quietlife.net

oldest blog

28 Jun 2005

Bill’s comment over at this post got me thinking. I wonder what the oldest example of something that qualifies as a “blog” on the Internet was?

If we take “blogging” to represent a community of people using the Internet to exchange ideas, argue about politics, flame and generally harass one another, etc, then blogging is pretty clearly just picking up where the USENET community left off after it was destroyed by porn and spam – allowing for some growth, as well, as the Internet in general gets bigger.

But if we take “blogging” to represent “posting dated log entries to the web”, I am not sure of the earliest example. Memepool was probably one of the first to get closer to blogging as we know it now, but that was as late as 1998, so maybe not. Mirsky’s Worst of the Web was around from a very early date. archive.org has entries on Mirsky’s dated as early as January 1, 1995 – was it hosted somewhere else before that, even?

Can anyone think of something that fits the bill before that?

Comments

Tim Morgan — June 28, 2005 at 20:20 · reply

Mirsky’s Worst of the Web was the best. Man, I miss that guy.

cwage — June 28, 2005 at 20:21 · reply

A friend of mine that is entirely too cool to actually read my blog commented:

“My favorite Mirsky moment though was when he went insane because he didn’t get rich off the net”

But, who can blame him? I’d be pissed too.

scott — June 28, 2005 at 20:45 · reply

Justin Hall (links.net) was the first that came to mind for me, and the Wikipedia entry for “blog” agrees with me.

Amanda — June 28, 2005 at 20:51 · reply

Well I trust wikipedia more than I trust scott….

cwage — June 28, 2005 at 20:54 · reply

He could have just changed the entry long enough to fool us!

Amanda — June 28, 2005 at 21:00 · reply

Oh…he’s not that clever.

cwage — June 28, 2005 at 21:01 · reply

I am going to start doing that, though. Any time I am in a heated argument, I will just quickly edit a wikipedia page to reflect my viewpoint and then refer people to it – hopefully before it gets reverted.

This is GENIUS!

scott — June 28, 2005 at 21:06 · reply

I’m very clever! You don’t know!

I’ve seen the “blog origins” thing discussed about a million times. My answers are usually “look it up in Wikipedia” or “Dave Winer invented everything! Just ask him!”

Howsabout: who’s the oldest Nashville blogger? In terms of blog-time, not gray hairs, obvs.

Tim Morgan — June 28, 2005 at 21:10 · reply

Rex, probably.

cwage — June 28, 2005 at 21:11 · reply

Hm, that’s a tough one. Beats me. I started in around mid-2001, not counting the early blogger adventure entries that I lost in the migration process and whatnot.

scott — June 28, 2005 at 21:14 · reply

September ‘99 for me, except that I didn’t live in Nashville at the time, haven’t ever taken it seriously, and won’t link to it. We’ll go with Rex. Or. Brittney? I know she’s pretty old-school.

cwage — June 28, 2005 at 21:16 · reply

Yeah, she said ‘99 I think, so may be..

cwage — June 28, 2005 at 22:53 · reply

Hmm. That’s gotta be a winner – a close one, since it’s an organization and not an individual which was more what I was thinking about, but I think it still counts.

Erik — June 28, 2005 at 23:15 · reply

It all depends on your definition of what a blog is.

I’m more concerned that every time I look back on my friends page, where your post is still at the top, and read the title “oldest blog”, I have to go listen to Nanang Tatang’s song “Oldest News” again.

Jackson — June 29, 2005 at 02:25 · reply

I remember using a perl cgi “news” script on personal sites in the late 1990’s. News scripts were all the rage at the time. My current blog started in September 2001, but there was older stuff before I committed to maintaining a personal permanent record on the web. I remember them being all over the place.

I had some fun with the Wayback machine earlier today (also inspired by Bill’s comment). Unfortunately my oldest site that is in the Wayback machine has a Flash front page and the flash isn’t there, so I can’t get to the “news”.

cwage — June 29, 2005 at 02:29 · reply

I think the earliest thing archive.org has for me is http://www.telalink.net/~cwage/, which eventually I transitioned to http://www.place.org/~cwage/, which is where the earliest instance of my blog is archived. archive.org is so cool.

I have thought about gathering up all my previous totally-awesome home-pages and showcasing them somewhere, but I am lazy.

Les Jones — June 29, 2005 at 03:08 · reply

Define “blog.” When I started doing 56K.COM in 1997 I used a format with the newest information on the front page, with entries in reverse chronological order. And I stole that from the sites that I liked that did that. One was Ric Ford’s MacInTouch, which dates from 1994.

You’ll pretty much have to define an arbitrary moment to define the beginning of blogs. That’s pretty much how the invention of baseball was determined. (You didn’t think Abner Doubleday was the first person to play stickball, did you? - see Stephen Jay Gould’s essay on the creation myth of mankind and baseball, all neatly tied together with the Cardiff Giant - that’s also the name of a baseball team, and the Cardiff Giant is stored in Cooperstown, New York, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Gould mined pure gold on that essay.)

Doug Orleans — June 29, 2005 at 14:16 · reply

Did you know that Mirsky was an old-time LambdaMOOer? I met up with him when I first moved to Boston. I wonder where he is now.

Thanks! Your comment has been submitted and will appear shortly.

Leave a comment