Who Invented the word Blog?

Who invented the word “blog”?

Introduction

Blog is short for weblog. The term weblog was first coined in December 1997 by an American blogger named Jorn Barger. He used it to describe he would “log the web” as he surfed online. Later another blogger named Peter Merholz changed weblog to “we blog” in a 1999 post. Soon people were dropping the other word and just used “blog.”

Jorn Barger Biography
Jorn Barger was born in Yellow Springs, Ohio in the year 1953. He was the editor of “Robot Wisdom,” a widely read blog from the early days of blogging. Barger liked to blog about the Irish writer James Joyce and artificial intelligence. He participated heavily in Usenet newsgroups in the 1990s, writing about Joyce, Kate Bush and other topics. He came up with a newsgroups “law” stating that the more interesting one’s own life is, the less he or she posts in online discussions. Barger created the Robot Wisdom weblog posting links about politics, technology, internet culture, books, artificial intelligence and other subjects. It became an online journal recording his day to day intellectual and reading activities.

Barger’s blog gained wide acclaim. The influential New York Times remarked that the Robot Wisdom made life easier for people. With the blog, one could gain quick access to quality information without having to search the web by oneself. The Register praised Barger as well, saying no one could read news better than he. However the blog pioneer is not without critics. He has come under fire several times for allegedly racist comments against the Jews and Judaism.

Blog Basics
Blogs have gone from being simple web journals to big business. There are several types of blogs, such as:

Personal blogs – 

These are blogs that chronicle the activities and thoughts of their individual owners. Personal blogs are the most common of all blog types. Because blog servers have made their software so user friendly, practically anyone can start a blog. Personal blogs can be either private (visible only to the author), public or shared with selected users.

Corporate blogs – 
As blogs became more popular, businesses realized the potential benefits for them. A corporate blog is one owned by a company, and kept for the purpose of enhancing their image and attracting customers.

Topic blogs – 
Instead of focusing on one person or company, blogs can be devoted to a specific topic. A blogger can make a weblog devoted to cooking, movies, shoes, travel, pet care – practically anything under the sun.

Blogs are often free and one can have as many of them as one likes. Nowadays with advertising, one can also make money from blogging. It is no wonder that the word has become a household term.