Online diaries aren’t new. Ryan Kawai-lani Ozawa, who created Diarist.net, traces the earliest Web journal to January 1995. Later, Weblogs, or blogs, were born. These are personal sites, such as Tomalak’s Realm (www.tomalak.org), that organize links to other Web content on a particular topic of interest. Early bloggers needed to know HTML and have access to a network server. Updating entries was a technical chore. That began to change in 1999 with easy Web tools and free hosting sites, such as Blogger.com, Editthispage.com and LiveJournal.com. Some 100,000 people have tried Blogger.com, the most popular site. “The great thing about Blogger.com and Diaryland.com is that anyone who can fill out a form can have an online journal,” says O’Hara.
That’s not necessarily a good thing, at least for readers, according to John Grohol, a Boston-based research psychologist who runs PsychCentral.com and tracks Weblogs. “The majority of these journals are not all that interesting,” he says. Maybe not, but these snapshots of life–and, perhaps, fantasy–can be strangely addictive nonetheless. Unsurprisingly, some of the longest-running journals belong to techies. O’Hara, for example, is a Web designer. She describes her breasts, piercing, smoking habit and height in her online diary, Squirrel Bait (www.treehaus.addr.com/blog), and that’s just on the About page. O’Hara has been chronicling her life online since 1995, when she was a first-year college student. She claims to be shy in real life–a fact that comes as a surprise to anyone who reads Squirrel Bait, which has given her a somewhat limited measure of fame within the Weblog community. But don’t get the wrong idea–Weblogs are “not all Jerry Springer,” says O’Hara. “It’s not all people writing, ‘My boyfriend dumped me, he’s a bastard’.” Still, regular readers want to know: will she ask Alex out or not?
For isolated individuals, blogs can be a lifeline to a larger community. Noah Grey’s journal (www.NoahGrey.com) offers readers a view into the often difficult life of a bipolar agoraphobic with a troubled history as a rape survivor. You might expect Grey’s postings to sound like a whole week’s worth of “Oprah,” but it’s not the case. Grey’s musings, photos and links can be somber, sensitive and inspirational, as well as raw. “Throughout all my adult life, computers and the online world have been the only real outlets I’ve had,” he writes in an e-mail exchange. “In a very real way, they’ve kept me alive.” Grey’s postings, online since 1998, have also drawn a following, much to his surprise. “It just thoroughly astonishes me that anyone could give a damn about this insecure and fundamentally frightened guy who still sleeps with a teddy bear every night,” he says.
An aspiring Samuel Pepys can turn to many sites on the Web for launching a personal journal, including DiaryLand.com, Pitas.com, Diaryx.com and Blogspot.com. Joint journals, or discussions, can be conducted at sites such as Metafilter.com. So far, there’s not much commercial interest in Weblogs; companies hosting these sites attract users but not cash. But according to one practitioner, Weblogs aren’t about making money; they’re about revolutionizing communication. Dave Winer, a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur and founder of tiny Userland Software, has been maintaining his Scripting.com Weblog since 1997. For this baby boomer, Weblogs aren’t just a publishing medium; they’re a crusade. “I’m interested in creating a new form of journalism,” he says. “I don’t trust the media sources, the TV networks and magazines.”
Will Weblogs change journalism? They’ll do more than that, if you believe Winer. “We have a lot of problems to solve on this planet,” he says. “We need to gain consciousness as a society, and one of the best ways to do that is to start talking and also to listen. There are 6 billion people on the planet, and if everyone on the planet had a Weblog, we’d be better off.” Six billion people sharing their secrets and fears? Now, there’s an idea for a reality show.
