After 10 Years of Blogs, the Future's Brighter Than Ever

In the 10 years since the first site known as a "weblog" went online, the blog has matured from a geek niche to the internet's dominant publishing paradigm.

Blogs have come a long way since Dec. 17, 1997, when Jorn Barger coined the term "weblog" to describe the list of links on his Robot Wisdom website that "logged" his internet wanderings. In the decade hence, blogs have come to dominate the net, from 100 million personal diaries to the breaking news sections of the august The New York Times.

"It's the easiest, cheapest, fastest publishing tool ever invented," said Jeff Jarvis, news blogger, media pundit and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism. "The people have a voice they didn't have before."

There are more than 100 million active blogs, according to Technorati -- a monumental leap forward from the relative handful of geeks posting online just a few years back. The expanding chorus of voices is shaping what we read and how we read it. Blogs are re-shaping not just news and entertainment, but also publishing, politics and public relations.

Robert Scoble, Microsoft's most famous blogger, is widely credited with putting a human face on the giant company and facilitating an exchange between customer and corporation. Matt Drudge's news blog Drudge Report garnered national recognition for his coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky sex scandal; last year, Drudge -- a former convenience store clerk -- was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. "Rathergate," a blog-driven critique of Dan Rather's journalism, led to the CBS anchorman's early, ignominious retirement.

Furthermore, blogs have become important news sources in their own right. Behind-the-scenes footage and reports emerged during crises like the South Asian tsunami, the Hurricane Katrina aftermath and the recent Burmese uprising, when coverage from traditional outlets was scarce.

Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of online news site The Huffington Post, calls bloggers the "pit bulls of journalism" and credits their persistent nature with reviving stories that would otherwise fade from newspapers' front pages.

Huffington also said bloggers' openness helps break through the media clutter to illuminate important issues, and is changing the way traditional journalism engages readers.

"Blogging at its best is deeply personal, and once readers get used to that kind of connection to a writer, it's hard for them to accept anything less," she said.

Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine called blogs' capacity to effect real-world change -- like his campaign to shame Dell into giving him a refund for a lemon PC -- "profound."

"The public can find themselves in a dialogue with politicians and leaders that simply wasn't possible before," he said. "(Blogging is) a tool that you can use to do anything. Change the world or put up your restaurant's daily menu, and anything in between."

Blogs have bloomed even as the news industry shrinks, Jarvis said, opening up new and effective communication channels. And Gina Trapani, who helms Lifehacker, a blog that gets more traffic than sites published by big newspapers and magazines, said blogs wield a heavy cultural hammer as well.

"Blogs continue to have a bigger and bigger hand in creating and influencing culture," Trapani said. "It still surprises me when I see internet memes spread by blogs appear on serious TV news shows."

Meg Hourihan, co-creator of Blogger, the web-publishing tool credited with popularizing the personal blog, admits she never expected to see any of the radical changes commonplace today.

"We joked about (the idea) that people could start change in faraway places and revolutionary things would happen. But to see that it's actually happening? I get a thrill -- I see it everywhere," Hourihan said.

Justin Hall, recognized as one of the earliest pioneers in blog-like posting, first began publishing links from his Swarthmore College dorm room in 1994. He remembers the heady early days of online publishing, and notes that as entry barriers lessen, a new wave of microblogging is upon us. Thanks to blogs, zero technical know-how is required of today's web publishers. All they need is an idea.

"People can blog without needing a computer connection or more than a sentence they want to say," said Hall, who was crowned "the founding father of personal bloggers" by The New York Times. "The internet is a richer place for all these participants and it's clear that we're not going back."