Blog history, metamorphosis and evolution
Even before blogs, people created communities for communication with technology. Wikipedia (2005) lists the AP wire, ham radios, email lists, bulletin board systems, and forums as precursors to the blog. As the web opened to the public, programmers created blogs reviewing other sites or online articles with links to what was being discussed (Blood, 2000). With so few people involved in blogging, sites tracked all existing blogs and provided links to them (Blood, 2000). This trend lives on in the form of blog rolls. However where the initial lists documented all blogs, current blog rolls list similar blogs to show what community a blogger belongs, or hopes to belong, to.
A major shift in blogging came in 1999 with the advent of free blogging tools (Blood, 2000). Where once a blogger had to be a programmer first, these online tools allowed general web users to create accounts and post entries. Blood (2000) notes that while other blogging tools were available before Blogger, the open format allowed by Blogger altered the content of blogs forever. Where previous tools had more structured posting based on the historical use of blogs—with a space for a link, a subject line, and comments—Blogger offered “an empty form box into which the blogger can type ... anything: a passing thought, an extended essay, or a childhood recollection” (Blood, 2000).
From this point blogging branched into various types of blogs that are still evolving.
Types of blogs:
- Topic specific blogs cover travel, hobbies, and other interests of both professionals and amateurs
- Personal blogs, similar to diaries, cover daily life
- Issues blogs range from politics and religion to media and news; law blogs created the term “blawggers”
- Business blogs offer a way for companies to connect with customers and promote themselves, but blogs can also be businesses
- Collaborative blogs bring together multiple authors around a central topic
- Educational blogs can offer information or create a community for a class
- Advice blogs provide helpful tips and information
- Format-specific blogs revolve around what is posted—such as images, audio, or video
(Wikipedia, 2005)
Format-specific blogs are a fairly new addition to blogging that has evolved similarly to blogging itself. Even a few years ago, bloggers who wanted to include an image with text in a post needed to know basic HTML and have space on a web server to store the image. Space may have been the more difficult of the two to find, as sites offering free storage with email accounts at that time did not allow remote loading of images. This has all changed, and the same email and file space providers now offer blogs and photo albums with the ability to integrate photos into blog entries in addition to the format-specific blog providers who provide space to store photo or video blog posts.
From the beginning of blogs, with programmers reviewing articles, to the current multi-media face of blogging, where a blogger can call from a telephone to record an audio post, there has been astounding growth in this form of personal publishing in the past few years. However, not everyone agrees on the validity of blogging. Some technology companies use blogs as a backbone for business, interacting with clients, offering technical support, and updating the public about projects or company changes. Alternatively, other companies fear the public nature of blogs both as outlets for employees and as a place for public customer complaints.
Activity: Fortune Telling
Where does this format of personal publishing expand to, influence and evolve from here? Write a blog entry dated five years from now detailing at least one way blogs have changed.
Blood, Rebecca. (Sept. 7, 2000). “Weblogs: A History and Perspective”, in Rebecca’s Pocket. Retrieved from http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html on July 30, 2005.
Wikipedia. (Sept. 3, 2005). Weblogs. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weblog on September 5, 2005.