{"id":729,"date":"2006-11-04T08:47:58","date_gmt":"2006-11-04T13:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/?p=729"},"modified":"2009-06-06T07:14:48","modified_gmt":"2009-06-06T15:14:48","slug":"why-are-we-blogging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2006\/11\/04\/why-are-we-blogging\/","title":{"rendered":"Why are we blogging?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I noticed that Chris Clarke of the Creek Running North<\/a> blog has gone on hiatus. I can understand the temptation, having put my share of blogs<\/a> and other sites<\/a> in mothballs because I had run out of the time\/energy\/interest required to keep ’em going. <\/p>\n

Somebody asked Chris "what’s blogging for?" Which is aggravating to me because I started one of the first blogs on the planet back in 1996. I know damn well what blogs are for, and where they came from. For those absent at the creation, it happened like this: People with personal web sites would create a running log of updates to their sites — otherwise regular readers would have a hard time finding new content buried a site’s maze of links. After awhile these logs took on lives of their own, so people took to updating their sites by updating their logs, and somebody coined the term "web log" to describe what these things were. Another guy<\/a> (whom I’ve met in real life) started calling his site his "wee blog," and then, to save a few keystrokes, started calling it his "blog." Others thought it was cute so they all started calling their logs blogs. Then the blogger.com<\/a> tool was created to let everybody create their own blogs and a virtual shit-storm of blogs began flooding cyberspace.\n<\/p>\n

Back when there were only a few dozen of us bloggers on the planet, we all knew what we were doing and why we were doing it. I was so convinced in 1999 that blogging was been-there-done-that territory that I resisted calling myself a blogger and generally avoided the temptation to make a real live pastime out of it. Meanwhile millions of people started blogs and millions more started reading them. And now, five years after 9\/11 put blogging on the map, some people probably are legitimately wondering why we’re doing this. <\/p>\n

Here’s why we should<\/i> be doing it: <\/p>\n