Jesse James Garrett, editor of Infosift, began compiling a list of “other sites like his” as he found them in his travels around the web. Suddenly a community sprang up. It was easy to read all of the weblogs on Cameron’s list, and most interested people did. More and more people began publishing their own weblogs. Cameron’s list grew so large that he began including only weblogs he actually followed himself. In early 1999 Brigitte Eaton compiled a list of every weblog she knew about and created the Eatonweb Portal. Webloggers debated what was and what was not a weblog, but since the Eatonweb Portal was the most complete listing of weblogs available, Brig’s inclusive definition prevailed.
The original weblogs were link-driven sites. Each was a mixture in unique proportions of links, commentary, and personal thoughts and essays. Weblogs could only be created by people who already knew how to make a website. A weblog editor had either taught herself to code HTML for fun, or, after working all day creating commercial websites, spent several off-work hours every day surfing the web and posting to her site. These were web enthusiasts.
Many current weblogs follow this original style. Their editors present links both to little-known corners of the web and to current news articles they feel are worthy of note. Such links are nearly always accompanied by the editor’s commentary. Out of the myriad web pages slung through cyberspace, weblog editors pick out the most mind-boggling, the most stupid, the most compelling.
In Douglas Rushkoff’s Media Virus, Greg Ruggiero of the Immediast Underground is quoted as saying, “Media is a corporate possession…You cannot participate in the media. We need a definition of media that is public in its orientation.”
By writing a few lines each day, weblog editors begin to redefine media as a public, participatory endeavor.
While weblogs had always included a mix of links, commentary, and personal notes, in the post-Blogger explosion increasing numbers of weblogs eschewed this focus on the web-at-large in favor of a sort of short-form journal. More than that, Blogger itself places no restrictions on the form of content being posted. Its web interface, accessible from any browser, consists of an empty form box into which the blogger can type…anything: a passing thought, an extended essay, or a childhood recollection. The Metafilter interface instructs the writer to contribute a link and add commentary; Blogger makes no such demands. Searching for a filter-style weblog by clicking through the thousands of weblogs listed at weblogs.com, the Eatonweb Portal, or Blogger Directory can be a Sisyphean task. Certainly, both styles still exist; certainly the particular mixture of links, commentary, and personal observation unique to each individual site has always given each weblog its distinctive voice and personality; and certainly the weblog has always been an infinitely malleable format. But the influx of blogs has changed the definition of weblog from “a list of links with commentary and personal asides” to “a website that is updated frequently, with new material posted at the top of the page.” A filter-style weblog provides many advantages to its readers. This profound experience may be most purely realized in the blog-style weblog. Lacking a focus on the outside world, the blogger is compelled to share his world with whomever is reading. Blogger, Pitas, and all the rest have given people with little or no knowledge of HTML the ability to publish on the web: to pontificate, remember, dream, and argue in public, as easily as they send an instant message. In September of 2000 there are thousands of weblogs: topic-oriented weblogs, alternative viewpoints, astute examinations of the human condition as reflected by mainstream media, short-form journals, links to the weird, and free-form notebooks of ideas. Traditional weblogs perform a valuable filtering service and provide tools for more critical evaluation of the information available on the web. Free-style blogs are nothing less than an outbreak of self-expression. Each kind of weblog empowers individuals on many levels.
So why doesn’t every bookmark list contain five weblogs? Weblogs, once filters of the web, suddenly became so numerous they were as confusing as the web itself.
Question 1: Do you think that weblogs are the next big thing?
