Ten years of blogging

Yep – this blog has been around for over ten years.

Here's a link to the Internet Archive for one of my first posts.  There were actually a few other iterations before this – but I can't find them.  The site was initially created with Manila – a tool based on Dave Winer's Userland Frontier.  A while later – a kid named Evan Williams and his team created a great tool called Pyra – which had a "daughter" product called "blogger."  You know the rest of the story.

What's interesting is that both tools provided a successful user experience that was LESS than the designers initially intended.  "edit this page" was a small part of Manila – but that is what worked.  "Blogger" was a tiny part of Pyra.  Evan has gone on to smaller things – and (surprise) .. that is yet another factor more successful than Blogging/blogger. 

What's the next decade have in store for us?  Smaller, simpler, yet more complex systems.  Yes – smaller (like twitter) and simpler (like the ipod) yet more complex (like the ipod).  John Maeda writes well about this paradox.  To the user – it needs to be simple.  Behind the scenes – it will be more complex – since the user's needs are understood and in fact anticipated.  So when I want to log my exercise, I should be able to use a device that I own (perhaps even something that comes with me!) … that will track my exercise for me – and report it for me – to all of the right places:  My insurance company, my physician .. my running coach? (if I had one) ..  sure! .. wherever I decide I want it to go.  Why not?  The technology here is easy.  

It's all about connecting

That's what the blogs were a decade ago:  A  handful of signposts – meant to help connect the dots. Now there are certainly more than a handful.   Yet (see my other post from today) .. there are far more examples of where we remain another decade away from thinking about these connections properly. 

One thought on “Ten years of blogging

Comments are closed.