Though this site didn't start the blogging trend, it definitely helped make it more popular

How old is blogging? To answer this question, we have to ask another more fundamental question what is a blog? We could at one level look at it as a one-to-many conversation, just as e-mail is mostly a one-to-one conversation system. In this context, BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems) that were popular before the rise of the Internet in India and abroad can be seen as precursors to the blog.

We could also look at a blog as a method by which people can share their thoughts with others, including strangers. In some ways, this was a revolution of sorts before the blog became popular, only editors and columnists had a platform for airing their thoughts. But once blogs became popular, this freedom was available to many.



Dear diary

While the blog has many fathers the BBS, Usenet, e-mail lists and others perhaps the closest parent is the online diary, which involves publishing one's thoughts on the Web. Wikipedia says that the first web page in an online-diary format is thought to be Claudio Pinhanez's Open Diary, which was published at the MIT Media Lab website from November 1994 to 1996.

But something like blogging becomes popular only when many people start using it. For this, credit has to go to Pyra Labs, which created Blogspot in August 1999. After Pyra Labs, one has to credit Google for helping blogs take off in a big way.

Google's biggest contribution to the blogging community is the fact that it acquired Pyra Labs in 2003. Once the acquisition was completed, premium paid services were made free. Google also integrated Picasa, which it acquired in 2004, with Blogger, thereby giving users the ability to share photos on their blogs.

Who are you?

While Google managed the technology behind blogging, some social issues started cropping up once blogging became popular. The first problems happened in 2004 in the Apple vs. Does case, when information about new Apple products was leaked to various online news sites. This case raised a question of the rights of journalists and what protection they could get under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

While many journalists don't think of bloggers as journalists most of them are actually more like
columnists the community has gained some respect. In the case mentioned above, the courts said that people who post to Web sites are given the same protection as the mainstream media.

In India, it is quite different, and sometimes mainstream media, obviously feeling threatened by the rise of blogging, has acted against the latter. One infamous case involves NDTV allegedly bullying blogger Chyetanya Kunte in the aftermath of the 26/11 Mumbai terror strikes.

But blogging will always live on, and any attempts to gag it will fail. More than 'Blogging turns x years', it is perhaps this concept of freedom that we should celebrate now.

QUICK TAKE
>>Online journals have been around from around a quarter of a century
>>Pioneers GEnie (General Electric Network for Information Exchange) and BIX (Byte Information eXchange) date back to 1985
>>But blogging on the Web became popular only around ten years ago thanks to Blogger

Pioneer speak
Jerry Pournelle, a familiar name to anybody who used to regularly read BYTE in the good old days, can be regarded as one of the first bloggers in the world. On his site jerrypournelle.com, he says:

I can make some claim to this being The Original Blog and Daybook. I certainly started keeping a day book well before most, and long before the term "blog" or Web Log was invented. BIX, the Byte exchange, preceded the Web by a lot, and I also had a daily journal on GE Genie.

I note that a Google Search on Blog doesn't show me, at least not in the first 10 or so pages, but then I long insisted I don't "blog" because I find the word ugly. But I have a fair amount of traffic and a quality readership, so I can hardly complain.