1999 vs. 2009 Then And Now – Blogging

In a few short months it’s going to be 2009, and a ton of stuff has changed in the world of computing over the past almost-ten years. Some of the modern advancements have proven to be a notable improvement while others still produce the same crapola they did nearly ten years ago.

In this installment we’ll be taking a look at blogging. The history of blogs has been a rollercoaster of ups and downs, authored by those of every age, race, creed, color, nationality, religion and whatever else you want to throw in the list. All emotions pour out in blogs and they are – said very simply – the best reading there is on the internet.

Where did “blog” come from?

Blog comes from weblog which is a shortened web log. This word originated to define a written series of web events, journal style. For example, some of the early web logs were simply internet technical journals outlining the progress on projects. These journals had more of a a personal touch and were easy-to-read compared to a manual (which was the whole point). In addition they could be updated at whim, and people genuinely appreciated this.

Web log turned into weblog and then simply blog for whatever reason. It is unknown when this happened or even why it did, but the word stuck like glue once it became blog.

Blog used to be only a noun, meaning “the journal itself”. But now it is also used as a verb where it literally means “to write on my online weblog”. So if you said “I’m going to blog that”, people know exactly what you mean.

Let’s take a look at how blogs have changed over the years.

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The first blogs (1999-2002)

As noted above, early blogs were technical in nature, centered around computer related material. Most of the rest were “geeky” or “nerdy” in nature – also mostly centered around computer related material, science fiction movies, Star Wars, Star Trek and like subjects.

Being there weren’t any hosted blogging services back then, you had to have your own web site and manually install a blogging platform such as Greymatter or MovableType. These CMSes in those times were difficult to work with at best but did do the job effectively once installed and operational.

It is important to note that the dot-com bubble burst of 2001 had a lot to do with blogging spreading its wings initially. People were absolutely sick and tired of everybody trying to make a buck with portals and just wanted simple means of writing a journal online in anti-corporate fashion – and that’s exactly what happened.

MySpace, “fad” blogging (2003-2006)

In this time period (before the dawn of online video sharing – namely YouTube), social networking started becoming the norm and with it, blogs.

Being that blogs were now super-easy to use because they were pre-programmed and simpler, what we saw during this time period was a whole lot of blogs because it was the “new” and “cool” thing to do.

On the dot-com side of things, more programmers were getting into the game of blogging platforms and many new blog engines surfaced, giving domain owners more choice.

Two things happened from this:

First, there were a lot of terrible, terrible blogs that appeared. In addition there were many who thought “It’s the internet – what could happen?”, and learned the hard way that posting your innermost thoughts on the internet isn’t the wisest maneuver in the world.

Second was a new form of spam – that being blog spam a.k.a. comment spam. Many bloggers – including the good ones – were absolutely infuriated by this. Some authors were so frustrated they just stopping blogging altogether.

In early 2006 it was decreed by many that “blogging is dead”.

New era of blogging (2007-Present)

It appeared that when video sharing became the norm that blogging was left for dead, however there were new innovations introduced that shot blogging right back into the mainstream:

Microblogging

Twitter introduced microblogging to the online world as something everyone could use easily and be done via computer or mobile phone. This short-style blogging makes it very enjoyable for people to write their thoughts on the internet in the easiest way possible.

Social networking improvements

The internet and the people who use it learned the hard way that privacy is and always has been paramount. As such, new innovations in social networking platforms were introduced that greatly enhance personal security for users of those systems. This brought about a better feeling of safety and got people blogging again.

Spam control

Major blogging platforms like WordPress introduced spam control tools like Akismet that kill the vast majority of blog spam, making comments (an integral part of blogging) easy and fun to use again.

Cash

Blogging today can be profitable whereas it wasn’t in earlier years. This is mainly due to the advancement of online publishing thru sites such as CafePress and LuLu.

The future

Written works on the internet have always proven to be the best way to communicate on the internet. We took our lumps over the years with blogging, learned our lessons, fixed it – and now it works and works well.

For those that say “I’m not a writer”, that’s what Twitter is for. For those that can write, you’ve got hosted sites like WordPress, Microsoft Live Spaces and a whole bunch of others to try out and see which works best for you.

And as much as people have said video is the “new wave”, that mode of thought has waned and gone back to text-on-screen again, because as long as they are computer keyboards there will be blogs.

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