Short Blogging History

The history of blogging is a long and convoluted one. Blogging has been around in some form since the earliest days of the Internet. In fact, one of the first web pages was similar to a blog in that its author, Internet creator Tim Berners-Lee, regularly updated it with a list of all websites (only a few dozen at the time).

Blogging eventually evolved into a means of sharing both personal expression and other information that individuals found valuable. Since its beginning, blogging has enjoyed a slight duality: on one hand, it serves as a great online diary, and on the other, it’s a fantastic communications tool.

Until 2004, blogging was a fairly specific activity, with only about 5 million bloggers worldwide—most of them fairly secluded in their own little niches, blogging about pets, businesses, and tech-related issues. Then came the US 2004 presidential election, and blogs suddenly began getting mainstream attention. Bloggers unearthed issues about candidates, blogged about all kinds of events that journalists couldn’t be bothered to attend, and even received press passes to the Democratic party’s national convention. Overall, 2004 was a huge year for blogging, as business thoughtleaders such as management guru Tom Peters, author and lecturer Malcolm Gladwell, entrepreneurial expert Guy Kawasaki, and leadership authority Steven Covey woke up to the power of blogs.

In fact, these days, no business author’s work is complete without starting a book blog. As a result, the business magazines of the world such as Fortune, Business 2.0, and Fast Company have awakened to the power of the blog and businesses around the world are taking notice. While blog-related inquiries to marketing and PR companies were initially met with blank stares, these companies quickly caught up to the idea, and now blog consulting is a staple of consultants large and small.

The early twenty-first century has been marked by mergers and acquisitions in the blogging space as well as a number of scandals—but more than anything, it has been marked by growth. If 5 million bloggers were online in 2004, more than 50 million were blogging by the start of 2005, and that growth won’t slow down anytime soon. In fact, the collective number of blogs has grown so rapidly that no one service has been able to keep up with it, which is one of the reasons that nobody is entirely sure how many people are actually reading blogs. Suffice it to say that a lot of people are writing them, even more are reading them, and more still are being influenced by them. These days, the question isn’t “Do you know what a blog is?”; it’s more likely “What’s your blog?” or “What’s your favorite blog?”

The growth of blogs among businesses has been astronomical. Thousands of new business blogs are being created by companies of every size, in every industry, for just about every purpose imaginable. So, what will you do with your blog?