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A Brief History of BloggingMarketing,Web Design,WordPress | Mar 14, 2011

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Blogs have become an integral part of online culture.Practically everyone reads blogs now, whether theyre official news blogs associated with traditional

news media, topic-based blogs related to ones work or hobbies, or blogs purely for entertainment, just

about anyone you ask has at least one favorite blog.

But it wasnt always so. Blogs have a relatively short history, even when compared with the history of the

Internet itself.

And its only in the past five to ten years that theyve really taken off and become an important part of the

online landscape.

The Early YearsIts generally recognized that the first blog wasLinks.net, created by Justin Hall, while he was a

Swarthmore College student in 1994. Of course, at that time they werent called blogs, and he just

referred to it as his personal homepage.

It wasnt until 1997 that the term weblog was coined. The words creation has been attributed toJorn

Barger, of the influential early blogRobot Wisdom. The term was created to reflect the process of

logging the web as he browsed.

1998 marks the first known instance of a blog on a traditional news site, when Jonathan Dube blogged

Hurricane Bonnie for The Charlotte Observer.

Weblog was shortened to blog in 1999 by programmer Peter Merholz. Its not until five years later that

Merriam-Webster declares the word their word of the year.

The original blogs were updated manually, often linked from a central home page or archive. This wasnt

very efficient, but unless you were a programmer who could create your own custom blogging platform,

there werent any other options to begin with.

During these early years, a few different blogging platforms cropped up. LiveJournalis probably the

most recognizable of the early sites.

And then, in 1999, the platform that would later becomeBloggerwas started by Evan Williams and Meg

Hourihan at Pyra Labs. Blogger is largely responsible for bringing blogging to the mainstream.

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The Growth PeriodThe early 2000s were a period of growth for blogs. In 1999, according to a list compiled by Jesse James

Garrett, there were 23 blogs on the internet. By the middle of 2006, there were 50 million blogs according

toTechnoratis State of the Blogosphere report. To say that blogs experienced exponential growth is a bi

of an understatement.

Political blogs were some of the most popular early blogs. Some political candidates started using blogsduring this time period, including Howard Dean and Wesley Clark.

One important event in the rise of blogging was when bloggers focused on the comments U.S. Senate

Majority Leader Trent Lott said regarding U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond in 2002. Lott, while praising

Thurmond, stated that the U.S. would have been better off if Thurmond had been elected President in

1948. During that race, Thurmond was a strong supporter of racial segregation (though his position

changed later in his political career). The mainstream media didnt pick up on the comments and their

potential implications until after bloggers broke the story.

In-depth topic blogs were also becoming more popular during this time. They often delved much deeperinto current news and pop culture than mainstream media sources, in addition to commenting directly on

what traditional media was reporting.

By 2001, there was enough interest in blogging that some how-to articles and guides started cropping up.

Now, meta blogs (blogs about blogging) make up a sizable portion of the most popular and successful

blogs out there.

A number of popular blogs got their start in the early 2000s, including Boing Boing, Dooce, Gizmodo

Gawker (the first major gossip blog to launch), Wonkette, and the Huffington Post. Weblogs, Inc. was

started by Jason Calacanis in 2003, and was then sold to AOL for $25 million. It was that sale that helped

to cement blogs as a force to be reckoned with rather than just a passing fad.

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 was started in 2003, though parts of its development date back to 2001. TypePad was also

released in 2003, based on Movable Type.

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.

Also launched in 2003 was the AdSense advertising platform, which 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

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making money from when they first started blogging (though payments to low-traffic blogs werent very

large).

Once bloggers started making money from their blogs, the number of meta blogs skyrocketed. Bloggers

like Darren Rowse (ofProblogger.netandDigital-Photography-School.net) andJohn Chowmade

sizable amounts of money telling other bloggers how they could turn blogging into a full-time career.

One early event that highlighted the rising importance of blogs was the firing of Heather Armstrong, the

blogger behindDooce,for comments posted on her blog regarding her employer. This event happened in

2002, and sparked a debate over privacy issues, that still hasnt been sufficiently put to rest by 2011.

Dooced became a slang term to describe being fired from ones job for something youve written on your

blog, and has made appearances inUrban Dictionary,and even on Jeopardy!

Blogs Reach the MainstreamBy 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, its more than ten percent of the entire population. The

same year, Garrett M. Graff was granted White House press credentials, the first blogger ever to do so.

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 organizations all began using blogs more prominently. They provided

the perfect vehicle for broadcasting editorial opinion and reaching out to readers and viewers.

Mainstream media sources are also teaming up with existing blogs and bloggers, rather than just setting

out on their own. Take, for example, the regular posts on CNN.com from Mashable editors and writers

Another good example is the purchase of TechCrunch and associated blogs by AOL, which, while not a

traditional media source, is one of the oldest internet companies still in existence.

During this time, the number of blogs grew even more, with more than 152 million blogs active by the end

of 2010. Virtually every mainstream news source now has at least one blog, as do many corporations and

individuals.

The Rise of Microblogs and Tumblogs

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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).

Tumblrwas the first major site to offer this kind of service, starting in 2007. They allow for a variety of

different 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).

It also makes it easier for users to reblog the content of others, or to like individual posts (sort of like

Facebooks like feature).

Posterousis 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.

Posterous is sometimes considered more of a lifestreaming app than a blogging platform, thought its

technically both.

The Future of BloggingEight to ten years ago, blogs were becoming the primary point of communication for individuals online.

But with the advent of social media and social networking in the past five years, blogs have become only

one portion of an individuals online persona.

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 new services like Quora coming onto the market, theres the possibility that the blogosphere wil

shrink, and more people will turn to sites like these to get information. But services like Quora also provide

valuable tools for bloggers, as they give insight into what people really want to know about a topic.

Blogs are unlikely to go anywhere in the foreseeable future. But theres a lot of room for growth and

innovation in method in which their content is found, delivered, and accessed.

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