Five Years Telling Stories About the Internet Through Data
A personal look back at five years of telling stories at Cloudflare through data, exploring the history of the Internet, and the people who made it all possible.
Last Friday, July 31 (2026), marked the final day that I was connected to Cloudflare. Even so, I feel I’ll always be connected to the company I loved serving for five years (I gained so much historical perspective, thanks in part to many long conversations with the people who helped build Cloudflare).
I’ll be sharing some news soon about what’s next. But before turning that page, I wanted to reflect a little on this one.
Throughout my five years at Cloudflare, I almost always felt like I was still doing journalism. The subjects changed, but the curiosity didn’t. I was still asking questions, interviewing people, trying to understand complicated topics, and then finding ways to explain them clearly.
Before Cloudflare, I had interviewed entrepreneurs, innovators, scientists, filmmakers, actors, and many others. At Cloudflare, my conversations shifted toward Internet engineers, researchers, product leaders, security experts, and developers. I also had the privilege of exploring Internet-scale datasets, learning how to spot meaningful trends, understand what they meant, and turn them into stories that people could understand. The tools evolved, but the curiosity never did.
[Cloudflare was also a wonderful place to be curious, with experts who were always generous with their time and knowledge, ready to explain even the most complex topics (the Internet is far more fascinating and complex than most of us realize… but that’s a story for another day).]
Over these five years, I had the privilege of helping tell stories about the Internet through data. From the war in Ukraine and global sporting events to elections, cybersecurity, bots, major outages, and Internet traffic trends, my goal was always the same: make complex technical topics understandable, useful, and interesting. I genuinely loved doing it.
One of the unexpected privileges of working at Cloudflare was gaining historical perspective, not only about the company but also about the Internet itself.
Early on, I came up with an internal series called A Bit of History. John Graham-Cumming encouraged me to pursue it, and it became one of my favourite occasional side projects. It was built around long conversations with people who had helped shape Cloudflare over the years (and were leaving the company), especially across engineering, research, although there was also product, marketing, and revenue.
People like Ólafur Guðmundsson, Nick Sullivan, Usman Muzaffar, Marek Majkowski, Ignat Korchagin, Chris Merritt, and many others shared stories about decisions, challenges, mistakes, and ideas that became part of Cloudflare’s DNA. The series came full circle in 2025, when I sat down with John Graham-Cumming for a conversation that lasted more than three hours. Understanding why things had been built often became just as interesting as understanding how they worked. Those conversations gave me a much deeper appreciation of both the company and the Internet we were helping build.
Most people know Cloudflare through its products. I had the privilege of helping explain what those products revealed about the Internet.
With an amazing team in Lisbon, a handful of colleagues in the US, and the collaboration of many teams across the company, we built Cloudflare Radar into one of the best windows into what’s happening across the Internet. Along the way we created blog posts, reports, videos, presentations, Radar Display, and eventually This Week in NET, a podcast that ran for almost four years with more than 150 episodes and over 100 guests.
That podcast became one of the highlights of my time at Cloudflare. I had the opportunity to interview Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn several times, as well as researchers, engineers, product leaders, Internet pioneers, and many people helping shape today’s Internet. Every conversation was another opportunity to learn.
One of the things I enjoyed most was that no two weeks looked alike. One week I might be analysing Internet traffic around an election. The next I could be preparing content for Davos, recording a podcast, brainstorming a Radar feature with engineers, helping build Radar Display for an event, or sharing data trends with journalists across Europe. That variety never stopped being fun.
Some projects became much bigger than I ever imagined.
Radar Display started as an idea and eventually became part of Cloudflare offices, partner offices, conferences, and events around the world. Watching people stop in front of a giant globe showing the Internet in real time never got old. One of my favourite memories was making a huge installation work remotely for an event in Dubai together with André Páscoa and the local team. It took many hours, many video calls, and plenty of problem solving, but seeing it all come together made every hour worthwhile.
Another project that became part of my yearly rhythm was the Cloudflare Radar Year in Review. Early on, I proposed telling part of the year’s story through the world’s most popular Internet domains. It started as a standalone blog post and later became an integral part of the Year in Review. Every year after that, I spent weeks revisiting the year’s biggest events through Internet traffic and changes in domain rankings. Looking back at how elections, sporting events, holidays, product launches, unexpected global moments, and even shifts in how people searched, shopped, or consumed media influenced the way people used the Internet became one of my favourite exercises.
It wasn’t just about rankings (also important). It was another way of telling the story of the year through Internet data. Year after year, it reminded me that behind almost every major moment in the world, there was an interesting Internet story waiting to be discovered (or shared).
One of the most rewarding parts of the journey was seeing the work travel far beyond Cloudflare.
Students turned some of our analyses into classroom projects, including beautifully illustrated stories. Journalists, researchers, engineers, policymakers, and simply curious readers picked up the trends we uncovered.
Some stories became much bigger than expected. Internet disruptions in Tonga. Ramadan and Easter. New Year’s Eve. The total solar eclipse across Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Eurovision. Euro 2024. The Olympics. Dozens of elections. TikTok’s rise and also brief ban in the United States. Malicious email TLDs. And one of my favourites: exmaple.com, a domain that many people had never noticed despite typing example.com for years.
