A blog is a type of website that is updated with new content on a regular basis, usually daily or weekly. Most blogs are created and updated by a single person, and they develop a tone based on the opinions and ideas of that person. Successful blogs may evolve to the point where the original [...]
History
Although early blogs go back to the origins of the World Wide Web, the term was not invented until 1999. In the early 1990s, online communications primarily took the form of electronic bulletin board systems and email lists. Both of these allowed users to post text, and other users could respond. It was not very efficient, but efficiency increased with the introduction of Internet forum software later in the decade. This software organized user posts and responses into hierarchal threads.
What is recognized as a blog today developed from personal online diaries or journals. The writers of these early blogs were known as journalists or diarists. Two of these early bloggers were science-fiction writer Jerry Pournelle and Dave Winer, who ran a news website for computer programmers. Another early blog, Wearable Wireless Webcam, added automation to the medium by hosting wireless webcam videos showing the daily lives of users.
Most of these early blogs were produced as regular websites that were updated with new information more regularly than most other websites. Later, dedicated blogging software was produced that was geared to those who did not have the technical savvy to update websites. This blogging software was then combined with dedicated web hosting services for bloggers. Together, this technology allowed anyone with Internet access and a computer to create and maintain a blog.
The term blog did not originate until 1999. It originated as a shortened form of the word weblog, which was coined two years earlier by Jorn Barger, a game programmer and early blogger. Soon after Peter Merholz first used the term blog as a noun, it also began to be used as a verb for the action of creating and maintaining a blog.