Background
Matt has been producing software for over twenty years, with the last fifteen focused on publishing systems, databases, crawlers, and search indexes for high-traffic sites including Gizmodo, Deadspin, and Blogger.
In 1999 he developed Weavelet, one of the first web-based feed readers, and later helped launch the Kinja aggregator. Those experiences led to Attribyte, built on the idea that search and algorithmic recommendation can power personalized reading without manual feed curation.
In 2015 Attribyte launched a native Android app and mobile web application running on Attribyte’s search platform and API, backed by a distributed crawler, on‑demand image processing, and several open-source components.
Matt was an early member of Gawker Media’s tech team and helped it grow from a handful of people to more than twenty, working on custom publishing, search, statistics, and discussion systems over a ten‑year span.
He also served as project manager for Kinja’s parsing and crawling framework as it evolved from a web-based blog reader into infrastructure later acquired by Gawker Media.
- Weavelet Early web-based feed reader (1999)
- Kinja Aggregation, parsing, and crawling framework
- Attribyte platform Search, recommendations, and content APIs
Talks & references
Matt’s work on publishing systems and Blogger has been referenced in talks, articles, and books about web publishing and software history.
- Expanding Play to a Multiple JVM Architecture Ping Conference, 2014
- Gawker's Kinja, circa 2003 Jason Kottke, 2012
- The New Gawker Media Felix Salmon, 2010
- Say Everything Scott Rosenberg, 2010
- Getting Real: Race to Running Software 37signals, 2005
- How the Blogger Deal Happened (Trellix, not Google!) Dan Bricklin, 2001
- This is what computers looked like when we first made Blogger Evan Williams, 2000