Contents
1994 – 1999 The Early Ages of Blogging
The history of Blogging is back-dated to the period of the commencement of the InternetThe very first blog (Links.net) can be traced to the year 1994, created by Justin Hall, a US freelance journalist. During this time he was a student at Swarthmore University and the content he created was not referred to as a blog. It was just listed as a personal homepage.
When was the word “blog” first used?
The next milestone taken towards the invention of blogs occurred in 1997. The word ‘weblog’ was invented on December 17, 1997 by Jorn Barger who also invented his own blog labeled Robot Wisdom. The name was believed to have been derived from the act of logging the web during browsing hence web+log.
The Charlotte Observer posted a blog on their news website during the same year. The journalist behind this was Jonathan Dube who covered the tragic Hurricane Bonnie.
In 1999, the word blog came to life. Peter Merholz a programmer rebranded the term ‘weblog’ to ‘blog’. Later on, approximately after five years, the term blog, was declared the word of the year by Merriam-Webster.
Blogs at this time were difficult to upload as it had to be done manually and they were linked to the homepage unless one had a programmer to invent custom blogging platforms. There were no blogging platforms as there are today to support such content sharing.
Several blogging platforms later came up. Live Journal was amongst the first platforms to gain popularity. Blogger later emerged into the blogging industry. It was invented by Evan Williams and supported so many blogging websites in the year 1999.
2000 – 2004 Growth Stage of Blogging
The year 2000 marked the beginning of the growth stage for blogging. A total of 23 blogs were listed on the internet. This later grew to 50 million by 2006. Listing this as an exponential growth in the industry is quite an understatement.
In 2001, blogging hit a new level when several other types of blogs came up, such as how to guides. Meta blogs also became popular during this era..
2003 saw the invention of Weblogs Inc. which was invented by Jason Calacanis. It was later sold off for a staggering $25 million, this sale made people realize blogs were becoming a force to reckon with.
2005 -2010 Blogs Reach the Mainstream
In 2005, YouTube officially launched, and while it didn’t happen right away, the platform set the stage for what would become the modern vlog.
At the same time, the Yahoo! Videoblogging Group saw an increase in their membership. In short, this is the year that a new way to express yourself online was truly born.
Some of the early vloggers who are still popular today include Smosh and Michelle Phan.
Statistics indicated that on 2005, 32 million Americans were regular blog readers. 2005, was also the year when the very first blogger Garret M. Graff was granted the press credentials for White House. Several media websites now owned blogs and had full story coverage with online commentary options.
Toward the end of 2010 there over 152 million active blogs online. Major media organizations such as CNN partnered with other established blogs rather than creating their own. By the end of that year almost all major companies and media sources had their own blogs.
2010 – 2015 Where Blogging is Today
Ten years ago blogs were the only source of content and communication for internet users. With the increase of social media use, social networking has emerged as a popular source of information.
In 2012, Medium was established as a new platform by Evan Williams and Pyra Labs. Today it has evolved into a great blogging platform where users can publish their own content. Major developments in the blogging industry have taken place especially within the major blogging platform called WordPress.
2016: WordPress Launches the .blog Domain
Blogging had become so popular by 2016, that WordPress decided to add the domain extension .blog to its list of possible blog URLs.
This meant that in addition to the original six (at the time) domain extensions in popular use, which included .com, .net, and .org, people and organizations could now choose a domain name with the .blog extension.
This move opened up many new domain options and highlighted the popularity of blogging.
In 2018, blogging increased the lead flow up of brands online by 800%. It is also the year when internet users spent 3x more time on blogs than on email.
2019: The Right time to Start Your Own Blog
The history of blogging will never be over, and even better, you can still become a part of it.
Whether you’re brand new at blogging or you’ve been trying your hand at it for a while and just haven’t quite gotten to where you want to be, just follow all the tutorials in the Blog and you will be good enough to do well in your Blogging Career.
Do everything possible to make sure that you start your own Blog now. Don’t let another year go without your impact in the History of blogging