Happy tenth birthday, Blogger!

On 1st January 1999, the Euro was introduced.

In August of the same year, Blogger, the online blogging platform subsequently bought by Google, was launched. It heralded the arrival of mainstream, accessible web publishing for all. We’re pretty much at peace with the Euro, so, why, I wonder, does blogging continue to be seen as such a novel concept?

It’s not that way for everyone, of course: there are bloggers out there who have been updating regularly for all of those ten years, and possibly even longer on earlier platforms. Google’s Product Manager, Rick Klau, makes it clear that the habit is becoming more and more widespread:

“In the past two years alone, the number of people contributing to a blog has more than doubled, and every second of every day, a new blog is created on Blogger.” (and that’s just on Blogger, not any of the other popular services!). It sounds like the rest of the world is cottoning on to the marketing power, or the simple pleasures, of blogging.

Something else happened ten years ago – something small, but which was marked by a flurry of retweeting activity on Twitter. One of our best-loved comic writers happened to say something very perceptive in an interview. Douglas Adams, writer of the Hitch-Hikers’ Guide to the Universe books, mused, “we are still the first generation of users, and for all that we may have invented the net, we still don’t really get it“. You can read more of his quotes, and find the source, in the super blog post that started the retweeting kerfuffle.

Yes, that’s right, I said blog post. You know what one of those is, now don’t you…?