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The World Wide Web and the idea of a blog appeared at the same time. Tim Berners-Lee, often described as the Web’s inventor, created the first “blog” in 1992 to outline and render visible the ongoing development of the Web and the software necessary to navigate this new space. Web history, especially the early growth of Web servers and sites, is chronicled on the various “What’s New” pages in the archives of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Another example of a blog that existed before the word was coined is Slashdot. Following its debut in September 1997, Slashdot operated as a clearinghouse for information in its “News for Nerds,” with a small set of editors who decided what to publish of numerous articles and news items submitted by the “geek” community. Indeed, Web sites mentioned on Slashdot were often overwhelmed, leading to a condition now known as being “slashdotted.”
In December 1997, Jorn Barger, an early online presence, coined the term web log to describe his Web site RobotWisdom.com. In early 1999 another individual with considerable online experience, Peter Merholz, began to employ the term blog on his site Peterme.com. While the history of the term is pretty well settled, the same cannot be said of the identity of the first blogger. Depending on the definition of a blog, Berners-Lee may not qualify as the first blogger. Claimants to this title include Justin Hall, a college student who started an online list at links.net in 1994; Carolyn Burke, who began publishing Carolyn’s Diary online in 1995; and Dave Winer, who has published Scripting News online since April 1, 1997.
The growth of the blogosphere has been nothing short of remarkable. Technorati, Inc., a Web site and organization dedicated to mapping and searching the blogosphere, found that by October 2005 there were 19.6 million blogs, a number that has been doubling roughly every five months. Approximately 70,000 new blogs are created each day—or, more vividly, nearly one every second. Also of importance is the growth of blogs in languages other than English, especially Chinese.