Birth of The Blogosphere
Continuing the story, so far we have seen History of Blogs and Introduction to the Business of Blogging.
FYI: The term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger
FYI: The term blogosphere was coined on September 10, 1999 by Brad L. Graham, as a joke.
Justin Hall, who began blogging in 1994 is generally recognized as one of the earliest bloggers and Dave Winer’s Scripting News is one of the oldest and longest running weblogs.
What did people blog about
- Personal blog: Me, Myself and I
- Particular subject; Technology, Travel, Food, Politics, Sports.
- Random stuff: random (blog);
And as usual late comers were the corporate blogs, spammers ( read marketers), splog .
FYI: The first spam email was sent on May 01 1978 by a DEC marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
Why folks blog?
- Document my Life
- A Point of View
- Outlet for thoughts and feelings – Cheaper than a shrink
- Bloggers are of course good writers
- To build community and make friend
- Information
- Learning or Teachings
- Make money
- Its a job
Drivers of the mass adoption
After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained in popularity. Blog usage spread during 1999 and the years following.
- Internet proliferation
- Finger protocol, seriously
- Open Diary launched in October 1998, soon growing to thousands of online diaries. Open Diary innovated the reader comment, becoming the first blog community where readers could add comments to other writers’ blog entries.
- Brad Fitzpatrick, a well-known blogger started LiveJournal in March 1999.
- Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan (Pyra Labs) launched blogger.com in August 1999 (purchased by idiots @ Google in February 2003)
- Easy Blog hosting services, free Blog software.
- comments, healthy discussions, permalinks, blogrolls and trackbacks
- Ad-Sense
- Technorati
- Easier spamming tool
Problems
Napster vs Metallica (shame on Metallica) in many ways I see Napster and RMS as the drivers of the free culture community online, I know this has nothing to do with blogging but I want to share this.
- Ellen Simonetti, known as Queen of the Sky is the most famous for being fired form Delta Air Lines
- Bloggers Blast Outdoor Magazine For Firing Jim Zumbo After He Said Assault Rifles Have No Place In Hunting
- Ottawa Grocery Chain Fires Employees over Facebook Posting
- Michael Hanscom, fired in October 2003 as a temp at Microsoft for posting a picture of Apple Macintosh G5s sitting on the loading dock at MS.
- Troutgirl, fired from Friendster for blogs that included references to her work.
- Matthew Brown, fired from Starbuck’s for posting comments about the coffee chain, its customers and managers on his personal blog in September 2004.
- Iain Murray, a Brit working in the US, fired from his post as Director of Research at an NPO in January 2003, apparently in part due to blogging at work.
- Jessica Cutler (Washingtonienne), fired this summer after blogging for a total of two weeks about her sexual exploits with six partners, including a few highly placed government staffers.
- Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler Files Lawsuit Against Bloggers For Impersonation
- GreenZap Files $57.5 Million Lawsuit Against Bloggers and Website Hosting Company
Longterm IBM-India employee Gaurav Sabnis followed up on his personal blog on his own time with new information on an India Uncut magazine article that revealed the India Institute for Planning and Management (IIPM) had vastly overclaimed its academic performance in recruiting ads for new MBA candidates.
State of the blogosphere
Steve Gibson was hired to blog full-time by Ritual Entertainment on February 8, 1997, possibly making him the first hired blogger. As Blogs came in main stream and dominate the traditional media, they said what the hell, let do this. Jeff Jarvis, is highest paid blogger on Earth. There are many other who are paid blogger.
Blogosphere now is being used for product promotions, updates, marketing, tutorials, propagating agenda, self promotions, news, alternate views, CEO’s to connect to people, Blaha…..
but corporate people never get it do they.
Who’s Really The Most Famous Blogger?
Actually no one gives a shit unless you are in for some serious doug, then you start/join a network and make money by ads, link placements etc…
I think this is enough for today, will get the next installment tomorrow.
- Images courtesy dsifry
- Please note Web 2.0 is not yet invented
- WordPress is not there yet, as they were really late
- How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else)
- EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers
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Thanks for the history lesson – it was great! I enjoyed the read. I’m way late to blogging, having just started this summer.
That was quite an infromative post ..thanks
when i had started blogging..i never knew what we have to do here.
just signed up her wordpress one fine morning without any clue …
I wonder why corporates have not woken up to using blogging as a tool in a big way.And it’s mostly the IT cos who are doing it.
@donstuff:
Me too earlier I just wrote white papers and case studies
@arvind:
I am glad you did.
@Nita: No Passion. They look only for short term profits, it was said, Kodak and canon were paying indie bloggers to write good about their products
Lol every blogger needs know history?
I doubt it,but i like to know it was formed and the reasons,dates can go to hell 
though i might remember some 
Wow this was informative! Wish I had started blogging earlier
@ Nita
they are actually trying to block some blogs, saying threat to their brand image .. trying to do some clean up work
wats ad sense????
cx: Hi Its a the way google makes money
a lot of it. They will sell you some keywords and if some one clicks you pay some shit like that.
Napster vs Metallica (shame on Metallica) in many ways I see Napster and RMS as the drivers of the free culture community online, I know this has nothing to do with blogging but I want to share this.
Shame on every single person who thinks that Metallica were wrong in defending their innovative intellectual property.
Free society doesn’t means that there should be freedom to steal and loot and rob.
And all those who wants freedom to loot and rob are actually the enemies of freedom!
For further reading, look at it
Violation of Copyright is Illegal
Interesting history lesson on blogs chirax!!
Some great facts you’ve got there, waiting for the ‘next installment’.
@Chirag: Hey thanks Bro, working on it.
@Gargi Dixit: Thanks for your comment. Metallica, innovative am I missing something here, last I remember they “They killed Napster”. FYI Napster was the idea which changed the internet as we see it today.
To Metalica “fans”: If you like their music, please use BT to download it. Then take the money you would have paid for the album and mail it to someone who is being sued by the RIAA.
- Korn
Thanks for the mention
This is a great summary as well. Imagine what sociologists will be writing about the phenomenon in another decade or so.
You might like this: http://www.shamusyoung.com/lemon/issues/timeline.php
chirax: Thank Don. Brilliant page