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9:58:00 AM EDT
Hearing What a Fool Believes -- Doobie Brothers
Blog Entries Back in the Day
Journals Editor Joe notes that next Monday is the 3rd anniversary of AOL Journals, and is talking about everyone's first Journal and blog posts. In the piece, he notes that my very first blog entry was on September 13, 1998 -- almost eight years ago now. This is absolutely correct; that's the day I started writing daily on my own personal site. It was so long ago that these sort of things weren't typically called "blogs" or even "journals" -- they were called "online diaries" if they were called anything at all. Ironically, in the very first blog entry I ever did, I talked about what it was I should call this thing I was doing; the word blog didn't come up at all.
Because I thought you might be interested to see what a really old school blog entry looks like, here's the very first one I ever did, from September 13, 1998.
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9/13
Hey, there. I've decided to try something a little new for me here at this website -- for a little while, at least, I'm going to try to update this front page on a regular basis with new text; the idea here being to give folks who come to the website a reason to come back on a somewhat regular basis.
This isn't a new
idea, by any stretch of the imagination. The internet is nothing if not
a fount of unbridled egos splooging their opinions out to whomever is within
browsing distance, regardless of the quality (or coherency) of those opinions;
my pal Ivan Brunetti's cartoon comment here says it all.
A number of people out there even keep "online diaries": One of my personal favorites is from James Lileks, who updates his site on a daily basis. It shows a certain stick-to-it-iveness that I admire, although I'm not sure that this own space will be updated with the same frequency. I am inherently lazy and will, whenever possible, avoid doing more work than I have to.
Be that as it may, I have several reasons for deciding to do the regular online update. As a writer, one of the things I have done most regularly, and which I think I am pretty good at, is write columns. I've been a columnist on various subjects off and on for most of the last decade, and it's something that I enjoy.
Right now, I'm sort of between columns -- I write a music column once a week for MediaOne Express, and I'm extremely grateful that MediaOne folks have seen fit to pay me to write one; please visit the column several times daily to inflate the hit results, if you wouldn't mind. Still, there's only so much you can comment on in a music column (hint: It's mostly music). In the absence of having another column at the moment, I'll just use this space as my own little soapbox to comment about other things that are going on in the world.
I hestitate, however, to call anything I write in this space a proper column -- that would bespeak of a certain amount of organizational structure that I can't really seeing myself applying (it's that laziness thing, remember). Nor would I really call it an "online diary" -- Starr report notwithstanding, I think there's a certain line beyond which personal lives ought to remain personal; I don't plan on using this space to foist my deepest, darkest secrets on the internet. I can't imagine most people would care all that much (especially as there won't be pictures).
Probably the best thing to call this is a ".plan". Plan files, for the blissfully technogically ignorant, are small files that reveal who a holder of a particular internet account is (by way of the "finger" function. Don't ask). Plan files generally hold very basic information, but a few folks who have them use them as a place to jot down their thoughts on their life, world events, sports, movies, what have you. In short, a place to muse, somewhat publicly. It's not about anything in particular, just what that person is thinking at that moment.
That's what I figure this will be. Nothing especially deep, just a random thought or two I feel like sharing. My expectation is that I'll update this every couple of days; drop by when you feel like and see what the hell is going on in my brain. E-mail if you like, or go on in and look at other parts of the site. Hope you enjoy it.
---And there you have it. Even back in the day, it was mostly about whatever it was I was thinking about at the time. Some things change, but some things stay absolutely the same.
The real irony is that I never did get another general newspaper column, but I kept on doing this, and now I get paid for it. The 21st century rocks.
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I'm sitting here trying to resist the temptation to research all references to you and/or Whatever on Wikipedia, and Googling the term "splooging." - K.
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Well, ok, you didn't call it blogging. But you did mention "splooging" and I think that's a much better term. Sploogs and splooging. I'm surprised it didn't catch on. LOL
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I didn't have comments enabled until March 2003, so it took that long for people to comment. But I did have a fair number of readers early on, because my personal site had been online for years, and also when I started writing daily I let me friends know. I'd say I had a couple hundred readers daily by the end of 1998. Of course, it was a MUCH smaller world back then. There were probably only a few thousand people doing "diaries" back then; now there's 50 million blogs.
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A blog is like the proverbial falling tree in the forest (though some don't want to be heard). How long was it before someone left you a comment? And when did it really take-off for you?
8/17/06 5:13 PM
AJ in SF