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Blogging Is 10 Years Old

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the or-thereabouts dept.

Several readers sent us notice of an article in the Wall Street Journal in advance of the tenth anniversary of the blog (by some definitions and accounts). The Ur-blogger in this version of history was Jorn Barger and the blog was Robot Wisdom. Barger wrote, "I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff." The Journal article has statements from a baker's dozen of bloggers and/or blogwatchers and a handful of videos of bloggers talking about how and why they do what they do.

6 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. And their moms STILL don't read their blogs. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Nor does anybody else.

  2. He also typical of most bloggers: by Winckle · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Maintained by Jorn Barger (jorn@mcs.com). Last updated: Aug99"

  3. Overinflated self-importance, however... by nuzak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... much more than 10 years old.

    --
    Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
  4. Pitty he did not patent it by houghi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    because that would have ment that nobody would be able to blog.

    --
    Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  5. How quickly the WELL has been forgotten. by Archeopteryx · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The WELL, or Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link was a forum were people were doing what we would now call blogging but LONG before the WWW existed.

    --
    Dog is my co-pilot.
  6. I call bullshit! by billcopc · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm absolutely certain (without proof) that the act of blogging predates these hypocrites!

    The difference is that back in the day, you had to be well-versed in the technology to pull it off. You couldn't just download Wordpress, wear a yuppie shirt and call yourself a genius back then, you had to write your own scripts/software, or do it by hand with HTML and a whole lot of patience.

    I know I was doing it, with a randy assortment of little management apps and batch files (I was a DOS geek at the time). My design skills were puke, but it's safe to say my site was updated extremely often for a vanity site; more than my present blog, that's for sure. This was in 1996, the good old days when the biggest MP3 stash online was bongo.tamu.edu and animated gifs were all the rage.

    Did I make any money with that early "blog" ? Hell no! Does that disqualify me as a blogger ? To the WSJ, probably!

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    -Billco, Fnarg.com