Which came 1st, the blogger or the blogging site? When the internet began to spread in the 1990s, online communities were already gathering around common interests, using avenues like email lists and electronic bulletin boards to connect. But these were “back door ” strategies not simply attached to the new internet pages, and the private interactions were clunky and mechanical. People wanted something more of a diary which could record their thoughts and allow people to reply. The issue was how to make this possible.
Enter the blog software. It took many forms in its early days in the mid-1990s, often just permitting the blogger to post text entries everyday, still without any reply capacity from readers. Some of the earliest software did manage to form forums where “threads” could be created, folks posting one after another on specific subjects. But ultimately programs developed that authorized readers to comment on a single diary-type entry, and this was when the real blogs commenced.
While 1998 was the year the world first saw a blogging site as it’s known today (Open Diary, established in October), the big year for blogs and bloggers appears to have been 1999, since it saw the debut of sites like LiveJournal, Pitas.com, Diaryland, and the well-known blogger.com site. Even the word “blog ” was coined in this year. It is a shortened form of “weblog, “first employed in 1997 by Jorn Barger on his “Robot wisdom Weblog. ” In 1999, Peter Merholz broke the word down to the phrase “we blog,” and eventually Evan Williams at Pyra labs popularized the utilization of “a blog” as a noun, and “to blog” as a verb.
Once multi-member blogging sites were established, the phenomenon took off in a big way. In 2003, WordPress, another major site, was introduced, based mostly on open source blogging software. As blogging grew in appreciation, the use and value of blogs became more clear, and in more realms than anybody had thought possible.
Blogs are now entertainment sites, gossiping about famous folk. Company and home business websites might include a blog for communicating with purchasers. Blogs spring news that can make or break officeholders, the writers functioning as a new sort of correspondent. The blogger is king, digging for information, giving tips, connecting helpers with those who need them. Whatever kind of connection folks desire, there are blogs to provide it. And more than any of that, they still serve the function that they were initially designed for, which is providing a diary site where folks can record their thoughts and hear what others have to say about them.
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