Blog (1999- ) is short for “weblog”. A blog makes it easy for ordinary people to write something and have it quickly posted on the Web for all to see all around the world. A posting can contain not only writing but also pictures and sounds. A blog lists one’s postings from newest to oldest, showing the latest posting first. Going through a blog you can see all of the older posts.
Anyone who can get to the Web can write a blog. It is free and requires no special skills. That is the beauty of it: people all over the world from all walks of life can write blogs, opening windows on the world that did not exist even a few years ago. Before blogs, writing for the public was limited to a few – now over ten million are doing it!
Of course, if you are one of ten million, you will probably not have the kind of readership that the New York Times, Virgil or Dan Brown enjoy. A few do have thousands even millions of readers, but most do not.
If all this writing can somehow be preserved, then it will give future generations a window onto our age unlike any that ever existed before. Just think of it!
The word blog was coined in May 1999 when one wit changed “weblog” to “we blog”. The name stuck and has been with us ever since.
It was in 1999 that the first real blogs appeared. There were things that looked like blogs before that. For example, Justin Hall wrote about what was happening in his life for eleven years (1994-2005) and put it all on the Web. The form may have been like a blog, but not its inner workings: to add or edit posts was not easy. He had to learn HTML first and then write HTML as well as the posting itself. It is the ease of use that makes a blog a blog, makes it something new under the sun.
This was originally written as part of a blog. It may still be or it may have been put into some other form. Ten years ago there were no real blogs, so who can say what there will be ten years from now?
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