Today Marks 5 Years of Le Blogeur...
It seems utterly unbelievable, but today marks the 5 year anniversary of this website. Back when I started observing weblogs, there were but a few standouts in a relatively small field of active, daily bloggers.
The big names from those days were CamWorld, Scripting News, Kottke, Rebecca's Pocket, Robot Wisdom, EatonWeb, plep, nutlog, evhead, wetlog, megnut, saturn, prolific, barbelith, riothero, flutterby, metafilter, benicetobears, misterpants, peterme, rogers, and others that I am forgetting. I am very happy to say that nearly all of these pioneers of blogging are still at it, and continue to define and reshape the genre.
I have always believed that a weblog should have links. Without daily links, it's an online journal which is similar but not the same thing, as online journals tend to document ones offline life, while a proper (in my opinion) weblog documents ones online life, and instantly connects you, via the link, to what they're talking about. The vast majority of the sites that I have linked through the years have been link heavy, because I always come for the links, and stay for the commentary.
Over the past 5 years we've seen an explosion in weblogging and weblogs. The term "blog", coined by peter merholtz and popularized by Rebecca Blood, has become something that everyone from my 12 year old niece to my 75 year old aunt recognizes. Corporations, mainstream publications, political figures, entertainment companies and more have all embraced the genre and used it to varying degrees of success. It's easy to tell when a blog run by a 'professional' will be good-- when there are constant daily updates, lots of link to independent sources, and commentary that has a real voice. Corporate sites that are timid, and afraid of an independent voice and links from non-company sources will never succeed as independent sources, but can succeed in disseminating company info if other bloggers pick up blog-broken news.
Blogging came on to the scene in the second half of the 1990s, exploded for the first time in 2000, and then really went crazy in early 2002. This period saw political weblogs, with their ability to capture the pulse of the internet and collate the millions of news stories, personal histories, source documents, etc. online into a readable daily document. Sites like Curor.org and Instapundit were able to attract huge audiences by distilling the cavalcade of post 9-11 news into something recognizable and coherent.
With tools such as Movable Type, WordPress, Blogger, Haloscan, Blogads, Google Adsense, etc. weblogging became a viable commercial option for the aspiring writer/publisher, if not one that could pay all the bills for most. However, with those tools in hand, the next batch of commentators and pundits will have an outlet that bypasses traditional media-- who also benefit by having a self-publishing 'farm system' for their future stars. Businesses specializing in weblog publishing such as Gawker Media and Weblogsinc have positioned themselves as leaders in the new media form. These leaders' dependance on advertising for revenue means that they will stick to topics which make money, such as lifestyle and shopping, technology and gadgets, etc. The best thing about blogging (and the web in general) is that even with slickly produced commercial weblogs produced by corporate weblog comapnies, there will always be room for the upstart in his living room publishing his thoughts to a huge audience. As long as there are other companies who continue to lower the barriers to entry through software, hosting, etc., the next great weblogger is always around the corner.
Still, some bloggers have perservered and have managed to stay around even as the genre they helped to define has mutated and gained a huge new audience and exposure. You can find them represented on the archives of this website on virtually every month over the past 5 years, as a testament to their quality and staying power.
Thank you to the bloggers, and thank you to my readers. I will continue to watch the blogs for you, and point out new and exciting weblogs, as well as refer you back to my favorites...
Your humble Blogeur,
Relton
