Most experts agree that the first blog was Links.net, created in 1994 by then-student Justin Hall as a place to publish his writing. The site consisted entirely of brief posts, each one sharing a link and some of his thoughts on the content within. This compilation of links included links to websites he liked, as well as his own work.
My First Blog Ever!
Many of those early blogs were created by programmers and focused on highly technical subjects, but in 1998 Jonathan Dube became the first journalist to blog an event. His blog chronicled Hurricane Bonnie for The Charlotte Observer, as pictured below:
Blogger, on the other hand, began its life as a commercial blogging service created by Pyra Labs. The platform would go on to be purchased by Google in 2003 and made freely available to the world. This move pushed not just Blogger, but also the entire concept of blogging, into the mainstream.
As blogging became more popular, tools appeared to help people curate their blog reading list or market their own blogs. 2002 was a particularly big year for the blogosphere. People also started to monetize their blogs with sites like BlogAds, a precursor to Google AdSense.
Many popular blogs also launched in this year, including Gizmodo and Gawker, some of the earliest companies to use blogging itself as their primary business model. Check out the original version of Gizmodo below:
2002 was a big year for blogging, but 2003 turned out to be even bigger. Google purchased Blogger and introduced AdSense, making it possible for anyone to monetize their blog without needing to join a special network like BlogAds.
2003 also saw the birth of two new brand-new blogging services that would further alter the blogosphere: TypePad, a commercial blogging platform that hosts blogs for major multimedia companies like the BBC, and WordPress, the open-source platform we use for Themeisle and our sister sites. These platforms made it easy for companies to create their own fully customized blogs and sell advertising directly to companies for improved profits.
In 2005, Garrett Graff became the first blogger in the history of blogging to be granted a press pass for the White House. This, along with the birth of Huffington Post in the same year (see the original site below), brought blogging into the political realm and gave the medium a new level of legitimacy as a media source.
The rise of vlogging was only one sign of a major shift in internet usage: as internet connections grew faster and more stable, images and video became more prominent. Images and design also became gradually more important to blogging success. Early blogs consisted almost entirely of text that stretched across the entire page, with only the occasional small image. You can see this early design aesthetic if you take another look at that screenshot of Links.net:
The design aspect of blogs has evolved and grown more important with each new iteration of the concept. Early platforms like LiveJournal and Blogger offered limited but simple customization. This allowed people with no coding experience to create unique sites. Popular LiveJournal layouts also introduced some elements of design that are still common in WordPress themes, like the centered text pictured below:
Many blog designs during this era of the history of blogging also used elements like images of notebook rings or even just beige coloring to simulate the feeling of reading a paper journal, like the one pictured below:
Since then, premium WordPress themes have become an industry to themselves. ThemeIsle joined this wave of companies in 2012, with a strong desire to make WordPress themes more fun for both site owners and new visitors. Our first theme, CreativeMag, was released in 2012:
The CreativeMag theme showcases several popular design elements from this era in the history of blogging, including possibly the most enduring element of modern blog design, the sidebar. Like many older themes, it uses beige coloring to evoke the feeling of reading a journal. The sidebar features an image of lined paper to strengthen this association.
Another important aspect of the history of blogging is the development of search engine optimization, commonly referred to as SEO. The creation of Google in 1998 changed the internet forever. The site quickly gained popularity, and enterprising individuals soon realized that they could use excessive keywords to make an impact on the search engines. Blogs, as sites that are frequently updated and have a heavy focus on text content, were a natural way for businesses to add large numbers of these keywords to their sites.
All in all, the changes to SEO reward high-quality blogs, making blogs an even more instrumental part of marketing. Companies who blog receive 55% more visitors to their website. Those visitors are also higher quality; SEO leads get a 14.6% close rate, whereas outbound leads have a much lower closing rate of 1.7%.
Throughout its lifetime, Medium has made waves by introducing new ways to pay creators. They introduced a subscription model, and in 2017 replaced it with a partner program. Today, Medium is home to thousands of blogs with varying levels of success, and they even employ some writers directly.
Around the same time that Medium introduced the partner program, another platform, Substack, also came on the blogging scene. Substack let independent writers and content creators publish their work directly to readers and set up paid subscriptions. This subscription-based revenue model is one of the key features of Substack, and allowed writers to build a loyal and dedicated audience.
As the 2010s began winding down, creators continued to use Medium, Substack, and the outcropping of similar sites as their primary blog. However, many of them also used these blogging platforms as secondary and tertiary posting grounds, as a means of funneling traffic to their self-hosted, main blogs. Leveraging these platforms brought content from low-traffic domains to larger new audiences.
Social media was utilized by blogs in a similar, symbiotic fashion, which has continued to the present day. Most bloggers have some kind of social media marketing strategy. They share bits and pieces of every blog post on a plethora of social media platforms, in an effort to get that traffic back to their blog. Vloggers use similar marketing tactics, and many also run blogs in tandem with their vlogs.
The history of blogging is far from over. According to different estimates, there are millions of blogs live today. Plus, blogs are especially important to marketing: 85% of B2C companies and 91% of B2B companies use blogs or other forms of content marketing [3].
What do you think is the next stage in the history of blogging and how big of an impact do you think artificial intelligence (AI) is going to make? Let us know in the comments section below!
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There are hundreds of millions of blogs on the internet today. More than 440 million blogs are found on Tumblr, Squarespace and WordPress alone, according to marketing agency Mediakix. Blogging is now a household term and holds a firm place in culture.
It may be surprising to learn that the history of blogging dates back to 1994, which predates social media by at least a few years. The following timeline looks at the history of blogging, from its inception to its modern status.
The blogging platform Blogger launched, opening up opportunities for people to publish online. LiveJournal and Xanga followed in 1999 (Xanga originally began as a social network, but added blogging features in 2000).
A new trend emerged with mothers blogging about parenting, in order to educate and support readers. Ten years later, there were more than 3.9 million mommy blogs in North America alone, according to Mashable.
Google launched its blog advertising service AdSense in 2003, and other major sites followed, including blogging platforms WordPress and TypePad. This is the same year that live blogging is believed to have started.
Ms. Steele:It is my humble honor in trying to respond in words worthy of you. Your books take me to worlds I wonder if I will ever travel and leave me wondering on what a sequel would have the characters doing next. Have you ever considered a sequel?Thank you,Karen, Pittsburgh, PA
Ms. Steele:It is my humble honor in trying to respond in words worthy of you and your writings. Your books take me to worlds I wonder if I will ever travel and leave me wondering on what the sequel would have the characters doing next. Have you ever considered writing a sequel?Thank you,Karen, Pittsburgh, PA
I have read every single one of your books and consider you my favorite author. I just got A good woman and plan to start reading it this weekend. Please continue writing. Since I am only a year older than you, I plan to read your books for the rest of my life.
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Well your first blog was absolutely beautiful just like everything else you write. I could never figure out how old you are from your pictures. You have always looked so elegant. I hope that you enjoy your age and ill try to do the same. It shouldnt be too hard since im only 23 but sometimes it feels ridiculous.
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