THE HISTORY OF BLOGGING By Sumayyah Bailey
WHAT IS A BLOG? ➤
The term ‘blog’ is a truncation of the expression weblog
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A weblog is a discussion/ informational website that is uploaded on the internet
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Blogs are often published in a diary entry style, with posts displayed in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page
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Up until the mid 2000s, blogs were usually the work of individuals, but in more recent years, mainstream media has got more involved
THE BEGINNING OF BLOGGING It is believed that the first blog created was Links.net, created by Justin Hall, a Swarthmore College student in 1994. During that time these kinds of sites weren't called ‘blogs’ so he just referred to it as his personal homepage. The term ‘weblog’ was created in 1997. The word’s creation has been attributed Jorn Barger, the creator of the blog ‘Robot The term was created to reflect “logging the web” as he browsed.
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DEVELOPMENT IN BLOGGING The first known instance of a blog on a traditional news site, in1998, is when Jonathan Dube blogged Hurricane Bonnie for The Charlotte Observer “Weblog” was shortened to “blog” in 1999 by programmer Peter Merholz. The original blogs were updated manually, often linked from a central home page or archive. This wasn’t very efficient, but unless you were a programmer who could create your own custom blogging platform, there weren’t any other options to begin with.
EARLY BLOGGING PLATFORMS During the early years, a few more “blogging� platforms came about. LiveJournal is probably the most recognisable of the early sites. In 1999, the platform that would soon become Blogger was started by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan at Pyra Labs. This platform was largely responsible for bringing blogging to mainstream media.
BLOGGING GROWTH The early 2000s were a period of growth for blogs. According to a list compiled by, writer and interface developer, Jesse James Garrett, in 1999 there were 23 blogs online. According to the Technorati‘s State of the Blogosphere report there were 50 million blogs by the middle of 2006. Political blogs were some of the most popular early blogs. Political candidates such as ; Howard Dean and Wesley Clark started using blogs during this time period. In-depth topic blogs were also becoming more popular during this time, offering more current news and pop culture than the news. In 2001, there was a lot of interest in blogging, so how-to blogs started to pop up. This gave beginners a guide to learn the basics of blogging. During the early 2000s, many popular blogs started. This included Huffington Post, Boing Boing and the first major gossip blog, Gawker.
MAJOR BLOGGING PLATFORMS A couple of major blogging platforms got their start in the early 2000s. Version 1.0 of Movable Type was released in September of 2001. Wordpress and Typepad were released in 2003. Some peripheral services to the blogosphere also started in the early 2000s. Technorati, the first major blog search engine, was launched in 2002. Audioblogger, the first major podcasting service, was founded in 2003. The first video blogs started in 2004, more than a year before YouTube was founded. The AdSense advertising platform was also launched in 2003 , it was the first ad network to match ads to the content on a blog. AdSense also made it possible for bloggers without huge platforms to start making money from when they first started blogging. Once bloggers started making money from their blogs, the number of meta blogs skyrocketed. Bloggers like Darren Rowse (of Problogger.net and Digital-PhotographySchool.net) and John Chow made sizable amounts of money telling other bloggers how they could turn blogging into a full-time career
THE UPRISE OF BLOGGING By the mid-2000s, blogs were reaching the mainstream. In January of 2005, a study was released saying that 32 million Americans read blogs. At the time, it’s more than ten percent of the entire population. A number of mainstream media sites started their own blogs during the mid to late 2000s, or teamed up with existing blogs to provide additional coverage and commentary. By 2004, political consultants, candidates, and mainstream news organisations all began using blogs more prominently. During this time, the number of blogs grew even more, with more than 152 million blogs active by the end of 2010. Nearly every mainstream news source now had at least one blog, as did many corporations and individuals.
MICROBLOGS A lot of people only think of Twitter when they think of microblogging, but there are other microblog (also called tumblog) platforms that allow for a more traditional type of blogging experience, while also allowing for the social networking features of Twitter (like following other bloggers). Tumblr was the first major site to oer this kind of service, starting in 2007,They allow for a variety of dierent post types, unlike traditional blogging services, which have a one-size-fits -all post format (that allows users to format their posts however they want, including adding multimedia objects). Posterous is another, similar service. Launched in 2008, Posterous allows bloggers to set up a simple blog via email, and then submit content either via their online editor or by email.
BLOGOSPHERE Over the past 20 years, blogging has come a long way. Vlogs and podcasts have also taken on a bigger role in the blogosphere, with a lot of bloggers opting to use primarily multimedia content. Services that cater to these kinds of posts (like Tumblr and Posterous) are likely to keep growing in popularity. With much more room for growth and talent, the market for blogging is only likely to grow.