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The history behind the name "blog"

the proper way to say "weblog" is "wee'- blog". (Tee-hee!)". Peter Mescellany of PeterMe.com reminisces on the word in his own blog of May 17th 2002 and notes that Pyra Labs released "Blogger" in August of 1999, immortalizing the term blog. So, where did Blogger get the word from? They fail to say just where they got the name Blogger in their about page, but, based on the fact that the site was started by three friends who had an idea for a community of bloggers, I am guessing that they got the idea from the coined term wee-blog that Mescellany posted on his blog.


And so, blog is, as far as I can tell, traceable back to what Mescellany defines as "I was just being silly, shifting the syllabic break one letter to the left". He went on to use that silly shift in syllables in his own blog entries and the word spread across the Web until, in 2002, he looked back on where it all began and noted: "And now, it's May of 2002, and over the last few days, "blog" has proven its stickiness in a way I would have never bothered to even foretell." He is speaking of the Emerging Technology Conference and all of the talking at it about weblogs with references to "City of Blogs", "People's Republic of Blogistan", and the "Blogsphere". Blogging had become a way of being a community on the World Wide Web and there was no stopping it. So, why did they name it a blog? I think that Peter Mescellany said it best when speaking to Keith Dawson of Jargon Scout on the inclusion of blog to Jargon Scout: "I like that it's roughly onomatopoeic of vomiting. These sites (mine included!) tend to be a kind of information upchucking."
Suggested reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W eblog
Sources for this article:
http://www.peterme.com /archives/00000205.html
http:// www.tbtf.com/jargon-scout.html #blog
http://www.robotwisdom.co m/weblogs/
http://www.blogger.c om/about
http://www.bradlands.c om/weblog/1999-05.shtml#May%20 23,%201999

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