Blogging Turns Ten

Blogging, the art of spewing forth text onto the web for all to read, usually in some sort of personal journal sort of format, has turned 10.  For a full decade now, people have been getting up on their virtual soapbox and sharing with the world their thoughts, fears, hopes and dreams.  In recent years, blogging has taken on a life of its own, getting a piece of the action in the last US presidential election, and regularly being the "source" of news.  Hailed as both the bane and savior of modern journalism, blogging, and the democratization of content generation is what grew into Web 2.0.

It's always interesting to ask people why they blog, what motivates them to share their inner thoughts with strangers across the globe.  In recent years, things have snowballed as the whole thing became "cool", but what about the people who blogged years before it was popular?  It's only been in the past few years that the idea has reached a sort of critical mass with the public and media. What was the motivation for someone in 1997 to write an online journal?  Was it the same as it is now?  Is the popularity of blogging due to the attention it now receives, or is it because the tools have become readily accessible to everyone?

I remember having a personal website on a UNIX server I helped run at my high school in 1997.  It had a "Daily Journal" of sorts where I'd post a few lines about my day every day.  Sometimes I'd post about people I knew, sometimes about fun things going on after school.  Among my friends it was noteworthy since it was the first such site any of us had.  At that point it was new, unique, and no one else had the resources or knowledge needed to do it themselves.

Back then it was hard(er).  You had to know HTML to make a blog, you had to manually type it all in, update everything, do the page layout etc.  And you had to muck with that every time you made an update (rotate old entries onto an "archive" page etc.).  Now, it's just a matter of typing your entry into a text field on a web browser, hit submit and BAM!  Your words are out there for the world to see.

Here at JoeUser, we're a bit of a mix between the traditional blog where people post about their day, and sites like Digg, MySpace and other social networking sites.  On sites like blogger, xanga, livejournal etc. your blog is a stand-alone item.  People only visit it if they already know it's there.  Here, it's all about community and interaction.  You post here and your stuff is absolutely read by others.

Looking back at the history of it all though, you have to go back further than the World Wide Web even to find where this whole online journal deal started.  Does anyone remember .plan files and the finger command?  If you had an account on any sort of UNIX system, you could create a .plan file where you'd just type in your latest thoughts, what you were working on, if you were on vacation etc.  Other users on the system could "finger" your username and see your latest .plan update, letting them keep an eye on you and what you're up to.

So from .plan to an online journal via the WWW in the mid-90s, to automated management systems starting in the late 90s, to connected communities and content aggregators now with "Web 2.0"  What's the next step for blogs?