Brief History of Blogs

According to Wortham (2007), the first person to coin the term “weblog”, which is more commonly known as a blog, was Jorn Barger on December 17, 1997, who used the term to describe his Internet browsing history. Today there are well over 7 million active Internet blogs that outline everything from the silly to the sublime. Many blogs are of a political nature and are popular attractions for people looking for the story behind the story. Arianna Huffington, founder of huffingtonpost.com, says that bloggers are the “pit-bulls of journalism” who focus attention on issues that we may never see in the newspapers (Wortham, 2007). On the other side of the spectrum, many blogs are nothing more than personal online diaries. Time magazine in 2004 noted the increasing popularity of weblogs as blogs can help families keep in touch with each other (time.com, 2004). Many are now sharing pictures and family news with each other using blogs instead of communicating via the telephone.
The commercial application for weblogs within the e-commerce world is growing as well. A prime example of the commercial application can be found at one of America’s premier companies, Boeing. Boeing’s Vice President of Marketing, Randy Tinseth, writes a blog that is sanctioned and hosted by Boeing to serve as a means of delivering news of the 787 Dreamliner as it readies for its first flight. Tinseth’s blog is the most current source available on the Internet for news of the Dreamliner 787 and is an example that many companies could emulate. However, this is a company sponsored blog and not a blog that is written by an “average” employee. Glove Girl on the other hand wrote about Lancaster-Webb within her musings on her personal life. This dichotomy presents interesting challenges to companies looking at how to utilize blogs to promote business.