This summer marks the 10th anniversary (or birthday?) of blogging.
In a feature story this weekend highlighting remarks from prominent bloggers, politicians and others on the "blogiversary," The Wall Street Journal's Tunku Varadarajan wrote:
In the decade since their conception, blogs, once a smorgasbord of links, have evolved into vehicles for a fuller, more forceful and opinionated prose. Not all of it has been lovely to behold, or even edifying. Inevitably, there has been bombast, verbosity and exposure to the public eye of thoughts that, ideally, should have remained locked inside fevered heads.
The feature includes comments from Newt Gingrich, Tom Wolfe, Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake, a podcast on the impact of blogs, several video clips and more.
Definitely one to throw in the "worthy read" pile for this week!
Earlier this year, The (U.K.) Guardian released a blog-style article highlighting some top moments in the history of blogging and threw in some "fun facts." Here's a sampling:
- The contraction ["blog"] was first used in 1999, but it wasn't until 2004 that it got wholesale recognition - with the Merriam Webster dictionary making it its word of the year.
- By making it simple for anybody to create their own site - particularly through its Blogspot hosting service - the company behind Blogger changed the face of the medium. And then it got bought by Google.
- Created by the U.S. web guru Dave Winer, Scripting News is sometimes described as the first modern blog, though the term "weblog" was not used in the early days.