Justin Hall

Born in Chicago, Hall graduated Francis W. Parker High School in 1993. In 1994, while a student at Swarthmore College, Justin started his web-based diary [http://www.links.net Justin's Links from the Underground], which offered one of the earliest guided tours of the web.Harmanci, Reyhan. "[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/20/MNGBKBEJO01.DTL Time to get a life -- pioneer blogger Justin Hall bows out at 31]." San Francisco Chronicle. February 20, 2005, retrieved on July 20, 2006. Over time, the site came to focus on Hall's life in intimate detail. In December 2004, The New York Times Magazine referred to him as "the founding father of personal blogging."Rosen, Jeffrey. "[https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/magazine/19PHENOM.html?pagewanted=print&position= Your Blog or Mine?]" New York Times Magazine. December 14, 2004, retrieved on October 31, 2007.

In 1994, during a break from college Hall joined HotWired, the first commercial web magazine started within Wired magazine.{{Citation | last = Hall

| first = Justin

| author-link = Justin Hall

| url = http://www.links.net/vita/hw/

| title = Justin Hall @ HotWired

| work = Justin's Links

| accessdate = 6 December 2012

}} There, he began a long-term working partnership with critic, writer and teacher Howard Rheingold.{{Citation | last = Rosenberg

| first = Scott

| author-link = Scott Rosenberg (journalist)

| url = http://www.sayeverything.com/excerpt/say-everything-chapter-one/

| title = Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters

| publisher = Crown

| year = 2009

| accessdate = 6 December 2012

}} Later Hall would become a freelance journalist covering video games, mobile technology and internet culture. He published analysis from game conferences such as E3 as well as the Tokyo Game Show. He chronicled the first Indie Game Jam in 2002. From late 2001 and 2003, Hall was based in Japan, mostly Tokyo and Akita, authoring a guidebook Just In Tokyo.{{Citation | last = Hall

| first = Justin

| author-link = Justin Hall

| isbn = 1891053507

| url = http://www.links.net/vita/trip/japan/tokyo/guide/

| title = Just In Tokyo

| date = May 2002

| publisher = Garrett County Press

| location = New Orleans, Louisiana

| pages = 66

| accessdate = 16 October 2011

}}

In 2007, Hall graduated from the MFA program in the USC Interactive Media Division. His thesis project was an attempt to make surfing the web into a multiplayer game: PMOG, the Passively Multiplayer Online Game. Hall went on to serve as CEO of GameLayers, which raised $2 million to turn PMOG into The Nethernet, a MMO in a Firefox toolbar.{{Citation | last = Arrington

| first = Michael

| author-link = Michael Arrington

| url = https://techcrunch.com/2008/02/02/play-a-multiplayer-online-game-while-surfing-the-web-pmog/

| title = Play A Multiplayer Online Game While Surfing The Web: PMOG

| work = TechCrunch

| date = 3 February 2008

| accessdate = 23 February 2013

}} The Nethernet failed to turn a profit, and GameLayers closed down as a company. The server and client software for the Nethernet was released as open source{{Citation

| url = https://github.com/gamelayers/PMOG-OS

| title = PMOG Open Source

| publisher = Github

| accessdate = 6 December 2012

}} and Hall went on to publish A Story of GameLayers, "open-sourcing our business process".{{Citation

| last = Hall

| first = Justin

| author-link = Justin Hall

| url = https://www.links.net/vita/gamelayers/

| title = A Story of GameLayers

| work = Justin's Links

| accessdate = 6 December 2012

}}

At present, Hall lives in San Francisco, California. He served as a Producer on ngmoco:)'s Touch Pets series, and then became ngmoco:)'s Director of Culture & Communications.{{Citation

| last = Walker

| first = Joseph

| url = https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204323904577038462736751448

| title = For Tech's Elite, Mobile Gaming Is a Big Play

| date = November 15, 2011

| newspaper = The Wall Street Journal

| accessdate = 21 February 2013

}} After working for ngmoco:)'s parent company DeNA as a Recruiter, Hall left the company in mid-2013. In 2015 he released a self-produced short documentary [https://archive.org/details/overshare-the_links.net_story Overshare: the Links.net Story] exploring his "extremely personal blogging".{{Citation

