A reunion: Bringing Humans back to nature

      History Of Blogging 

 Introduction:

Blogs are an integral part of the digital world. Everyone reads them, whether they are based on news stories, facts or on topics of media, entertainment, or current events. But blogging has evolved dramatically from the past when blogs were only written about personal interests.

The blog posts of today comprise images, infographics, and a vast array of information, not just text.

 1993 :Blogging Begins

 Right around the time Bill Clinton was being inaugurated as the President of the United States and Beanie Babies were making their debut, Rob Palmer, the self-described world’s first blogger and digital nomad, started what was essentially a blog for a communications company he’d been hired by in London.

When was the first blog started? In 1993 by Rob Palmer.

The first or very early online journal (aka blog) was only made up of plain text—there were no graphics or fancy formatting, but this very first incarnation of a blog did something important. It had the ability to spread ideas.

This blog, which is quite possible the world’s first, showed that the Internet was teeming with potential. You can hear all about the world’s first blog by listening to my interview with Rob from earlier this year. It’s quite an interesting tale of what it was like learning how to make a website in those early days.

 

 How different blogging platforms began and died

Just as the cumbersome, code-heavy blogs of the late ’90s began to give way to more accessible solutions, in 1999 the word “weblog” was dropped in favor of a simpler term: “blog” by Peter Merholz. This year also saw the advent of three new blogging platforms: Xanga, LiveJournal, and Blogger. Xanga, a site that focused more on the social side of blogging (similar to MySpace), boasted 300,000 users at its peak but faded out of the blogging scene entirely.

LiveJournal started as a website where Brad Fitzpatrick could keep in touch with his high school friends, and quickly grew into a place where all kinds of people could record their thoughts and develop communities. LiveJournal sustained popularity as a blogging platform into the mid-2000s, but gradually transformed from a blogging site where all were welcome into one of Russia’s primary social media platforms.

Blogger, on the other hand, began its life as a commercial blogging service created by Pyra Labs. The platform would go on to be purchased by Google in 2003 and made freely available to the world. This move pushed not just Blogger, but also the entire concept of blogging, into the mainstream.

The early 2000s

As blogging became more popular, tools appeared to help people curate their blog reading list or market their own blogs. 2002 was a particularly big year for the blogosphere. People also started to monetize their blogs with sites like BlogAds, a precursor to Google AdSense.

The first-ever blog search engine, Technorati, launched that November.

Many popular blogs also launched in this year, including Gizmodo and Gawker, some of the earliest companies to use blogging itself as their primary business model. Check out the original version of Gizmodo below:

Heather Armstrong became the first person to get fired for talking about her job on her blog in February 2002, putting her blog Dooce in the spotlight of many conversations about internet privacy. “Dooced” even became a verb, meaning “fired for blogging”.

2002 was a big year for blogging, but 2003 turned out to be even bigger. Google purchased Blogger and introduced AdSense, making it possible for anyone to monetize their blog without needing to join a special network like BlogAds.

2003 also saw the birth of two new brand-new blogging services that would further alter the blogosphere: TypePad, a commercial blogging platform that hosts blogs for major multimedia companies like the BBC, and WordPress, the open-source platform we use for Themeisle and our sister sites. These platforms made it easy for companies to create their own fully customized blogs and sell advertising directly to companies for improved profits.

The Rise of Microblogs and Tumblogs

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 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 Facebook’s “like” feature).

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.

Posterous is sometimes considered more of a lifestreaming app than a blogging platform, thought it’s technically both.

 

The Future of Blogging

Eight 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 individual’s 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, there’s the possibility that the blogosphere will 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 there’s a lot of room for growth and innovation in method in which their content is found, delivered, and accessed.