14 Years of Blogging

There are things that have existed for a very long time. Like the Stonehenge, believed to have been built around 5000 years ago.

Writing also existed for a very long time. The earliest known writing was invented around 3400 B.C. in an area called Sumer near the Persian Gulf. This tell us that humans have the affinity for writing since the beginning of time.

Photo below is a replica of the Rosetta Stone, a stone bearing inscriptions in several languages and scripts, which is a fragment of a larger slab erected at an Egyptian temple in 196 B.C.

Blogging however, is relatively new.

About 30 years ago, in 1993, the first official blog was created by Rob Palmer* and he made it for a communication company. In 1994, a 19-year-old kid created a personal blog. And that was the start of personal blogging.

Today, there are about 600 million bloggers in the world, and about 32 million bloggers are in the US alone. I’m one of them.

The term “web log” was first coined in 1997. “Weblog” was shortened into “blog.”

In 2003, WordPress, a blogging platform, was introduced. Today, more than 40% of blogging websites (including mine) are powered by WordPress.

In 2005, video-based blog or known as “vlogging” happened.

In 2010, this website – Pinoy Transplant In Iowa, was launched. Here’s the link to my very first entry. 14 years later, it is still going strong.

Do you know that there are certain cheese that takes 14 years to age, like the super super sharp cheddar cheese? And do you know that there are certain balsamic vinegar that they mature for 14 years for a more complex sweet taste? I hope this blog gets sharper and sweeter with age.

According to a study, an overwhelming 77% of internet users are said to be regular blog post readers. If you are one of them, thank you very much. It is estimated also that about 3.2 million new blog posts are published every day. How you end up reading this blog post is amazing. At least for me. I am grateful to all of you, my readers.

Here is to more years of blogging.

Pinoytransplant

(*data from here; photos taken with an iPhone)