Who Cares Who First Started Blogging?
Monday, July 16th, 2007;
-- Andy Beal |
It seems some bloggers are a little bit ticked off over the Wall Street Journal’s article on the 10th anniversary of blogging. It appears there is a lot of debate over who first started blogging, and how long blogging has been around.
[Jorn] Barger has always been credited with popularizing the term weblog (although as I found in my research back in 2005 he wasn?t the first to use it the term)…Winer has often claimed that he was the first blogger, I?ve long disagreed but whether it was Hall or Winer is a moot point: both were blogging in 1996
I?m just an observer in this particular battle, but it appears that the WSJ sort of flubbed it today with a hastily written article on the history of blogging…
…the Wall Street Journal got blogging?s history wrong. Dave Winer had a blog long before Jorn Barger started blogging or came up with the name ?blog.? In fact, if I remember my history right Jorn was using software developed by Dave Winer to do his blog.
So I ask, does it really matter?
Blogging has become valuable and powerful because of its decentralized conversation. To try and give credit to the first blogger takes us away from the core message; that blogging has brought us the age of citizen-journalism and radical transparency. Personally, I don’t care who gets credit for being the first to blog, let’s just focus our efforts in ensuring blogging grows and earns the respect of its mainstream media peers.
** Join Andy Beal, Om Malik, Biz Stone, Dave Taylor & other experts for 2-days of hands-on social media training. Save $250 with code "FOA" **
Similar posts you may like...
Save & Share: 
Category: Blogging
Forward: Email This Post
July 16th, 2007 at 11:41 am
Thank you! I’ve been seeing all these people debating the issue and every time my mind screamed “Who gives a flip?” I mean really isn’t blogging just an extension of keeping your journal in a word doc? And wasn’t that just an extension of keeping a pen and paper journal?
Basically I don’t much care who claims to have had the first one or who is credited, so long as blogging continues to grow.
July 16th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
As long as no one says that Al gore invented it,I’m ok.
July 16th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Didn’t Al Gore invent blogging? Sorry Alexandra I couldn’t resist.
I’m with you Andy. It would difficult to care any less about who was the first to blog. Other than the egos of some bloggers is there any reason the information is important.
July 16th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
What matters, to me, is that people should feel able to correct these big media organizations when they are wrong… otherwise their printed facts will become actual truths (history) to future researchers and writers. And when a single journalist or a big media outlet like WSJ is wrong the editors/readers alike should also be alerted to the shoddy work.
I don’t care who was first, either. Blogging is just a method of publishing online and a lot of people were doing that before RSS was created (by Winer).
July 16th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
The problem is, it doesn’t appear that bloggers can agree on who created it either.
July 17th, 2007 at 7:05 am
I think it was Al Gore. Definitely. Haha
July 17th, 2007 at 11:31 am
[...] Who Started? Filed under: Andy Beal, Bloggers, Blogs, Blogging — becki325 @ 3:31 pm Good thread on Andy’s log yesterday about the WSJ coverage of the 10th anniversary of blogging - who did really start blogging? [...]
July 18th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
It’s silly to argue over such things, ok who made the first CSS template.
July 18th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
But it’s not silly to demand journalistic integrity or to request fact-checking by historians and journalists, especially during a time when the history is still “alive” and can help sort that out for us. Otherwise, whatever they print becomes the truth.
July 19th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Before there was blogging, there was E/N (Everything/Nothing) sites. Completely pointless sites like r33t, BAMF, and such. It’s been too long to remember any of them, but that was ‘blogging’ before it was something everybody could do.
August 17th, 2007 at 5:35 am
I actually did. but you would not believe me anyway.
December 20th, 2007 at 8:18 am
The fact no-one can agree is the interesting part! My money’s on Winer: http://sphinn.com/story/15348