How the word ‘blog’ came about

by Peter Morscheck

Blog is indeed a contraction of the term “web-log”, as in a record of events kept on the web — kind of like an online diary.

According to Wikipedia, the term “web-log” was coined by Jorn Barger, just over 20 years ago, on December 17, 1997.

The short form, “blog”, was subsequently coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly split the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999.

Shortly thereafter, Twitter co-founder and (later) Medium founder Evan Williams used the term “blog” as both a noun and verb (“to blog”, meaning “to edit one’s weblog or to post to one’s weblog”).

From there, Williams coined the term “blogger” in connection with his Pyra Labs’ Blogger product, leading to the popularization of the terms.

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Peter Morscheck is a writer, PR consultant, writer and blogger.


Visit his blog HERE.
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