Wednesday, November 23, 2005
What Are Blogs? How Have Blogs Developed? PART ONE
Currently, I am taking an online sociology course: Sociology of Cyberspace. The first assignment concerns blogs, and part of that assignment requires answering the questions, "What are blogs?" and "How have blogs developed?" There is no static definition of blog; what a blog is now is not what it was years ago, and, no doubt, it will further change, for the reason that its appearances and uses in Internet communication have changed and continue to change.
There is no general agreement as to when the first weblog was created. Some blog historians, such as Dave Winer, claim the first weblog was created was created 13 years ago by Tim Berners-Lee at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN. For those like Winer, Berners-Lee's 1992 webpage was a weblog because it included links to new websites as they came online. However, other historians, such as Jorn Barger disagree. Barger's "Weblog resources FAQ," does not identify Berners-Lee's webpage as the first weblog nor does it include the 1992 webpage among the early prototypes, although Barger defines a weblog as a "webpage where a blogger ... 'logs' all the other webpages that she finds interesting," and Berner-Lee's webpage seems to fit that definition. Instead, Barger includes the National Center for Supercomputing Application's (NCSA's) 1993 Mosaic What's New page, created by Marc Andreeson, and Justin Hall's Justin's Home Page (1994) as early prototypes of weblogs. The 1993 What's New page listed postings in chronological order from newest to oldest and provided links to other webpages, and Justin's Home Page in 1994 included comments about and links to other webpages, along with photos and personal information. Barger suggests Dave Winer's Scripting News was the first weblog because it "formalized many characteristics in 1997." Because Scripting News was the first to include periodic postings in reverse chronological order, comments about and links to other websites, and a sidebar with links to archives and other URLs, it seems Barger's working definition of a weblog is one that has the following elements: periodic reverse-chronological postings, comments about and links to other websites, and a sidebar with hyperlinks to other websites of interest.
According to The Blog Herald, "the first use of the term 'weblog' in relation to the delivery of content on a website" comes from the abstract of a 1995 paper entitled, Exploiting the World-Wide Web for Electronic Meeting Document Analysis and Management by Gitesh Raikundalia and Michael Rees. However, popular use of the term didn't begin until after Jorn Barger's webpage, Robot Wisdom, generally considered to be one of the original weblogs, identified itself as a "weblog" in December 1997 (Rebecca Blood:December 2004).
On January 26, 1999, Cameron Barrett, creator of another early weblog, Camworld, published an essay entitled, "Anatomy of a Weblog," which defined a weblog as a webpage that: 1) is updated regularly, 2) has a "nice, clean easy-to-use design and user interface," 3) has a theme, 4) isn't patronizing, 5) includes a mailing list, and 6) has a community "maintained by repeat visitors and list members who contribute" to the webpage. Replies and comments to that article motivated Jesse James Garrett to identify 23 weblogs that "were known to exist" at the beginning of 1999, and he forwarded that list to Cameron Barrett, who published the list on Camworld Rebecca Blood's "Weblogs: A History and Perspective").
Weblogs were rare at that time because their construction and maintenance required a blogger to have knowledge of both Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)" and File Transfer Protocol (FTP), plus the abilities to update content and establish protocols for archiving and indexing old material. That combination of knowledge and skills belonged to web developers, so it is not strange that early bloggers were web developers.
Peter Merholz is credited with coining the shortened version of the term, "blog," when he posted in May or April of 1999 in the sidebar of his weblog, PeterMe.com, that he pronounced the term, "weblog," as "wee blog" or "blog" for short (Juiceenewsdaily.com's "History of Blogs". Shortly thereafter or at the same time, Brigette Eaton began using the term, blog, when she launched Eatonweb Portal, which was the first portal dedicated to listing blogs, and which further popularized the term (The Blog Herald's "A Short History of Blogging". Although Eaton defined a blog (weblog) as a webpage with dated entries, her listing excluded personal journals, which were webpages with dated entries, apparently because blogs were about logging the World Wide Web, not logging one's life.
