The history of blogs (or weblogs) go back as far as the early nineties. But as to who the first blogger was, this is unclear as the definition of blog has evolved during this time and different people added to this evolution of the word thus making it difficult to pin point the blog to be created!!!
The beginning of the blog era started in 1983 when a man called Brian E Redman set up a webiste within a forum. On the site he posted summaries of any interesting threads or posts he found. However, this was using a service called Usernet, as the idea of html and the internet had not yet been invented! This was ran from 1983-84 and was called mod.ber.
In 1992, Tim Berners Lee posted the first ever webpage on the internet which contained links to new websites as they came online.
One of the first known bloggers on the internet, was a university student called Justin Hall who reported on his life whilst attending Swarthmore college in America. This was one of the first bloggers who wrote what we would now call a blog. However, there were several people who helped blogs evolve into what they are today!
One of these people is a guy called Jorn Barger who was the editor for a website called Robot Wisdom, in which he posted entries, containing comments and links! His contribution to the history of blogging is that he changed the definition of a weblog into what it means today!
This was in December 1997!
November 1998 Cameron Barrett releases the first list of blog sites on Camworld.
Early 1999- Peter Merholz anounces that he will pronounce weblog as we blog thus the word was then shortened to blog.
July 1999- A site called Pitas appears, becoming the first free build your own blog tool on the web.
August 1999- Pyra release Blogger (the site you are on now) which has become the most popular blogging tool based on the net, thus also making blogging more popular among many internet users.
By the end of 2000 there are thousands of blogs based on many topics, some full of news and articles, others more of a personal account.
By 2001, blogging had become such a phenomenon that how to manuals appeared. These mainly focusing on writing technique. As well as this schools of Journalism satrted to analyse blogs, comparing blogging to journalism.
From 2002 blogs were and are still known for their ability to break, spin and shape the latest news and as time has passed these sites have had more coverage as more people have noticed blogs such as Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, a blog set up in 2000 focusing on news items and Rebecca Blood's blog, Rebecca's notebook about other bloggers and journalism, which lead her to write the book 'the weblog handbook'.
In 2004 blogs had become mainstream and were often used to air opinions on political issues. This lead to the release of Global voices online, which "aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore". This meant that bloggers from around the world were becoming more known. This site is now linked with Reuters and is often responsible for breaking news stories from around the globe.
In January 2006 Fortune magazine announced eight business bloggers who were not to be ignored; these were: Peter Rojas, Xeni Jardin, Ben Trott, Mena Trott, Jonathan Schwartz, Jason Goldman, Robert Scoble and Jason Calacanis.
and finally, in 2007, Tim O'Reilly proposed a Blogger's Code of Conduct.
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1 comment:
Good post - some good research and your key point at the beginning, re it being difficult to say who the first blogger was, is a good one.
Make sure you check details - Brian Redman is interesting, in that he was doing was bloggers do - filtering online content - but he was doing it via Usenet - not Usernet. Similarly, Usenet used the net - the net was invented back in the last 60s... Usenet pre-dates the web - that was developed at the end of the 80s. Usenet is part of the pre-Web internet... Elswhere, there's some good historical detail - where did you find it all? If you used certain key sources, then link to them.
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