What were you doing in 1999? Maybe you were following the Kosovo War. Maybe you were starting to use Napster. Maybe you were entering your senior year of high school (I was). Or maybe you started blogging. After all, on August 23, 1999, Pyra Labs launched its Blogger product, which would go on to become the biggest blogging platform in the world.
Yes, on Sunday, Blogger turns 10 years old. And to celebrate, the Blogger team (which is now a part of Google following a 2003 acquisition) is promising a bunch of gifts to users in the form of new features. Without naming anything specifically, Blogger points to this list as a good reference point for some of what they’ll be rolling out over the next few weeks. Of note on that list are a better commenting system and WordPress-style pages (About page, etc).
It’s worth noting that Blogger’s roots are deeply tied to the new hot web platform of choice: Twitter. Pyra Labs was co-founded by Evan Williams, who is now the CEO (and co-founder) of Twitter. Also a part of Pyra Labs were Jason Goldman who now runs product development for Twitter, and Jason Shellen who now runs Thing Labs, the makers of Brizzly, a much buzzed-about new Twitter client.
Biz Stone, another Twitter co-founder, joined the Blogger team at Google before leaving with Williams in 2004 to start Obvious Corp. which would eventually birth and turn into Twitter. (An interesting side note is that Williams’ Pyra co-founder Meg Hourihan, eventually married Jason Kottke, who is best known as being one of the web’s most popular bloggers.)
These days, while the web is abuzz over Twitter, no one really talks much about Blogger despite millions of people using it everyday. The fact is that as a platform, it has fallen behind the more nimble blogging platforms like WordPress and Tumblr in recent years. Still, in terms of straight up simplicity in setting up a blog, it’s easy to see why Blogger is still popular among users (and, unfortunately, spammers).
Update: As as Faridur notes in the comments, current Twitter Creative Director Douglas Bowman also worked on the Blogger team back in the day.
omg I feel old
10 years ago… it was like a yesterday
Recently I’ve saw a Jennifer Lopez – If You Had My Love video and regret it… damn you, time!
Hey, I too entered my senior year of high school in 1999..We are same age then..Friends?
That’s true, blogger is still having key features that are user friendly. Still fans of bloggers use it.
oh yes i was soooo using napster. i realy miss it sometimes haha. good old day’s
I was watching pokemon and playing with yoyos.
hahaha yes me to
Its nice to see that they are working on some features.
I think that Blogger has many advantages over other platforms. Yes it lacks some things (including any sense of design whatsoever) but I love it. I have created an amazingly advanced blog with it (albeit with a hell of a lot of coding) that would beat any Wordpress/Tumblr (As much as I love it) blog.
And no, I’m not giving out the link – its not quite ready yet.
Wait, people still use blogger?
I’m stunned. It’s feature set is about as old as it is, not to mention it’s slow as molasses (sp?)
You’d think they’d innovate a bit more in 10 years.
Hmm…let me name a few:
Easy to setup
Free hosting for your domain
100% customization (something Wordpress.com doesn’t do without a fee)
Superior media posting (images & video)
Before you whine about, I want to let you know that I am a Wordpress.org user, as well as Blogger and Wordpress.com as well.
IMHO the only platform better than blogger is WordPress.org, mainly because of the plugins, comment layout and pages.
WordPress.com is an okay platform, but not as powerful as Blogger and when it comes to posting images, I utterly loathe WordPress (both platforms) posting method, which adds too many steps.
Blogger’s is simple and to the point.
Great points and I totally agree. Blogger is meant to be painfully easy to use.
Blogger is a great free platform, simple, easy and fully customisable. I’m interested in any enhancements which may become available and further friend connect integration!!
yaa you are right blogger ad easy to user iterface than wordpress.com but wordpress.org is awesome
Slow? I use Wordpress and Blogger. When I hit Publish on a Wordpress draft, it consistently takes several seconds to execute. When I hit Publish on Blogger, I wait maybe a second.
I can’t even remember what I was doing in 1999, sad right? I was young so that also makes it hard. I can tell you this much, I sure was not thinking about blogging. I was hardly on the internet at that time, all I had was a Windows 98 computer and a dial up connection.
Well, David, if you’d just been blogging, you’d be able to look back and see what you’d been doing.
Hooray for offboard memory!
Google’s Blogger is a giant. It just keeps on growing.
Just so you know. LiveJournal also turned 10 years old this year.
http://en.wikip...iki/LiveJournal
I started blogging in November of 1999 on LiveJournal and never used Blogger. I think they deserve a post too.
你说的很正确
I started my first few blogs on the Blogger platform several years ago… I liked it for it’s simplicity. I think that blogger really nailed it in terms of providing an easy to use platform (at least in my opinion).
Anyway, just wanted to hop on over and say: CONGRATULATIONS!!!
in 1999 ,I don’t know what is blog
Hrm, no mention of Jack Saturn? I know he left early in the game, but he did contribute to their history – 1998/99′ish if memory serves.