| last = Wickman

| first = Kase

| url = http://www.mtv.com/news/2250045/rules-for-internet-first-blogger/

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150826231335/http://www.mtv.com/news/2250045/rules-for-internet-first-blogger/

| url-status = dead

| archive-date = August 26, 2015

| title = One Of The First Webloggers Shares 6 Things He's Learned On The Internet

| date = August 25, 2015

| newspaper = MTV News

| accessdate = 8 February 2017

}} In September 2017, Hall began work as co-founder & Chief Technology Officer for bud.com, a California benefit corporation delivering recreational cannabis, built on a domain name he registered in 1994.{{cite news |last1=Colbert |first1=Mitchell |title=bud.com & the Power of the URL |url=https://cannabisnow.com/bud-com-the-power-of-the-url/ |accessdate=29 October 2019 |work=Cannabis Now |date=20 March 2018}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20060507192005/http://server1.sxsw.com/2006/coverage/SXSW06.SCREENBURN.20060311.JustinHall.mp3 Playing a Life Online - an audio recording] March 11, 2006 (speech at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas USA)
• [https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.04/play.html "The Fantasy Life of Coder Boys"], April 2003, Wired
• [http://links.net/share/write/rollingstone/slashdot/ "Where the Geeks Are"], August 19, 1999, Rolling Stone
• [https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20615FD345B0C778CDDA80894DB404482 "Today's Visions of the Science of Tomorrow"], January 4, 2003, New York Times op-ed
• [http://links.net/share/write/rollingstone/joshgriffith.lg.jpeg "Hire This Boy To Play Your Video Games"], October 12, 2000, Rolling Stone
• Just In Tokyo, 2002, Garrett County Press. {{ISBN|978-1-891053-50-4}}

• J. Goldstein & J. Raessens, Handbook of Computer Game Studies, MIT Press, 2005: Chapter on "Future of Games: Mobile Gaming"
• T. Fullerton & C. Swain, Game Design Workshop, CMP Books, 2004: Sidebar/chapter on "The Indie Game Jam."
• V. Burnham, Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age, MIT Press, 2001: Essays on the Apple ][, Burger Time and Spy Hunter.

• Hall was featured in the documentary Home Page.{{IMDb title|qid=Q5888619|title=Home Page}}
• He appeared nude as an actor in Blood.[http://www.ifilm.com/filmdetail?ifilmid=97396&cch= Blood]
• Hall appears in the science fiction film Radio Free Steve.{{IMDb title|qid=Q123785344|title=Radio Free Steve}}
• Hall appeared in Famke Janssen's critically panned 2011 film Bringing Up Bobby.

• Justin Hall, [http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/100/45 Passively Multiplayer Online Games]. International Journal of Communication, 16 November 2006
• Yahoo Internet Life, May 2001, "Who let the Blogs out?"
• Jeffrey Rosen, [https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/magazine/19PHENOM.html Your Blog or Mine?] New York Times Magazine, 19 December 2004
• Rosenberg, Scott, [http://www.sayeverything.com/excerpt/say-everything-chapter-one/ Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters], New York : Crown Publishers, 2009. {{ISBN|978-0-307-45136-1}}

{{reflist}}

{{commons category}}

• {{official website|http://www.links.net/}}
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx8rDD1ekGU "Dark Night" video clip of his breakdown]
• [https://www.flickr.com/photos/justin/4839537445/ July 2010 Photo of Justin Hall by Howard Rheingold]

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Category:1974 births

Category:Living people

Category:Writers from Chicago

Category:Writers from San Francisco

Category:Francis W. Parker School (Chicago) alumni

Category:Swarthmore College alumni

Category:USC Interactive Media & Games Division alumni

Category:American male bloggers

Category:American bloggers

Category:American male journalists

Category:21st-century American non-fiction writers

Category:21st-century American businesspeople