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Blogs have become an integral part of online culture. Practically everyone reads blogs now, whether theyre official news blogs associated with traditional news media, topic-based blogs related to ones work or hobbies, or blogs purely for entertainment, just about anyone you ask has at least one favorite blog. But it wasnt always so. Blogs have a relatively short history, even when compared with the history of the Internet itself. And its only in the past five to ten years that theyve really taken off and become an important part of the online landscape.
During these early years, a few different blogging platforms cropped up. LiveJournal is probably the most recognizable of the early sites. And then, in 1999, the platform that would later become Blogger was started by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan at Pyra Labs. Blogger is largely responsible for bringing blogging to the mainstream.
A couple of major blogging platforms got their start in the early 2000s. Version 1.0 of Movable Type was released in September of 2001. WordPress was started in 2003, though parts of its development date back to 2001. TypePad was also released in 2003, based on Movable Type. Some peripheral services to the blogosphere also started in the early 2000s. Technorati, the first major blog search engine, was launched in 2002. Audioblogger, the first major podcasting service, was founded in 2003. The first video blogs started in 2004, more than a year before YouTube was founded. Also launched in 2003 was the AdSense advertising platform, which was the first ad network to match ads to the content on a blog. AdSense also made it possible for bloggers without huge platforms to start
making money from when they first started blogging (though payments to low-traffic blogs werent very large). Once bloggers started making money from their blogs, the number of meta blogs skyrocketed. Bloggers like Darren Rowse (of Problogger.net and Digital-Photography-School.net) and John Chow made sizable amounts of money telling other bloggers how they could turn blogging into a full-time career. One early event that highlighted the rising importance of blogs was the firing of Heather Armstrong, the blogger behind Dooce, for comments posted on her blog regarding her employer. This event happened in 2002, and sparked a debate over privacy issues, that still hasnt been sufficiently p ut to rest by 2011. Dooced became a slang term to describe being fired from ones job for something youve written on your blog, and has made appearances in Urban Dictionary, and even on Jeopardy!
A lot of people only think of Twitter when they think of microblogging, but there are other microblog (also called tumblog) platforms that allow for a more traditional type of blogging experience, while also allowing for the social networking features of Twitter (like following other bloggers). Tumblr was the first major site to offer this kind of service, starting in 2007. They allow for a variety of different post types, unlike traditional blogging services, which have a one-size-fits-all post format (that allows users to format their posts however they want, including adding multimedia objects). It also makes it easier for users to reblog the content of others, or to like individual posts (sort of like Facebooks like feature). Posterous is another, similar service. Launched in 2008, Posterous allows bloggers to set up a simple blog via email, and then submit content either via their online editor or by email. Posterous is sometimes considered more of a lifestreaming app than a blogging platform, thought its technically both.