Who's Your Daddy? Blogs Turn 10

Katherine Mangu-Ward | March 20, 2007

Blogs turn 10 years old today. Sort of. No one can really decide who invented the blog (or the name), but CNET offers some candidates and a brief history here. The tenth birthday is today if we give credit to the "irascible Dave Winer," who claims he "bootstrapped the blogging revolution" and that his it is the "longest currently running Web log on the Internet." See the first blog post here.

Of course, some of the tools that became blogs have been around a long time, such as "the 'finger' command, which is so antique it actually dates back to the pre-Internet days of the ARPAnet. It was created in the early 1970s by Les Earnest, who had already invented the first spell-checker and the first successful cursive writing recognizer."

Read more from Earnest here.

Comments

|3.20.07 @ 12:29PM|#

It's a fuckin' website. Cutesey new names don't change a thing.

|3.20.07 @ 12:38PM|#

It's my birthday today, too. I am also turning 10.

|3.20.07 @ 12:52PM|#

Smacky,
Who's your daddy? (Sorry, couldn't resist)


My last semester in college, spring 96, was spent picking up required liberal arts credits (Don't get me started). My American Technology professor had a blog. I was using a 14.4k modem and text based software from home.

|3.20.07 @ 12:53PM|#

Blog, planet, whatever, Pluto is still a big rock in the sky.

What, isn't this the same discussion?

John M. Joy|3.20.07 @ 1:05PM|#

Of course, some of the tools that became blogs have been around a long time, such as "the 'finger' command, which is so antique it actually dates back to the pre-Internet days of the ARPAnet.

Back in my undergrad days, I kept in touch electronically with, among others, Rose, a friend from my hometown. (I was in Worcester, she was in Rochester.)

One holiday (Thanksgiving, Easter - don't remember, but it was a family-around-the-table event), I was asked during dinner if I had spoken with Rose lately. "No," I said, "but I did finger her a couple days ago." Hilarity ensued.

Ah, memories.

JMJ

ed|3.20.07 @ 1:12PM|#

I've always assumed that blogs began with diaries, which began when someone figured out how to put his pointless life in print on a daily basis. An ancient Egyptian, perhaps? Then the diarist started commenting on other people's pointless lives, then electricity was discovered, then the transistor...the computer...ultimately the modern blog. Am I close?

MikeT|3.20.07 @ 1:19PM|#

I think it's safer to trace it back to the first real uses of content management software, not to things like the finger command...

cgee|3.20.07 @ 1:21PM|#

Gee, the first blog credited to a guy named Winer. Why am I not surprised?

|3.20.07 @ 1:23PM|#

Bak in the days of modems, a friend of mine wrote a scripting tool that periodically fingered a select group and posted the .plan outputs to a file on the internet, which may not be blogging, but its pretty damn close.

Dave Winer|3.20.07 @ 1:52PM|#

Scripting News's 10th birthday is April 1, not today. Pretty soooon! :-)

|3.20.07 @ 3:00PM|#

Les Earnest and a fellow named Winer are the founders of the blogosphere? What is this, an early April Fool's joke?

TLB|3.20.07 @ 5:05PM|#

I got one link from Winer, back in 2000:

scripting.com/2000/06/06.html

Back in those days, it wasn't a "blog", it was just a daily-updated website with techy links. Another person doing something similar was EliotRustyHarold, who linked to me several times but didn't link me the last time I asked about a year ago for one reason or other.

There were also "blogs" associated with trade shows LikeJavaOne, but once again they were just daily-updated sites.

I also "blogged" to USENET.

I started my blog making fun of blogging, and TonyPierce in particular. It soon evolved into news coverage. Nowadays, I reject the "blog" designation and try to use that word as little as possible on my news site.

|3.20.07 @ 5:45PM|#

It's a fuckin' website. Cutesey new names don't change a thing.

I agree.

jkii|3.20.07 @ 7:35PM|#

I also "blogged" to USENET.

USENET is, for practical purposes, a blog, but technically it is a bit different than the Reason blog. Blogs like H&R use HTTP while USENET use NNTP. I can't be bold on USENET.

HTTP blogs are a bit more technically sophisticated than USENET discussion groups in the presentation options available to a participant. But, OTOH, I cannot attach my 150GByte-RAR-compressed diatribe on how the world should be run to an HTTP H&R post.