Living in the Blog-osphere

Welcome to the world of a half million (and counting) Weblogs, where anyone can instantly publish his passions and favorite Weblinks. And the fun's just begun.

By Steven Levy
NEWSWEEK

Aug. 26 issue -- Zack was an insecure kid who clowned around in high school and felt that no one really liked him.

ABOUT A YEAR AGO he started a Weblog, or blog--an easy-to-maintain journal-like personal website where he could express his feelings and share his songs, poems and artwork with his classmates. "I thought that people would like me if they truly knew me," explains Zack, now 18. As the journal became well known in the school, Zack saw the change he hoped for: "My friends found me."

Zack, with his 28 readers a day, isn't part of Weblogging's "A list," an intricate mutual back-scratch society that includes clever curmudgeons, high-tech avatars and angry ankle-biters who ferociously snipe at traditional media. He is, however, a truer representative of the blogging boom that's making people into instant publishers, newshounds and public diarists--and helping the Internet make good on some of its heady promises of personal empowerment.

Indeed, with a new blogger joining the crowd every 40 seconds, Weblogs are officially the explosion du jour on the Net. Most estimates peg the current number at a half a million Weblogs, depending on how you define the term, but "my suspicion is that there are even more," says Cameron Marlow, an MIT graduate student who's studying the phenomenon.

That's a startling contention, especially since most coverage of the so-called Blog-osphere (the name given to the collective alternate universe consisting of all active Weblogs) seems to focus on A-listers like pundit Andrew Sullivan, gadfly Mickey Kaus or former MTV veejay Adam Curry. Even the various computer-generated lists that purport to probe what's happening on Planet Blog don't go beyond the 10,000 or so most popular ones, rated by the numbers of links to and from the various sites. But the bigger story is what's happening on the 490,000-plus Weblogs that few people see: they make up the vast dark matter of the Blog-osphere, and portend a future where blogs behave like such previous breakthroughs as desktop publishing, presentation software and instant messaging, and become a nonremarkable part of our lives.

So what kind of Weblogs live in the dark matter? There are endless personal journals like Zack's, exposing thoughts and experiences that range from the somewhat profound to the stultifyingly banal. There are collectively millions of links to obscure items tucked in dusty recesses of the Web. There are blogs devoted to cats, blogs about knitting, blogs about 802.11 wireless standards, blogs about "The Golden Girls" TV show, blogs about baseball, blogs about sex (hey, it is the Internet). One blog is written in the voice of Julius Caesar, tracking the Roman's progress as he takes on Gaul. There are blog short stories and a blog novel in progress.

Motives include a blogger's need for attention, a mania to share information and, above all, a desire to be a participant and not a potato. "It's a way for anybody with anything to say, to say it," says Rebecca Blood, author of "The Weblog Handbook." Often a blog is a way to keep families and friends informed. Sometimes the reasons are farfetched, such as the Weblog kept by one young man to painstakingly record memories of a faded relationship in hopes that his lost love will find the blog and rush back to his arms. (Posting nude pictures of her, however, might not be the best way to accomplish this.)

But no matter how trivial the content, to the bloggers, every item is vitally important, the faintest feedback cherished. "A magical thing happens when you get your first email from someone who says, 'Me, too'," says Meg Hourihan, an early blogger.

Blogging is a social phenomenon, and the Blog-osphere self-organizes into clusters of the like-minded. Within one of those clusters, the small-scale drama of a life, the incisiveness of one's film criticism or the knowledge one imparts about esoteric telcom regulations can foment a weird kind of microcelebrity. "In the future, everyone will be famous to 15 people on the Web," says David Weinberger, author of "Small Pieces Loosely Joined," an incisive book about the Net.

The blogging boom is more of a realization of unfulfilled promise than a new idea. In the early days of the Web, commentators gushed at the prospect of a billion people's broadcasting their respective essences on personal Web pages. But websites can be difficult to construct, and the tools never became easy enough for the technically challenged to let feelings fly. In 1997, those with the geek gene began to hand-create what are now considered Weblogs. Around that time James Romenesko's link-dominated "filter" site, focusing on news about the media, became an industry --institution. A few other blogs, like software guru Dave Winer's Scripting News, also achieved cult status. But as of 1999, Weblogs were measured by the dozen.

