In 1999, she and Evan Williams co-founded Pyra Labs. The company's first product, also named "Pyra", was a web application which would combine a project manager, contact manager, and to-do list. In 1999, while still in beta, the rudiments of Pyra were repurposed into an in-house tool which became Blogger. In 2001 she left the company following a mass walk-out due to economic difficulties.[1]
She is the co-author of We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs (ISBN0-7645-4962-6), and a frequent[3] speaker at technical conferences concerning online journalism and the role of women in technology. In 2003, she was named to the MITTechnology ReviewTR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.[4]PC Magazine named Evan Williams, Paul Bausch, and Hourihan—the Blogger team—as People of the Year in 2004.