The Rise of the Blogosphere

The Rise of the Blogosphere

Blogs (short for web logs) are regularly updated journal published on the Web. According to Technorati, there are about 112.8 million blogs on the Web right now, with 175,000 new blogs added every day. That’s about 122 new blogs a minute or 2 blogs a second!
The term “weblog” was coined by John Barger on December 17, 1997 to describe his website Robot Wisdom that “logged” the links he collected while surfing the Net – as such, his website got the distinction of being the world’s first blog*. (The contraction “blog,” which arguably became a more popular word, was coined in 1999 by Peter Merholz of Peterme.com who playfully broke up the word into we blog).
[*Note: yes, technically there are blogs that preceded Robot Wisdom, though they were never called "blogs." For example, Justin Hall of Justin's Links from the Underground (now defunct) started his website in 1994.]
Blogging became more popular in 1999, with the creation of hosted blog tools that made writing for and managing a blog easier (like Pitas.com, LiveJournal, and Blogger.com) Today, blogs have become mainstream – newspapers have ‘em, corporations have ‘em – and heck, even politicians have ‘em.
So whatever happened to Jorn Barger, the world’s first blogger? Paul Boutin of Wired Magazine wrote about his encounter with Jorn, homeless and broke, on the streets of San Francisco:

Homeless and broke at age 53, [Barger] allowed the domain registration for robotwisdom.com to lapse and can’t afford to re-up it. He has abandoned his Chicago apartment and is staying on Andrew’s floor while he tries to get back on his feet. He’s looking for work – sort of. After a few hands-in-pockets attempts at small talk, we give up. I continue up the hill.
A few weeks later, I find out that Barger has recovered his domain – and Robot Wisdom pops back up online. I hunt him down for a pint at a local pub and he tells me he’s moving on, this time to Memphis. He says he avoids the need for a job by living on less than a dollar a day. “I was carrying a cardboard sign when we met that day,” he tells me. “I wasn’t sure if I should show it to you. I figured if things didn’t work out with Andrew I could pick up some change.” On his panhandler sign, Barger had written: