Blogging De Ja Vu

Whe I first encountered blogging, I had a sense of de ja vu. I guess its because I was around for the early days of the web, when the web pages we designed were plain, textual, few graphics, and fairly linear. And, every now and then, I hear some muttering from someone online that blogs aren't really a big deal because they are really just simple web pages - and haven't we already been there, done that?

But there are differences. First, during the first round, we didn't have simple to use, powerful content publishing systems (like blogger.com) that would let just about anyone self publish without touching code. Those first web sites were hand coded in a text editor - and now, no one need get thier hands dirty at all. Second, the concept of the World Wide Web wasn't as mainstream as it is now, and the audience and participants many fewer. Third, the whole commercialization of the web had barely caught fire in 1995 - whereas now, its hard to remember a day when it WAS all about communication and community, not commerce. And of course, with that, there is the fact that all of the other systems have evolved - search engines, online marketing, database technology, for example. Which puts blogs in place in a very different world than the one the first web sites entered into.

Sure, the basic end results of a blog do seem a lot like those early web pages - but what has occurred in the enviroment they exist in, in 10 years, give them positioning and potential that wasn't possible before.

At least that is how I see it. Today :)