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 Previous to the existence of blogging the main medium of sharing information was Usenet which was a moderated newsgroup and allowed all posting in a group to be under the control of one individual or a small group. This existed around 1983 and was part of the pre HTTP web. The blog as we know it today evolved from the online diary people began to create for themselves the longest running blog is thought to be as early as 1994. The main difference from these early blogging sites and today’s blogs was that they were simply manually updated components of common websites. This all changed with the evolution of tools that facilitated the ease for a user to create and update web articles posted in reverse chronological order thus opening up the user marketplace immensely.
The actual term weblog was first used in December 1997 and the shortened version we know today of blog in April 1999. Although the popularity of this medium took a little while to catch on it soon began to gain momentum with new blogging tools such as Open Diary in October 1998 and blogger.com being launched in august 1999.
By 2002 blogging was gaining in its influence and was being established as a solid way to express opinions and with the Iraq war the emergence of political blogs that gained much attention. By 2004 politicians and news services had firmly grasped the potential that was blogging as a means of impact and began using them as tools to reach out and campaign. From that date to today the phenomenon, variety and popularity has continued to grow and diversify to the point where it has even been proposed that a blogging Code of Conduct be implemented. |
