Re:A highly inaccurate history lesson, actually...
on
Online Journals
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· Score: 1
Um, sort of.
I like LiveJournal enough, but I find this slick coordinated "grass roots" promotional campaign a little trying... But anyway.
LiveJournal facilitated JOURNALS, primarily, not WEBLOGS. LiveJournals may have been among the first sites in that vein, yes. You also have Diary-X, Diaryland, Opendiary, MyDearDiary... it goes on and on. Journals were of course built by hand since way back when - Carolyn Burke in 1995, Justin Hall, other names tossed around often.
Meanwhile. 'Weblogs' as a term existed as far back as 1997, and really, Yahoo!'s primordial days as a list of links at Stanford back in 1994 (?) may have been the first. As far as that format of web publishing, Pitas and Blogger pretty much captured the masses. Independent scripts like NewsPro already existed, of course, and since then advanced scripts like Greymatter are spreading.
I think the most annoying thing about the article is that it uses 'weblog' as a simple synonym for 'diary' or 'journal.' Not all 'blogs are personal journals (as has been strongly emphasized in discussions here), and in fact, as far as cranky old-timers on both sides are concerned, they're completely different.
Weblogs in the original, traditional, Slashdot sense are focused on external content. Here's a link, here's what I think, what do you think. Diaries and journals, of course, were all introspective, focused on the author alone - thoughts, experiences, activities.
The thing is weblog _tools_ made it easy for anyone to publish online. A link weblog could evolve over time into a journal, as the links and commentary fade and the 'what I ate today' stuff grows. And lots of people seized on weblog sites and scripts (i.e. Noah Grey's excellent and totally snubbed Greymatter) to publish journals from the get-go.
I appreciate the link I found here to an essay on the "history of weblogs" (tracing the term back to 1997, and the first weblog to 1998). On the online journal side, an excellent site is the Online Diary History Project.
Both of these phenomenon, in my humble opinion, are a big part of the evolution of the Internet (or at least the preservation of the 'personal' and 'connections' element, versus corporate and commercial). We should keep track of how its immortalized by the 'mainstream.'
Already I'm sure it's just semantics for some, but I just can't let go of these little distinctions...
Slashdot Mirror
I like LiveJournal enough, but I find this slick coordinated "grass roots" promotional campaign a little trying... But anyway.
LiveJournal facilitated JOURNALS, primarily, not WEBLOGS. LiveJournals may have been among the first sites in that vein, yes. You also have Diary-X, Diaryland, Opendiary, MyDearDiary... it goes on and on. Journals were of course built by hand since way back when - Carolyn Burke in 1995, Justin Hall, other names tossed around often.
Meanwhile. 'Weblogs' as a term existed as far back as 1997, and really, Yahoo!'s primordial days as a list of links at Stanford back in 1994 (?) may have been the first. As far as that format of web publishing, Pitas and Blogger pretty much captured the masses. Independent scripts like NewsPro already existed, of course, and since then advanced scripts like Greymatter are spreading.
I think the most annoying thing about the article is that it uses 'weblog' as a simple synonym for 'diary' or 'journal.' Not all 'blogs are personal journals (as has been strongly emphasized in discussions here), and in fact, as far as cranky old-timers on both sides are concerned, they're completely different. Weblogs in the original, traditional, Slashdot sense are focused on external content. Here's a link, here's what I think, what do you think. Diaries and journals, of course, were all introspective, focused on the author alone - thoughts, experiences, activities. The thing is weblog _tools_ made it easy for anyone to publish online. A link weblog could evolve over time into a journal, as the links and commentary fade and the 'what I ate today' stuff grows. And lots of people seized on weblog sites and scripts (i.e. Noah Grey's excellent and totally snubbed Greymatter) to publish journals from the get-go. I appreciate the link I found here to an essay on the "history of weblogs" (tracing the term back to 1997, and the first weblog to 1998). On the online journal side, an excellent site is the Online Diary History Project. Both of these phenomenon, in my humble opinion, are a big part of the evolution of the Internet (or at least the preservation of the 'personal' and 'connections' element, versus corporate and commercial). We should keep track of how its immortalized by the 'mainstream.' Already I'm sure it's just semantics for some, but I just can't let go of these little distinctions...