History of blogging
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While the term "blog" was not coined until the late 1990s, the history of blogging starts with several digital precursors to it. Before "blogging" became popular, digital communities took many forms, including
1983–1993
In the early 1990s, when Tim Berners-Lee coined the term "World Wide Web" and defined the first standards for HTML and URLs, the specifications included "USENET newsgroups for serial publishing and discussions."[3] Berners-Lee also created what is considered by Encyclopedia Britannica to be "the first 'blog'" in 1992 to discuss the progress made on creating the World Wide Web and software used for it.[4]
1994–2001
The modern blog evolved from the online diary, where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. Most such writers called themselves diarists, journalists, or journalers. A few called themselves "escribitionists". The Open Pages webring included members of the online-journal community. Justin Hall, who began eleven years of personal blogging in 1994 while a student at Swarthmore College, is generally recognized as one of the earliest bloggers,[5] as is Jerry Pournelle.[6] Another early blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a person's personal life combining text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer and EyeTap device to a web site in 1994. This practice of semi-automated blogging with live video together with text was referred to as sousveillance, and such journals were also used as evidence in legal matters.
Other forms of journals kept online also existed. A notable example was game programmer
The blog was independently invented by Ian Ring in 1997.[9] His online journal program was never called a "blog", and had very limited functionality, consisting of blobs of text associated with dates in an Access database. Ring experimented again with data-powered journaling in 2002, to provide a CMS for the popular health and wellness site SeekWellness.com, publishing weekly posts by fitness columnist Donald Ardell. Ring likes to claim that he "invented the blog",[10] which is technically true even though there were other projects that could make the claim with greater authority.
Another example of an early online entry into the evolution of blogging was created by
Websites, including both corporate sites and
Early weblogs were simply manually updated components of common
The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger[14] on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999.[15][16][17] Shortly thereafter, Evan Williams at Pyra Labs used "blog" as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog") and devised the term "blogger" in connection with Pyra Labs' Blogger product, leading to the popularization of the terms.[18]
After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained in popularity. Blog usage spread during 1999 and the years following, being further popularized by the near-simultaneous arrival of the first hosted blog tools:
- Open Diary launched in October 1998, soon growing to thousands of online diaries. Open Diary innovated the reader comment, becoming the first blog community where readers could add comments to other writers' blog entries.
- SlashDot, a still-popular blog for tech "nerds," launched in September 1997.
- Brad Fitzpatrick, a well known blogger, started LiveJournal in March 1999.
- Andrew Smales created Pitas.com in July 1999 as an easier alternative to maintaining a "news page" on a website, followed by DiaryLand in September 1999, focusing more on a personal diary community.[19]
- Drew Peloso and Steven Hatch launched Onclave in late 1999, a blogging and syndication platform scripted in Dave Winer's Frontier.
- In 2000, blogger Traciy Curry-Reyes started the blog Movies Based on True Stories Database. The site was the first to connect the real people with movies that were inspired by their cases. The information regarding her first blog in 1998 and based on the same subject has been lost. Traciy Curry-Reyes' 2000 blog was listed at (Geocities.org/traciy2000). That blog ended with the closing of Geocities. From there, she started the same blog with Blogger in 2008.
- blogger.com in August 1999 (purchased by Googlein February 2003)
Blogging combined the personal web page with tools to make linking to other pages easier — specifically
2001–2004
Several broadly popular American
By 2001, blogging was enough of a phenomenon that how-to manuals began to appear, primarily focusing on technique. The importance of the blogging community (and its relationship to larger society) increased rapidly. Established schools of journalism began researching blogging and noting the differences between journalism and blogging.
Also in 2002, many blogs focused on comments by
The impact of this story gave greater credibility to blogs as a medium of news dissemination. Though often seen as partisan gossips, bloggers sometimes lead the way in bringing key information to public light, with mainstream media having to follow their lead. More often, however, news blogs tend to react to material already published by the mainstream media.
After 2002, blogs gained increasing notice and coverage for their role in breaking, shaping, and
Blogging was established by politicians and political candidates to express opinions on war and other issues and cemented blogs' role as a news source. (See
Blogging was used to draw attention to obscure news sources. For example, bloggers posted links to traffic cameras in Madrid as a huge anti-terrorism demonstration filled the streets in the wake of the
Bloggers began to provide nearly-instant commentary on televised events, creating a secondary meaning of the word "blogging": to simultaneously transcribe and editorialize speeches and events shown on television. (For example, "I am blogging Rice's testimony" means "I am posting my reactions to Condoleezza Rice's testimony into my blog as I watch her on television.") Real-time commentary was sometimes referred to as "liveblogging."
