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- Early history of blogging<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Early 2000s<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Rise of vlogging<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Brief history of blog design<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Quick history of blog SEO<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Blogging in recent years (2012-2023)<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Blogging today in 2024 and into the future<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n\t\t
<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t \t\n\t\t \t\tFollow along for a visual tour of the history of #blogging from 1997 until today \ud83d\udcdc<\/a>\n\t\t \t<\/div>\n\t\t \t\n\t\t \tClick To Tweet \n\t\t \t\t<\/span>\n\t\t \t<\/a>\n\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nThe early history of blogging<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Most experts agree that the first blog was Links.net, created in 1994 by then-student Justin Hall as a place to publish his writing. The site consisted entirely of brief posts, each one sharing a link and some of his thoughts on the content within. This compilation of links included links to websites he liked, as well as his own work.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/mllj2j8xvfl0.i.optimole.com\/cb:c5QE.37290\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/links.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nOthers quickly followed in Hall’s footsteps, creating their own sites to share their personal lives and thoughts. With the term “blog” not invented yet, these sites were referred to as “Online Diaries” or even “Personal Pages”. In 1997, the term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger of the influential Robot Wisdom <\/em>blog to describe these sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many of those early blogs were created by programmers and focused on highly technical subjects, but in 1998 Jonathan Dube became the first journalist to blog an event. His blog chronicled Hurricane Bonnie for The Charlotte Observer, as pictured below:<\/p>\n\n\n
\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/mllj2j8xvfl0.i.optimole.com\/cb:c5QE.37290\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/dispatches.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n1998 also saw the creation of Open Diary<\/a>, a blogging platform that allowed members of the community to comment on each other’s writing. This was the first of many tools that made blogging accessible to regular people, regardless of their programming experience.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\nHow different blogging platforms began and died<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Just as the cumbersome, code-heavy blogs of the late ’90s<\/a> began to give way to more accessible solutions, in 1999 the word “weblog” was dropped in favor of a simpler term: “blog” by Peter Merholz. This year also saw the advent of three new blogging platforms: Xanga, LiveJournal<\/a>, and Blogger<\/a>. Xanga, a site that focused more on the social side of blogging (similar to MySpace), boasted 300,000 users at its peak but faded out of the blogging scene entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n![\"LiveJournal](\"https:\/\/mllj2j8xvfl0.i.optimole.com\/cb:c5QE.37290\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/LiveJournal.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nLiveJournal<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
LiveJournal started as a website where Brad Fitzpatrick could keep in touch with his high school friends, and quickly grew into a place where all kinds of people could record their thoughts and develop communities. LiveJournal sustained popularity as a blogging platform into the mid-2000s, but gradually transformed from a blogging site where all were welcome into one of Russia’s primary social media platforms<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blogger<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Blogger, on the other hand, began its life as a commercial blogging service created by Pyra Labs. Google would go on to purchase it in 2003<\/a> and make it freely available to the world. This move pushed not just Blogger, but also the entire concept of blogging, into the mainstream.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n![\"blogger](\"https:\/\/mllj2j8xvfl0.i.optimole.com\/cb:c5QE.37290\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/blogger.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nThe early 2000s<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
As blogging became more popular, tools appeared to help people curate their blog reading list or market their own blogs. 2002 was a particularly big year for the blogosphere. People also started to monetize their blogs with sites like BlogAds, a precursor to Google AdSense.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n![\"blogads](\"https:\/\/mllj2j8xvfl0.i.optimole.com\/cb:c5QE.37290\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/blogads.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nThe first-ever blog search engine, Technorati<\/a>, launched that November.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n![\"Technorati\"](\"https:\/\/mllj2j8xvfl0.i.optimole.com\/cb:c5QE.37290\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Technorati.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nMany popular blogs also launched in this year, including Gizmodo and Gawker, some of the earliest companies to use blogging itself as their primary business model. Check out the original version of Gizmodo below:<\/p>\n\n\n
\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/mllj2j8xvfl0.i.optimole.com\/cb:c5QE.37290\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/gizmodo.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nHeather Armstrong became the first person to get fired for talking about her job on her blog in February 2002<\/a>. This put her blog, Dooce, in the spotlight of many conversations about internet privacy. “Dooced” even became a verb, meaning “fired for blogging”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2002 was a big year for blogging, but 2003 turned out to be even bigger. Google purchased Blogger and introduced AdSense, making it possible for anyone to monetize their blog without needing to join a special network like BlogAds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2003 also saw the birth of two new brand-new blogging services that would further alter the blogosphere: TypePad<\/a>, a commercial blogging platform that hosts blogs for major multimedia companies like the BBC, and WordPress<\/a>, the open-source platform we use for Themeisle and our sister sites. These platforms made it easy for companies to create their own fully customized blogs<\/a> and sell advertising directly to companies for improved profits<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Early 2000s<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
![\"WordPress\"](\"https:\/\/mllj2j8xvfl0.i.optimole.com\/cb:c5QE.37290\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/WordPress.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"huff\"](\"https:\/\/mllj2j8xvfl0.i.optimole.com\/cb:c5QE.37290\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/huff.jpg\")
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