Seeing those stories featured by the BBC, The New York Times, CNN, Globo, and hundreds of other publications was incredibly rewarding. Discovering that data from some of our work eventually found its way into Wikipedia pages was another unexpected moment that made me smile.
John Graham-Cumming shaped my Cloudflare journey more than anyone else. He hired me, but more importantly, he gave me an unusual amount of freedom. He constantly encouraged me to build things people would genuinely find interesting, trusted me to move across topics and priorities, and supported ideas that didn’t always fit neatly into a job description. A Bit of History, This Week in NET, Radar Display, many reports, videos, and side projects simply wouldn’t have existed without that trust.
David Belson became a great collaborator throughout the years, around Radar. Whether we were discussing content, product ideas, strategy, or simply trying to understand what the data was telling us, working alongside him was always a pleasure.
The Radar team became a place where ideas never seemed to run out. Jorge Pacheco, Carlos Azevedo, Sabina Zejnilovic, Sofia Cardita, Carlos Rodrigues, Paula Tavares, André Jesus, Nuno Pereira, Mingwei Zhang, Tiago Dias, André Páscoa, Vasco Asturiano, and many others made those years not only productive but genuinely enjoyable. We spent countless hours discussing data visualizations, product ideas, interactions, stories hidden in the data, presentations, and sharing great lunches (and sometimes dinners). Those conversations often wandered far beyond work, but they usually came back to finding new ways to understand the data, visualize it, and make Cloudflare Radar a little bit better.
The Research team constantly reminded me how generous technical people can be with their knowledge. Vânia Gonçalves, Marwan Fayed, Bas Westerbaan, Thibault Meunier, James Allworth, Doug Kramer, Nick Sullivan, Tom Strickx, Tom Paseka, Mike Conlow, Mark Nottingham, Justin Paine, Lucas Pardue, Ignat Korchagin, Michael Tremante, Omer Yoachimik, Trey Guinn, Kenton Varda, Brian Mitchell, Sunil Pai, Grant Bourzikas, Heather Orsi, Craig Dennis, Jocelyn Woolbright, and many others were always willing to answer another question, review another draft, record another segment, or patiently explain something until I understood it. Many of my favourite videos only happened because they were happy to indulge one more unusual idea.
Beyond Research, I was fortunate to work with exceptional people across Communications, Marketing, Network, Email, Agents, Events, People, Offices, Developers, Legal and Policy, Compliance, the Innovation Weeks task force, and many other teams. Anne-Caroline Tanguy, Kari Linder, Val Vesa, Daniella Vallurupalli, Leigh Ann Acosta, Luanne Da Costa, Ryan Knight, Gabi Palavecino, Reagan Russell, Lindsay Scalisi, Jenna Zak, Laurel Wamsley, Brittany Brown, Rita Kozlov, Alex Messe Rodriguez, Chy Sarmento, Caroline Quick, Jen Preston, Carolina Beja, Margarida Alhinho, Margarida Simão, Margarida Pereira (the two Margaridas behind the wonderful Book Club), Pedro Santos, Kevin, Matt Carey, Patrick Day, Emily Hancock, Christiaan Smits, Petra Arts, Janel Riley, Syona Sarma, Sharon Goldberg, Stephanie Cohen, Luísa Gobbo, Michelle Chen, Alonso Bustamante, Lara Cohen, Jerome Fleury, Alissa Starzak, and so many others helped transform technical work into stories, products, launches, events, and experiences that reached journalists, customers, developers, and readers around the world.
And then there’s Celso Martinho, whom I first got to know years before joining Cloudflare through a couple of interviews I did as a journalist.
Before I joined Cloudflare, he told me something I’ve never forgotten.
He said that what my role would become after a year at Cloudflare would depend much more on me than on Cloudflare itself. The opportunities would exist. It would be up to me to build something meaningful with them.
I took that advice seriously.
Throughout my time at Cloudflare, Celso also became an inspiration simply by watching him work. He always made me feel part of the team, even though I wasn’t an engineer. He led with empathy, passion, humility, and an extraordinary ability to make the people around him shine. He never seemed interested in making himself the protagonist. He preferred helping others become one. That is one of the leadership lessons I’ll carry with me.
The funny part is that years later I reminded him of that conversation. He didn’t remember saying it. I never forgot it.
The layoffs in May were difficult. Seeing so many talented colleagues leave, including people who had helped build some of Cloudflare’s most important products, was disappointing. Many had dedicated years of their lives to the company and had shaped it in meaningful ways.
But that doesn’t change how I look back at my own five years. I learned an enormous amount.
I worked with exceptional people. I helped build things I’m genuinely proud of.
Most of all, I’m grateful I had the opportunity to make the Internet a little more understandable for millions of people while learning from some of the people who understand it best. I’ll also remember the generosity of so many people who always found time to answer one more question, explain one more concept, or help make one more idea a little better.
I’ll continue to cheer for Cloudflare.
And I’m excited to start telling the next chapter.