The First Blogs Ever
The comments under my last entry triggered a googling for the history of blogging.
First, I found a timeline.
Dec 1997: Jorn Barger coins the term web log.
November 1998: Cameron Barrett publishes the first list of blog sites on Camworld.
Early 1999: Peter Merholz coins the term blog after announcing he was going to pronouce web blogs as "wee-blog". This was then shortened to blog.
After reading an interesting essay by Rebecca Blood, I decided that *private, thought-recording blogs like ours, unlike the collection of presurfed links with comments a la Slashdot.com, could be said to start with Blogger.com.
And the founders of Blogger, the centre of my cyberspace right at this moment, Ev and Meg, have their own blogs since 1999.
Let me simply call those the first jot-it-down blogs:
Evhead
and
Megnut
For simplicity's sake.
BTW, on my travels with Google, I had fun reading this deja vu from 1998:
--------------------------------
November 03, 1998
CamRant: Why I Won't Be Voting on November 3, 1998
(...)
Posted by camworld at 05:35 PM
...................................
November 04, 1998
CamRant: Why I Should Have Voted on November 3, 1998
(...)
Posted by camworld at 05:37 PM
-------------------------------------------------
More at Camworld, a very early links-type blog (see the timeline link).
At least the apathy was less in the 2004 elections.
I experienced that new voter involvement first-hand:
In the middle of the night here in Europe, but on Election Day 2004 in the US, my cell-phone rang. Gradually, after some initial swearing on my end, it became clear that this was an East Coast man I last talked to in 2001, on a long Greyhound ride to New York while planes were grounded after Sept. 11.
He wanted my take on the presidential election before voting!
"You said then we would over-react. I think you were right."
I must have been the only European he knew.
Hopefully I can take credit for 0.000000001 percent of Kerry's votes ...
Aisha
(*edited: personal-- as a comment says below, a blog is hardly private!)
First, I found a timeline.
Dec 1997: Jorn Barger coins the term web log.
November 1998: Cameron Barrett publishes the first list of blog sites on Camworld.
Early 1999: Peter Merholz coins the term blog after announcing he was going to pronouce web blogs as "wee-blog". This was then shortened to blog.
After reading an interesting essay by Rebecca Blood, I decided that *private, thought-recording blogs like ours, unlike the collection of presurfed links with comments a la Slashdot.com, could be said to start with Blogger.com.
And the founders of Blogger, the centre of my cyberspace right at this moment, Ev and Meg, have their own blogs since 1999.
Let me simply call those the first jot-it-down blogs:
Evhead
and
Megnut
For simplicity's sake.
BTW, on my travels with Google, I had fun reading this deja vu from 1998:
--------------------------------
November 03, 1998
CamRant: Why I Won't Be Voting on November 3, 1998
(...)
Posted by camworld at 05:35 PM
...................................
November 04, 1998
CamRant: Why I Should Have Voted on November 3, 1998
(...)
Posted by camworld at 05:37 PM
-------------------------------------------------
More at Camworld, a very early links-type blog (see the timeline link).
At least the apathy was less in the 2004 elections.
I experienced that new voter involvement first-hand:
In the middle of the night here in Europe, but on Election Day 2004 in the US, my cell-phone rang. Gradually, after some initial swearing on my end, it became clear that this was an East Coast man I last talked to in 2001, on a long Greyhound ride to New York while planes were grounded after Sept. 11.
He wanted my take on the presidential election before voting!
"You said then we would over-react. I think you were right."
I must have been the only European he knew.
Hopefully I can take credit for 0.000000001 percent of Kerry's votes ...
Aisha
(*edited: personal-- as a comment says below, a blog is hardly private!)
posted by Aisha | 1:32 PM
2 Comments:
aisha
First, thanks for your comments on my new blog.
I'm flying by the seat of my pants here, not sure what is expected of bloggers.
I read your article and it was helpful.
Although I'm puzzled by your term "private" blog.
It doesn't seem very private to me..quite the contrary.
Isn't the point of this to share and interact?
Also I can see that this is quite labor intensive, time consuming. Perhaps you can explain that to me.
Anyway, I'm impressed with your blog, Aisha - very articulate, thoughtful and intelligent. So like you.
Cheers,
Jerry,
Thank you very much, as always I value your comments.
Hmmm--wrong word, you are right: I edited 'private' to 'personal' above.
Time-consuming? So is poetry and painting.. and a blogger does not have to write unless something comes to her.
BTW, read Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, the book I named this for, and read Gibson's blog at www.williamgibsonbooks.com -- he used the blog when blocked in his writing -- and recently to help Kerry win...
Aisha
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