Blogging was born around 1993 or 1994. At that time, no one had any idea what impact it would have on the World Wide Web, and the word "blog" didn't exist. Consequently, there were no historians studying it, and no one kept careful records.
We know that Rob Palmer launched a plaintext journal online in late 1993. In an article about how he became the first blogger , Rob explains how expensive it was to run a website back then. The domain name cost him $100, and basic hosting cost over $100 a month (for comparison, today it costs $2.99 a month ).
However, it is widely known that the first blog hit post was created by 19-year-old Swarthmore College student Justin Hall. His homepage contained hyperlinks to interesting content he found on the Internet and to articles he wrote himself. The content included simple HTML text formatting and small images.
Ten years later, the New York Times Magazine called him the "founding father of personal blogging." An early version of Justin's site can still be found on links.net.
The First Blog by Justin Hall
Three or four years later, in September 1997, the tech blog SlashDot was launched.
December 1997: The term “weblog” is coined
In the early days, blogs had no name. They were called online journals, online diaries or personal homepages.
In December 1997, Jorn Barger coined the term "weblog." He ran an Internet culture website called Robot Wisdom, and the term reflected his process of "logging the web" while surfing.