From the above, it should be clear that in the early development of blogs whether a webpage was identified as a blog or not depended upon one's definition. For example, some such as Winer and Blood in 1993, argued that links to other webpages were an essential element of any blog. In other words, it was all about content: a webpage with dated postings that commented about and linked to other websites was a blog, whereas a webpage with dated postings about personal experiences was not.
END OF PART ONE
There is no general agreement as to when the first weblog was created. Some blog historians, such as Dave Winer, claim the first weblog was created was created 13 years ago by Tim Berners-Lee at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN. For those like Winer, Berners-Lee's 1992 webpage was a weblog because it included links to new websites as they came online. However, other historians, such as Jorn Barger disagree. Barger's "Weblog resources FAQ," does not identify Berners-Lee's webpage as the first weblog nor does it include the 1992 webpage among the early prototypes, although Barger defines a weblog as a "webpage where a blogger ... 'logs' all the other webpages that she finds interesting," and Berner-Lee's webpage seems to fit that definition. Instead, Barger includes the National Center for Supercomputing Application's (NCSA's) 1993 Mosaic What's New page, created by Marc Andreeson, and Justin Hall's Justin's Home Page (1994) as early prototypes of weblogs. The 1993 What's New page listed postings in chronological order from newest to oldest and provided links to other webpages, and Justin's Home Page in 1994 included comments about and links to other webpages, along with photos and personal information. Barger suggests Dave Winer's Scripting News was the first weblog because it "formalized many characteristics in 1997." Because Scripting News was the first to include periodic postings in reverse chronological order, comments about and links to other websites, and a sidebar with links to archives and other URLs, it seems Barger's working definition of a weblog is one that has the following elements: periodic reverse-chronological postings, comments about and links to other websites, and a sidebar with hyperlinks to other websites of interest.
According to The Blog Herald, "the first use of the term 'weblog' in relation to the delivery of content on a website" comes from the abstract of a 1995 paper entitled, Exploiting the World-Wide Web for Electronic Meeting Document Analysis and Management by Gitesh Raikundalia and Michael Rees. However, popular use of the term didn't begin until after Jorn Barger's webpage, Robot Wisdom, generally considered to be one of the original weblogs, identified itself as a "weblog" in December 1997 (Rebecca Blood:December 2004).
On January 26, 1999, Cameron Barrett, creator of another early weblog, Camworld, published an essay entitled, "Anatomy of a Weblog," which defined a weblog as a webpage that: 1) is updated regularly, 2) has a "nice, clean easy-to-use design and user interface," 3) has a theme, 4) isn't patronizing, 5) includes a mailing list, and 6) has a community "maintained by repeat visitors and list members who contribute" to the webpage. Replies and comments to that article motivated Jesse James Garrett to identify 23 weblogs that "were known to exist" at the beginning of 1999, and he forwarded that list to Cameron Barrett, who published the list on Camworld Rebecca Blood's "Weblogs: A History and Perspective").
Weblogs were rare at that time because their construction and maintenance required a blogger to have knowledge of both Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)" and File Transfer Protocol (FTP), plus the abilities to update content and establish protocols for archiving and indexing old material. That combination of knowledge and skills belonged to web developers, so it is not strange that early bloggers were web developers.
Peter Merholz is credited with coining the shortened version of the term, "blog," when he posted in May or April of 1999 in the sidebar of his weblog, PeterMe.com, that he pronounced the term, "weblog," as "wee blog" or "blog" for short (Juiceenewsdaily.com's "History of Blogs". Shortly thereafter or at the same time, Brigette Eaton began using the term, blog, when she launched Eatonweb Portal, which was the first portal dedicated to listing blogs, and which further popularized the term (The Blog Herald's "A Short History of Blogging". Although Eaton defined a blog (weblog) as a webpage with dated entries, her listing excluded personal journals, which were webpages with dated entries, apparently because blogs were about logging the World Wide Web, not logging one's life.
From the above, it should be clear that in the early development of blogs whether a webpage was identified as a blog or not depended upon one's definition. For example, some such as Winer and Blood in 1993, argued that links to other webpages were an essential element of any blog. In other words, it was all about content: a webpage with dated postings that commented about and linked to other websites was a blog, whereas a webpage with dated postings about personal experiences was not.
END OF PART ONE
