More on the Origins of Blogging

Friday, January 26, 2007

After I posted that Quake was the real reason blogging began in response to Dave Winer's claims , I had a bit of a chat to the Evil Empire clan members via the clan mailing list we've kept active since 1998. And of course they filled me in on all the stuff I had forgotten. It's quite the trip down memory lane!

Adrian , aka [EvEm]_Matos, and Kim , aka [EvEm]_Arkan, both reminded me about the .plan files maintained by the game developers. Arkan explains:

Even then, the "web" blogging was shifting something that already existed over the finger protocol. All the id developers were maintaing reverse chronological news updates in the .plan files, and people used to finger them to read them. The id developers had in turn taken this trend from other areas of geekdom.

.plan file updates from the game developers were always exciting and the developers from many companies maintained them. John Carmack the lead programmer from id Software even kept his up to date till 2005. Originally using the 'finger' protocol , .plan files made their way to the web. There were even plan file aggregators like http://finger.planetquake.com.

Any of this look familiar?

Dan , aka [EvEm]_Milamber, also reminded me that Sean 'Redwood' Martin and Steve 'sCary' Gibson were also pioneers of blogging as they started around the same time as Stephen "Blue" Heaslip . Sean Martin ran 'Redwood News' at redwood.stomped.com which has since dissappeared. Steve Gibson began 'sCary's Quakeholio' in 1996, which became 'sCary's Shugashack', which became the very successful ' Shacknews'. Planet Quake ( February 1997) also played a huge role providing hosting for clans and Mod makers.

And I'm sure there were others. Looking back on history like this it's obvious where blogging came from. There was no big discovery. It simply evolved gradually over the years. The steady continuum of evolution is there for all to see. But I still think there's a strong case for saying that Quake was the reason people started blogging !

Random outings from a chaotic mind