The breakthrough came with a small software company called Pyra. The three cofounders kept blogs to record their progress building a "groupware" (multi-user) application to handle project management and, to make it easier, they wrote a program that automated the process. "I just liked the format and wrote a simple script," says Evan Williams. Soon they realized that others might appreciate their "simple little tool," and in August 1999 released Blogger on the Web, free.

By early 2000, thousands were using the new software. Setting up a Weblog--which is essentially a highly restrained version of a website--was a no-brainer, a simple walk-through that ended with your blog, live, on the Web. (Even "hosting" was included, so you didn't have to worry about buying room on a server to store your site.) In minutes you could have a site that potentially packed the same wallop as a six-figure, months-in-the-making consultant-created extravaganza.

But just as important was the simplicity of the format itself. The classic blog consists of brief items organized in reverse chronological order (so the first posts read are the ones most recently entered).

The genius of this scheme is that you can get going without any mental heavy lifting. "There's a low barrier to entry," says Hourihan, one of the Pyra cofounders. "You don't have to come up with a whole essay." In fact, even a simple link and a wry comment can get you started. The blog's raison d'etre can show up late to the party. By your comments and links, you eventually define your interests and ally yourself to the cluster of the Blog-osphere where you're likely to find others like you. "I read about what people in Poland, New Zealand and the U.K. have done on a particular day," says Barbara Fletcher, 33, a Web designer in Toronto. "Some people can go on and on about something they found on the sidewalk. It connects me to people I would never meet, and I guess people feel the same way about my blog."

Unfortunately, for the Pyra firm, it took a while to figure out a viable business plan; all the founders but Williams left the firm. Today Williams reports more than 350,000 registered users, many of whom are paying $35 a year for the deluxe Blogger Pro version of his program. Meanwhile other companies are offering second-generation software, including UserLand's Radio, and Trellix, created by Dan Bricklin, co-inventor of the computer spreadsheet.

Blogging meshed perfectly with the desire among ordinary folk to speak out after September 11, and a number of "war bloggers" appeared to highlight obscure points of information and push a generally hawkish agenda. Law professor Glenn Reynolds's Instapundit blog is a prime example of a Weblog that's now almost part of the establishment: he draws 20,000 readers a day, and sells T shirts, too. The A-list blogs are sufficiently integrated into the food chain now that public-relations agencies are circulating memos on how to exploit blogs to hype their clients. The next wave seems to be corporate blogs. "Right now it's guerrilla [among Fortune 500 firms]," says John Robb, president of UserLand Software, who cites experiments at DuPont, Intel, Motorola and Nokia. "A few years ago you wouldn't see a CEO typing--now they're doing email," says Ray Ozzie, the CEO of Groove Networks who recently began a Weblog. "Maybe the next generation will be doing blogs." Longtime blogger Dave Winer thinks that they'll have to, since customers will demand it. "The ability to write will be a requirement of every CEO--or legislator," he says. (Maybe the verbally challenged can hire ghost-bloggers.)

The blog format lends itself to a new kind of reporting: on-the-spot recording of events, instantly beamed to the Net. So far, bloggers have focused on real-time note-taking at conferences; when people in the room have laptops connected to the Web, they follow along, like fans at baseball games listening to play-by-play on transistor radios. A few weeks ago at a Harvard Law School seminar, a Microsoft executive declined to respond to a question, citing his reluctance to answer while three people in the audience were blogging their observations to the world.

When high-speed wireless connections become pervasive, we may see bloggers supplementing their daily dispatches with audio and video. The mind boggles at the intellectual-property complications (who owns images snatched from the world at large?). Not to mention the privacy implications.

Privacy worries, in fact, are a lurking presence behind the Weblog explosion. Blogging is an intimate process; the format seduces participants into sharing personal thoughts and opinions. But, of course, when you blog, your words reach not just your trusted cluster, but anyone with a Web browser. With search engines and Internet archives, a bright beam can illuminate the deepest corners of the Net--and intimate thoughts suddenly come to the attention of unwanted readers.

That's what our high-school friend Zack discovered. A few months ago his mother discovered his blog, and was alarmed to read about Zack's occasional drinking, his (mild) drug use and his hosting a party in her absence. Zack now worries about having to censor his Weblog. Real life, he's learned, sometimes intrudes on the Blog-osphere. One day there may not be a difference.