Saturday 14 July 2007

blogosphere's 10th birthday

The Wall Street Journal has a big splash in the "Pursuits" section today celebrating the 10th birthday of the blogosphere. Well actually the actual date seems to be in question, but they figure it's about ten years: "We are approaching a decade since the first blogger -- regarded by many to be Jorn Barger -- began his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy, to which he appended some of his own commentary." They have a little slideshow of some well-known blogs (Blogger, BoingBoing, Drudge Report) from their genesis to the present (you need a subscription to access the wsj.com website but you can look up the old websites using the Wayback Machine.)
On the inside of the section there's a 2 page article about well-known people commenting on blogs and listing their 2 or 3 favorites. Mia Farrow lists BoingBoing; Dick Costolo of Zero-Cost Publishing (a Google project) lists Fake Steve Jobs; and Tom Wolfe, iconoclastic as ever, says that "weary of narcissistic shrieks and baseless 'information,' " he no longer reads blogs.
Golly, I don't know if I could choose 2 or 3 favorites...

PS On the editorial pages Scott Gant writes in favor of the pro-blogger Free Flow of Information Act of 2007, S 1267.

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