"The coolest thing is anybody being able to say what they want to say to as many people as want to listen." -- Evan Williams, Blogger creator

Blogger Blogger is six years old today and I've been a user for six of them. Unlike some people who've migrated hither and thither looking for something more flexible I've stuck with the Pyra then Google people through thick and thin and bizarre changes in user interface. To celebrate, here is a wonderfully predictive interview from 2002 with Blogger creator Evan Williams:
"For one thing, blogs will become ubiquitous to the point of transparency. I don't think many people will be talking about blogs like we do today, because they will just be one of the basic things on the web. Not every site will be a blog, but the blog format will be the default for personal sites, for example (which will become more and more common) and, more often than not, they'll be incorporated into media and corporate sites. They will also be all over inside of corporations, on intranets."
I don't think there's any thing that Evan says that hasn't come true in the past five years.

There really is something quite comforting in people able to see the epic sweep of my life over the past six years in all of its browsable less than glory. Pour example, on this day last year I didn't enjoy the film A Scanner Darkly very much, in 2005 I was making some very good decisions about my university course, in 2004 I was largely missing the Olympics, during 2003 I was stalked by Christopher Biggins and found out my name isn't my real name, in 2002 I posted an old article about film adaptation and finally in 2001, the fifth series of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer was beginning in the UK and I was mourning the loss of a bar on Bold Street in Liverpool which subsequently became a Starbucks where I had a coffee only this afternoon.

Happy Birthday, then Blogger -- you've outlived a computer and a range of modems. Perhaps we'll see out the decade together.

1 comment:

Annette said...

Wow, that quote is almost scary.

Funny you should write this post, since one of the questions that I considered asking (but deleted) in our blog birthday interview was exactly that, why you've stuck with Blogger when so many have migrated to Typepad or WordPress.

I'm with you in that I've always had a lot of respect for Blogger as a company, from its early days up til now. Free personal websites for all, what a concept.