There is an anniversary of sorts this summer and a lot of news sources are picking up the thread and putting their own spin on the story. What is it? Blogs, it seems, have turned 10 years old. And with the widespread use of RSS feeds pushing entries to one's desktop, [watch a Flash movie from Common Craft, "RSS in Plain English"] it's easy to subscribe to particular blogs and stay attuned to the news, topics of interest, and pithy comments from all sorts.
In mid-July the Wall Street Journal ran a story, "Happy Blogiversary," and described the origins of blogging:
We are approaching a decade since the first blogger -- regarded by many to be Jorn Barger -- began his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy, to which he appended some of his own commentary. On Dec. 23, 1997, on his site, Robot Wisdom, Mr. Barger wrote: "I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis," and the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the primordial root of the word weblog.
We've seen blogging evolve over this time from personal journal entries to fulfill a variety of purposes, including political discourse, mean-spirited character assassination, and point-counterpoint exchanges through comments and trackbacks. On the professional side, those of us in IT have numerous reliable blogs to consult for information and opinions on the newest device, gadget or proposed/rumored technology just over the horizon that will, with apologies to Gene Roddenberry, enable us to go where no one has gone before in both physical and virtual worlds.
The LTC began to support instructional blogging 4-5 years ago, and we've seen good uses made of blogs around The University of Arizona campus.
The WSJ chose to publish 500 words or less from "Twelve commentators -- including Tom Wolfe, Newt Gingrich, the SEC's Christopher Cox and actress-turned-blogger Mia Farrow -- on what blogs mean to them." If you Google -- yes it's a verb these days -- "blogs turn 10", you find a number of different articles. Two you might check are from The Guardian and ZDNet.
The Arizona Daily Star ran a story on Monday, August 27th, that I can recommend for its listing of 10 Most Popular Blogs and 2006 Weblog Awards. It also reports some interesting statistics, including one from Blogpulse.com reporting that by late July there were 53.1M individual blogs on the Internet and that Technorati reported that there are 175,000 new blogs created each day. I wonder how many of those are on Blogger. Starnet tends to move stories after a week into the pay-as-you go archives, so check it out by Labor Day. I'm pasting in the lists here for your convenience. How many of these have you visited in the past? I know I've had RSS feeds set up to Engadget, Boing Boing, Gizmodo, and Ars Technica over the past year. Several months ago I started using iGoogle and I have feeds from many blogs coming in to several of my tabs, such as Higher Ed, Libraries & Librarians, and News.
10 Most Popular Blogs
(Measured by unique links in the past six months) Source: Technorati.com
2006 Weblog Awards Source: weblogawards.org
Weblogawards.org is a site devoted to blogging, and award winners are selected by the public; last year, more than 500,000 people participated in voting. This year's winners will be announced in December.
- Best blog: Daily Kos
- Best individual blog: The Bleat by James Lileks
- Best humor blog: Sadly, No!
- Best online community: Fark
- Best liberal blog: Think Progress
- Best conservative blog: Little Green Footballs
Who would've thunk it? Blogs 10 years old? That is just inconceivable! For perspective, however, just two weeks ago we celebrated the anniversary of Elvis' death....30 years, and we're approaching the 6 year anniversary of 9/11. Scary.