2004–2013
In 2004, the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream, as
Minnesota Public Radio broadcast a program by Christopher Lydon and Matt Stoller called "The blogging of the President," which covered a transformation in politics that blogging seemed to presage. The Columbia Journalism Review began regular coverage of blogs and blogging. Anthologies of blog pieces reached print, and blogging personalities began appearing on radio and television. In the summer of 2004, both United States Democratic and Republican Parties' conventions credentialed bloggers, and blogs became a standard part of the publicity arsenal. Mainstream television programs, such as Chris Matthews' Hardball, formed their own blogs. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary declared "blog" as the word of the year in 2004.[21]
Blogs were among the driving forces behind the "
Some bloggers have moved over to other media. The following bloggers (and others) have appeared on radio and television:
Some blogs were an important news source during the
In 2005,
In the United Kingdom, The Guardian newspaper launched a redesign in September 2005, which included a daily digest of blogs on page 2. Also in June 2006, BBC News launched a weblog for its editors, following other news companies.[22]
In January 2005, .
In 2007, Tim O'Reilly proposed a Blogger's Code of Conduct.
In 2011, Tom Knighton, owner of Knighton Media, Inc, announced that his company was purchasing The Albany Journal. Knighton Media was formed to managed Knighton's blog, Laws-n-Sausages, and this was the first known time that a blog had purchased a newspaper anywhere in the world.[23]
In 2012, Evan Williams of Pyra Labs launched Medium, a publishing platform for amateur and professional writers. In some ways this was the beginning of the end of the blog as a social platform.[24]
2014 and after
The evolution of social media and the speed of people reacting to posted content led to increasing declarations of the death of the blog, even as it was acknowledged that what came after would contain a lot of the same DNA as the blog .[25] Even as the number of voices declaring blogs dead increased each year,[26] others continued to see value, as for example in 2016 when the .blog domain name was launched. Depending on what one means by the word blog, blogging is alive and well - as of 2019, there are an estimated 500 million + blogs or blog-like sites[27] in the world, including inactive websites. Not all platforms choose to share their data publicly, so the number of blogs on the web is likely much higher.
References
- ^ The term "e-log" has been used to describe journal entries sent out via e-mail since as early as March 1996.Norman, David (2005-07-13), Users confused by blogs, archived from the original on 2007-06-07, retrieved 2007-02-20
- ^ "Research staff and students welcome 'E-Log'". University College London. December 2003. Archived from the original on 2007-08-12. Retrieved 2007-02-20.
- ^ a b c d Brad Templeton. "Rec.humor.funny as the world's oldest blog". Retrieved 2011-06-28.
- Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2023-05-03.
- ^ Harmanci, Reyhan (2005-02-20). "Time to get a life — pioneer blogger Justin Hall bows out at 31". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2006-06-09.
- ^ "RIP Jerry Pournelle, the first author to write a novel on a computer". The Verge. Retrieved 2018-06-29.
- ^ "Giggling About sCary Times for Ritual!". Ritual Entertainment. 1997-02-08.
- ^ "Poster Children History". Archived from the original on 2007-06-22.
- ^ "Blog Post Generator - History of blogging". Anyword. 2021-09-14. Retrieved 2022-03-15.
- ^ "Pubcon Pro". Pubcon Pro. Retrieved 22 April 2018.
- ^ "Blogs turn 10". Cnet. 2007-03-20.
- ^ "The Blog Bootstrap".
- ^ "Blog Software".
- ^ "After 10 Years of Blogs, the Future's Brighter Than Ever". Wired. 2007-12-17. Retrieved 2007-12-18.
- ^ "It's the links, stupid". The Economist. 2006-04-20. Retrieved 2006-07-21.
- The Internet Archive. Archived from the originalon 1999-10-13. Retrieved 2006-07-21.
- ^ Kottke, Jason (August 26, 2003). "kottke.org". Retrieved 2006-07-21.
- ^ Origins of "Blog" and "Blogger" Archived 2009-02-21 at the Wayback Machine, American Dialect Society Mailing List (Apr. 20, 2008).
- ^ Jensen, Mallory A Brief History of Weblogs Archived 2008-04-11 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Sullivan, Andrew (2002-02-24). "A Blogger's Manifesto". Andrewsullivan.com archives. Archived from the original on 2009-06-27. Retrieved 2009-07-02.
- ^ "blog declared Word of the Year". Wikinews. 2004-12-01. Retrieved 2006-06-22.
- ^ Wilson, Dawn (2006-06-26). "Down with blogs... so here's another". BBC News. Retrieved 2006-06-26.
- ^ "Blogger acquires Albany Journal". Albany Herald. October 10, 2011. Retrieved April 14, 2012.
- ^ Samuel, Alexandra (30 June 2015). "Have LinkedIn and Medium Killed the Old-Fashioned Blog?". Harvard Business Review.
- ^ "The blog is dead, long live the blog". NiemanLabs. 2013-12-19. Retrieved 2020-01-16.
- ^ "The Rise and Fall of the Blog". 27 December 2017.
- ^ "How Many Blogs Are There in 2019? We Counted Them All!". Hosting Tribunal. 2019-02-12. Retrieved 2019-12-31.