Evolution of Blogs

After a while, the weblog movement was gaining momentum. In July of 1999, Andrew Smales created Pitas, which allowed anyone who signed up with them the ability to keep a weblog. Soon after that, Blogger , a similar service, was created (Blood, 5).

With the creation of these services, weblogs changed. They evolved into what we know today as blogs: sites of short, personal entries that are updated usually once a day. Many of them did not include links, and the links that were included were for other sites like these. Since keeping a blog became so easy with Pitas and Blogger, knowledge of HTML no longer being required, blogs started popping up on the Internet by the thousands.

On September 11, the day of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., weblogs took on a whole new importance. When many news sites crashed because of too much traffic, people started looking to blogs for updates on the events. Bloggers had the time to look through the news stories so that others could read them (LA Times).

Blog Beginnings

I was trying to remember over the weekend what it was that initially got me interested in blogs in the first place. Then I remembered as I was reading over Rebecca Blood's book, The Weblog Handbook, that it was through online journals, which predate blogs by several years. I used to read online journals, like this one, which is unfortunately no longer updated; I thought he was pretty funny. These online journals acted as personal diaries, but were meant to be shared with a lot of other people. These have fallen somewhat out of favor now that blogs are so popular.

Blogs may not seem all that much different from online journals. In fact, Blood finds it difficult to truly distinguish between the two in her book (p. 7), and using the definition of a weblog by Brigitte Eaton--a site consisting of dated entries--it seems to me that online journals would qualify as weblogs. However, blogs didn't start out as a form of online journalling.

Blogs originated as sites with lists of links. Some people started collecting links to websites or news articles that they found interesting or entertaining. They thought other people might like to look at these sites, and made them available. It was an easy way for people with little time to spend online to see a lot of websites they wouldn't normally have the opportunity to see. One of these original filter weblogs is Camworld . The maintainer of this site, Cameron Barrett, actually created many of the elements found on blogs, including the sidebar of links to other blogs (p. 4).

I think I should start out by defining what a weblog, or blog, is. This may be difficult as there are several types. There are filter weblogs, which give links to different parts of the internet (Now This ); blogs, which act as online diaries for individuals (Trevstac); and notebooks, which are similar to blogs, but often have longer, less frequent entries (Lemonyellow) (Blood p 6-7). There are even professional blogs, which companies can set up to reach out to customers, or professionals will put up to connect with new clients. Here's what Macromedia is doing with its blog. Even journalists are keeping keeping blogs.

Ok. I am going to try a post. It's been difficult for me to do this. In fact, maybe that is what I will talk about. I have noticed that writing for a blog is harder than it looks. Sure, this particular one may be especially difficult for me simply because I'm being graded on it and feel like an entry has to be perfect before I can put it up. But I think in general that it has to be difficult to maintain a blog. People write entries usually once a day; many people write several entries a day. Even Rebecca Blood in her book The Weblog Handbooksays that it was difficult for her to write every day. Once she got started, she found it easier and easier to do and her writing even got better each time( p28-29). But initially, there was concern that she wouldn't have anything to say every day.

I think my biggest problem has been getting over the fear of writing something that is incomplete. I like to write a draft by hand first and then type it in the word processor, editing along the way. With a blog, you can't do that. You have to think on the spot and just let the words fly. You also have to make sure that you write concisely because most people aren't going to read a blog entry that spans the length of a computer screen. Rambling on, as I am wont to do when I don't have a draft in front of me, is not going to get you readers.

So this first entry may not be very informational as far as talking about blogs goes, but I am hoping that it is a starting point for me. I think that I just need to get writing and hope that it will get easier each time I post. Maybe in the next post, I can actually get started on the topic of blogs.