A blog on Blogs

This blog is going to be a little bit different than any of my other blogs. Today I’m going to dive into the history of the blog, how they came be, and why we use them. I’m going to explore where the blog phenomenon came from, and link you to a few of my favorites throughout.

Let’s begin with the word. “Blog,” as defined by the dictionary means: to writes or maintain a weblog. We as writers of weblogs are bloggers. The term “blog” that we use, usually means weblog.

The first use of the term “weblog” was on August 14, 1995 in the paper “Exploiting the World-Wide Web for Electronic Meeting Document Analysis and Management” by G. Raikundalia & M. Rees, of Bond University in the Gold Coast of Australia. Interestingly enough, the term “weblog” does not appear in the record of this paper at the Charles Sturt University website.

The term that we use today came from Jorn Barger of the weblog Robot Wisdom (http://www.robotwisdom.com) in December 1997. This would be what we think of a blog on the popular websites such as http://www.livejournal.com, http://www.wordpress.com, and http://www.blogger.com. The shortened form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog (http://www.Peterme.com) in the spring of1999.

We write about whatever we feel needs to be written about whether it be like my blog which is mainly about what happens on a day to day basis. But a blog can be about literally anything including what tie Brian Williams wore on the Night News (http://brianwilliamstiereportarchives.blogspot.com/). Most of the blogs I read, however, are more personally based. I read my friend’s blogs and the blogs of authors that I like, for example Maureen Johnson (http://maureenjohnson.blogspot.com) and John Green (http://www.sparksflyup.com/weblog.php).

In January of 1994 a Swarthmore College Student, Justin Hall started his website which has since become Links from the Underground. His site was mainly links and reviews of other websites, until January 10, 1996. On that day Hall started to write an online diary, linked through an index on his website. Hall has been called “the father of the blog." He started to post on the internet what people had been doing for years in secret journals, only now it was in public view. Of his journal, Hall wrote: “Some days, before I go to bed, I think about my day, and how it meshed with my life, and I write a little about what learned me.” This is the major concept of most blogs today.

Today’s blogging has started to move away from all personally diary style entries. Many bloggers are taking a stand in the mass media and news. The first known use of a blog in this way was after Hurricane Bonnie in August of 1998 by Jonathan Dube.

As blogging has become more popular, the websites that I mentioned earlier as well as countless others began to pop up, giving the regular person a chance to get involved in the blogging community.

In October of 1998, Open Diary (http://www.opendiary.com/) was founded. This was the first of the blogging websites that allowed comments on blog entries. Shortly thereafter, in March of 1999, Brian Fitzpatrick founded livejournal (http://www.livejournal.com). Also in 1999, the site that we are on right now (http://www.blogger.com) was started by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan of Pyra Labs. Google then bought this site in 2003.

Livejournal is where my personal journey of blogging begins, I have since deleted my original journal but I started it in October or November of 2003 in order to have an online fight with one of my friends over which play of the Boston Bruins was better. Being sixteen, this seemed like the logical thing to do. I like to believe that I won this fight, but I think that in actually, no one really cared after a while and we moved t o fight about some other stupid teenage girl thing.

Eventually I moved on the greatestjournal, which is basically the exact same thing as livejournal expect there is more space to have cute icons. My entries on both my live and greatest journals we’re anything exciting. Just typical what I did today lame entries. It wasn’t until recently that I started posting my fiction writing on the internet in my blogs.

Today, I am involved in a blogging project that involves over 300 nerdfighters, and Serket Agents. Nerdfighters are fans of the writing of John Green, and Serket Agents are the unofficial name of fans of Maureen Johnson. Both are young adult fictions authors. And John Green, along with his younger brother Hank, is a popular vloggers.

The project is Blog Ever Day April (popularly known as BEDA) the concept is simple, for the thirty days in April, one posts a new blog. A list of the bloggers can be found in Jordan’s blog (http://blogeverydayapril.blogspot.com/), along the side.

Blogging has become part of many people’s daily life. I, personally, feel as if I belong in the blogging community. There isn’t anyone telling the writer of a blog that what they are saying is boring or uninteresting. I know what I’m writing ninety-five percent of the time is boring and uninteresting. I may not have one of the most popular blogs, but I feel connected to the internet and the community that it encompasses. Letting my feelings and thoughts out here on the internet, I will hopefully become someone that gets followers and can be a big part of the internet world as a whole.

Sources:
http://www.blogherald.com/2005/03/06/a-short-history-of-blogging/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog


I will soon be posting a video about video blogs, on my youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/users/misuseofairqoutes). If I can figure out how to post them in here, I will. If not I will post the link here.