History on Blogging

Blogs are an important part of Internet culture – nearly everyone either has a blog of their own or reads one regularly – but what is the history on blogging and how did this phenomenon get started?

History on Blogging

The history on blogging starts with the blog, which was originally called the “weblog”. This term is first found to be used in a research paper published by college lecturers from Australia in 1995. The term was used once, and then seemingly, it was forgotten. In 1997, weblog became a more commonly used term, as one of the first blogs, Robot Wisdom, and its owner Jorn Barger, used the term to describe its site. After this time, the word became commonplace among the users of the World Wide Web.
In the year 1999, the common term “blog” was coined by a different individual, Peter Merholz, who decided the word “weblog” was pronounced “wee-blog”. He shortened the term to blog, and blogging – the act of writing and maintaining a blog – was born. This is not to say that blogs didn't exist before the naming of them did. Dating back the earliest beginnings of the World Wide Web and the Internet as we know it today, people have had personal websites that were updated with news and events.

The difference between blogging and maintaining a personal website, however, is twofold. The format of the site itself is different – a blog is usually a simple site with styles for links and entries. Little else is needed to maintain a blog besides software that allows archiving of posts and easy updating. Whether or not a personal site is a blog is also judged by the way the site is updated. Entries are usually added without removing prior content, and these entries are displayed in reverse chronological order.
The biggest point in the history on blogging happened in 1999, when Pyra Labs developed software that made having a blog easy for anyone with access to the Internet. Blogger.com was developed in order to allow bloggers to write and host their blogs for free – using different styles of blog templates and choosing when and how to update their blogs.

The history on blogging is not very long, considering it (as well as the World Wide Web) is a fairly recent phenomenon. We can be certain, however, that there are many more developments in store for those who choose to blog.