in standards and protocols including HTML 4.01, CSS, RSS, Atom, and HTTP/1.1, and it influenced publishing practices adopted by users of FeedBurner, Technorati, Delicious, Digg, and Reddit.

Later ventures and projects

After Pyra Labs, Hourihan worked on and advised a variety of startups, editorial projects, and technology initiatives connected to companies and platforms such as Kuro5hin, Gizmodo, Boing Boing, The Huffington Post, Slate (magazine), The New York Times, The Guardian, Wired (magazine), Salon (magazine), Medium (website), and Vox (website). She has been involved with design and product efforts related to Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest, SoundCloud, Kickstarter, and Etsy. Hourihan also contributed to conversations about blogging ethics, community moderation, and content discovery alongside figures and organizations like Clay Shirky, Lawrence Lessig, Mozilla Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, and Open Source Initiative.

Public speaking and media appearances

Hourihan has appeared at conferences and in media outlets that include TED Conferences, SXSW, TechCrunch Disrupt, Web 2.0 Summit, O'Reilly Media events, NPR, The New York Times, Wired (magazine), The Guardian, BBC, and CNN. She has participated in panels with technologists and journalists associated with Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Jimmy Wales, Craig Newmark, Katharine Viner, Arianna Huffington, and commentators from outlets such as The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg News.

Personal life

Hourihan's personal pursuits include writing, community organizing, and mentorship within technology and creative communities tied to institutions and groups like Girls Who Code, Ada Developers Academy, Women Who Code, Tech Ladies, Anita Borg Institute, and Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. She has engaged with cultural and civic institutions such as The New Yorker, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Columbia University, New York University, and regional arts organizations in Brooklyn, Manhattan, San Francisco, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Category:American computer programmers Category:Women in technology