Nowadays, we cannot think about the internet and online culture without mentioning blogging and bloggers. Almost everyone reads blogs, and it does not matter whether we are speaking about topic-based blogs, traditional news media, or something related to a specific industry or entertainment.
However, throughout history, it was not always like that, and you should understand that blogs have a short history that could be compared with Internet history. Of course, vlogging is another way of sharing information by creating videos.
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Have in mind that only in the past decade blogs have become an essential part of the online structure.
The Beginnings
Justin Hall was the first person who created a blog called Links.net, while he was a student at Swarthmore College in 1994. Back in the day, it was a personal homepage and not blog. This particular term was coined in 1997 as the weblog, as the creation of Jorn Barger.
He used the term to describe the process of logging the web. Afterward, it was shortened to blog in 1999 by Peter Merholz, and five years later, it became the word of the year.
Original blogs were manually updated and linked from a central archive or home page. However, that was not efficient especially if you did not know the programming, which means that only people who were programmers could create custom blogging platforms.
After a while, a few different platforms entered the market such as LiveJournal and the platform called Blogger started by Meg Hourihan and Even Williams at Pyra Labs. They were responsible for boosting the blogging idea into the mainstream.
The Growth Period
During the early years in new millennia, the growth of blogs increased gradually. For instance, in 1999 there were only 23 blogs on the web, while in 2006 there were 50 million blogs. Political blogs were favorite among people, and some candidates created using this particular form such as Wesley Clark and Howard Dean.
One significant event was responsible for the popularity of blogging, and that was when bloggers commented Trent Lott and Senator Storm Thurmond. During this particular race, Thurmond was a supporter of segregation, and mainstream media did not pick the implications, but bloggers were the ones who created a story that became viral afterward.
On the other hand, in-depth topics also became more and more popular during this particular time, and they entered into a comprehensive analysis of pop culture and news, and they commented directly what media was reporting.
In 2001, the interest in blogging reached the point where people decided to create guidelines and how to articles that had the idea to help people achieve their goals. At the same time, Meta blogs became prominent also, because they allowed people that want to become bloggers to learn how to do it and how to be successful with ease.
Some favorite blogs were Dooce, Boing Boing, Gawker, Gizmodo, Huffington Post, and Wonkette. For instance, the moment when Jason Calacanis sold Weblogs, Inc. To AOL for $25 million, it was the moment when people understood that blogs are important and vital to both the economy and our lifestyle. Click here if you wish to learn more about blogging and its history.
2003 was the year when WordPress started, as well as TypePad that used a movable type of creating blogs. At the same time, Technorati was the first blog search engine and audio blogger the first podcasting service. In the next year, YouTube entered the market, and that was the moment when video blogs or vlogs became popular too.
AdSense entered the market in 2003 as the advertising platform, and that was the first ad network that provided the ability for bloggers to earn more money. That moment allowed bloggers to start earning by writing about something.
As soon as the money entered the market, the number of blogs skyrocketed, and bloggers such as John Chow and Darren Rowse made sufficient amount of money by explaining to other people how they can turn to blog into a career.
Moreover, the rest is history.