Sounds good. Blogger has been pretty stagnant lately. I was thinking that they’ve been a little too comfortable under the google umbrella. People have requested the far too obvious “read more” feature for years now.
Maybe they were prepping for a big feature rollout. We’ll see…
Blogger platform is not bad. I am still using it although I have some wordpress based.
nice info…. thanks for posting…
I remember the Blogger Server Fund : a good reminder of the tough financial climate the original Blogger team went through in early 2001, before they made it big. Asking for dollars, and giving out four stickers for every $10 donated for a faster server. Pretty determined to build a great service, and succeed.
See the original page on the wayback machine : http://web.arch...erver_fund.pyra
Here’s an article from Wired about the fund, “Dot-Com Begs for Bucks” http://www.wire...s/2001/01/40979
blogger is still a good tool to blog
You missed out another name – Douglas Bowman of stopdesign fame. He designed the Blogger site nad templates and is now he is the Creative Director at Twitter.
ooh good call. thx.
Blogger is slow learner, that’s why I quit!
wow.. 10 years.. i wouldn’t have guessed..
although i’m new to blogging.. and i have a wordpress account.. it’s amazing.. congratz blogger.. to many more..
hey at 1999 i am in 3rd standard at now i am blogger that’s great
Hey, I remember those days! That was when I started blogging. Yes, I used Blogger, MovableType and finally Wordpress (dot org).
I love blogger, easy to use of course
Congrats
Blogger is still good due to its easier steps to start blogging. 10 years . I hope it will soon add more features and get upgraded .
I wish I knew about Blogger back then. I spent thousands paying for a Lotus Domino application to support my “Daily Journal.” That part of the site was almost as popular as the video feed.
At one of our development meetings I mentioned the idea of opening the daily journal platform to our registered users to use but was told “what would be the point?” No one wants to read what random people are saying.”
I’m sure these guys heard a lot of that. Fortunately they chose to ignore it. Happy birthday Blogger!
booo …
people, we are going to see new features in blogger, because it’s turning 10.
But the problem is that most of these features are already there in Wordpress & others
Does TC ppl have investments in Twitter or something? Every 2nd article mentions Twitter even if there’s no relevance.
In 1999 I was wondering what is it all the crap out blogging? What is it? What is it? What is it? I never created any blog and not going to be any time soon. Anyway congrats passing 10 years.
And, to think, I just spent the weekend gone writing a blogger file system for plan9
This is (kind of) how I use it % is the cmd line prompt
I hope this formats ok !
% g=USERNAME@googlemail.com
% blogger/blogs $g
3062883415508658133 compjootery
7387338365422478064 kookookery
% blogger/actionfs $g 3062883415508658133
% { echo ‘Title: Date demo’; echo ‘Tags: demo, blogger’ ; date} > /n/blogger/new
% cat /n/blogger/posts
3931523848251033590 Date demo
% cat /n/blogger/3931523848251033590
Title: Date demo
Tags: blogger
Tue Aug 18 21:01:07 GMT 2009
% { echo ‘Title: Date demo’; echo ‘Tags: demo, blogger’ ; date} > /n/blogger/3931523848251033590
% cat /n/blogger/3931523848251033590
Title: Date demo
Tags: blogger, demo
Tue Aug 18 21:01:25 GMT 2009
%
Though I would usually fire up the normal text editor on /n/blogger/posts and use the mouse from there
Missing a REALLY key player here, MG: Paul Bausch. He, Meg & Ev were the original team. They were PC Magazine People of the Year in 2004.
Paul is now working on another great 10 year old, MetaFilter.
- Dinah
Blogger blog #11
Ah, and it’s worth noting that the beautiful Blogger B logo was designed originally by Derek Powazek, who is married to Heather Champ, the fantastic Community Manager of Flickr.
Lot of good folks in or close to the Blogger creative blast radius!
10 Years back? I was busy at George Mason University School of Management at night – just finishing up the last course for my MBA. I had a 8-5 job, then hustle from Chevy Chase, Maryland to Fairfax, VA (usually down through Georgetown, over the key bridge and then Rte 50 to Fairfax). I had no time for blogging. Just work and school. Any free time? Well that was volunteering with Arlington Food Assistance Center or with other groups through Greater DC Cares. The highlight of the year? December 1999 – when I went to the opening of “The Matrix” with two friends from Mason. I saw that movie, and then the Organizational Behavior class I had taken three years before – well, everything just came into crystal clear focus. By December, I had completed the MBA, was finishing up my job, and getting ready to motorcycle across the USA as a break – as I was matriculating into law school full-time in year 2000.
So 1999 was a busy year for me.
10 years ago I was celebrating my 30th birthday, Yay I share a brithday with blogger
but not for me ’cause in 1999 I have 2 daughters aready hahaha…But I’m still look younger you know….
I passed high school in 1999 and it took me another 8 years to start blogging ,hahahha
Congrats to Blogger, hopefully the new stuff won’t be just a one time birthday thing
Interesting story you got here. I’d like to read more about this topic.