Birth of blog
It's been ten years, more or less, since Peter Merholz published a little squib in the sidebar of his Petermemes personal website and made a permanent dent in the worldwide lexicon.
Although the post was undated, I first noted its appearance here on May 23, 1999, earning me a citation alongside Peter in the Oxford English Dictionary entry tracing the lineage of the word "blog". Just three months later, on August 23, 1999, a San Francisco start-up called Pyra Labs launched Blogger, a public version of their internal weblogging tool (at one time billed as "Amphetamines For Your Website"), and...well, you probably know the rest.
Ah well. Happy birthday, you awkward, uneuphonious little word. I'm chuffed to say I knew you when you were but a wee blog.
Comments:
Jorn Barger coined the term though, didn't he? And does it make a difference that the Peterme pronunciation was not adopted?
Cool that you get an OED cite, though.
Comment by Bill Altreuter on May 24, 2008 at 2:47 PM
Jorn is generally credited with the term "weblog", to mean a regularly updated list of discovered links, somewhat earlier. Peter gets props for the waggish pronunciation and the truncation, which stuck.
Comment by Brad on May 24, 2008 at 4:32 PM
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Brad L. Graham is a writer, editor, riverboat gambler, fashion consultant, softshoe dancer, professional assassin, freelance factotum and singer of sentimental ballads.The BradLands is his home on the web. 
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