Popularization of Blogs

The term "Weblog" was first coined in 1997, by Jorn Barger. He logged things that he found on the web on his website, "Robot Wisdom." In April 1999, Peter Merholz invented the word "blog." In August of 1999, Blogger was created. Blogger, a free service, made blogs accessable to the general public, because it did not require knowledge of HTML.[1] This was important for users who wanted to blog, but were stopped from doing so because they did not know code. Blogger would eventually be acquired by Google.

Blogs were originally websites maintained by individuals and groups. Soon thereafter organizations, businesses and corporations started joining in the process. These sites were originally only used by techsavy people due to the fact that one needed to know HTML codes in order to blog. These types of websites were the precursor to blogs.

They became popular because they were often interactive or linked to other sites, usually to other blogs that people could follow.

Jesse James Garrett, the editor of Insosift, began compiling a list of blogs on his website. He then sent this list to Cameron Barrett, who then posted the list on Camworld. There were only 23 links to different blogs in 1999. Visitors to Camworld formed a community of people reading and contributing to blogs' links on his site.

Peter Merholz was going to call it Wee-blog, but this was shortened to blog. During this period, so many blogs started popping out, that Cameron was unable to list them all on his site.


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 * Created and edited by Ryan Farrell, Stephanie Brumfield, Laura Hogan, Dennis D'Aquila and John Byers.