Hmm. I think the "birth of blogs" can't be precisely dated as the WSJ article suggests (even though the article admits it's only "widespread consensus" that 1997 is the birth-year). The birth of the word "weblog" or "blog" perhaps can, but the underlying concept evolved over time, from the very first "what's new" sections, to the invention of RSS, to the invention of easy-to-use blogging software, to the informal ruleset of blogspace ("disclose substantial edits," "credit your sources" etc.). |
The first weblog I came across was on a site setup to coincide with a BBC program called Attachments: http://www.SeeThru.co.uk
Here's a link to a news story about the programme:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/935925.stm
Back then, I understood weblogs to be more like link blogs. For example, weblog posts would provide a link to something that the author had seen on the web which they would then comment on; they were web logs – i.e. logs of what people had found on the web.
As things developed, I saw more and more weblogs turn into personal online diaries (which I guess had been around for years before but never called weblogs or blogs) and corporate "latest news" or "what's new" sections of websites (which, again, have been around for as long as I can remember).
Nowadays, blogs can come in many shapes and sizes, each one trying to achieve something different. So, I agree with Philipp – before we can really pinpoint the age of the "blog" we really need to define what a "blog" actually is. |
> we really need to define what a "blog" actually is.
I think you can assign points per blog-like feature (e.g. RSS feed 10 points, reverse chronological 30 points, comments 10 points and so on...) and then you can find some arbitrary threshold upon which you count that thing as blog. One thing to consider: what if a crucial part of something blog-like is social, and also understanding of the social rules is part of it (e.g. you need to know what a permalink *implies* to make good use of it – it's almost like a social contract where one tells the other, "I don't intend to move this URL"), and also its network structure in relation to other sites (blogs)? Because then you can't reduce the thing to a single site, or a single person maintaining that site.
I completely didn't "get" this social part of blogs for years when the word arrived, because I only looked at technical explanations of blogs... and as I was creating a cool CMS at the time, and knew how to write HTML, dismissed it as something boring. So that's why in retrospect I think the social aspect of blogs is very important if you want to pinpoint the essence. If it's a "conversation" (this word is started to get abused by some groups!) then you can't really say who was the first to start a conversation, because each conversation needs at least two people, who both have a common understanding of the language they use (and try to pinpoint who invented a certain language... seems impossible). |
