Newsweek: "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."
I wouldn't call this revisionist history, but it's certainly not how I remember it. As a matter of fact, the very first Weblog of all time was up and running in 1993. NCSA's "What's New" page was absolutely a Weblog, in fact, the prototypical Weblog. For the few that remember, it was the definitive list of all the public HTTP sites that were on the Internet.
The editors received e-mails about and found links to new sites every day, and then listed them along with brief commentary for the world to see. Coupled with announcements of new versions of Mosaic, WWW conferences, etc., it became the place to visit on the Internet multiple times a day.
It seems easy to trace the lineage of Weblogs as direct descendents of the more popular mailing lists of the early '90s. I think Scripting News is the best example of an e-mail news letter (early DaveNets) that was followed by a much richer, but thematically similar web site. This was replicated all over the Internet from '94-'97 as it became easier for individuals to host their own Web sites.
While the term "Weblog" may date from '97, there's no doubt that the thing the term refers to existed much earlier than that and was probably one of the first successful publication forms on the Web.
7:28:04 AM 
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