A Decade of RasterWeb!

On this day, ten years ago, a weblog named RasterWeb! appeared for the first time on the internet.

Today, it is one of the the longest continuing running weblogs on the Internet.

This site may have played a big role in several important trends.

• It may have helped bootstrap the blogging world.
• It was the one of the early sites involved in podcasting.

Ok, with apologies to Dave Winer for the above, this is the 10 year anniversary of this weblog. When I say that, I mean that this is one of the original blogs. If you go to jjg’s the page of only weblogs and look at “ye olde skool” list, those are the folks who were around at the same time, pre-2000, and blogging regularly. Follow those links today, and many are gone, some are still around but on hiatus, and many have lost their archives due to moving to different weblog systems over the years. Scripting News started in April 1997, CamWorld in June of 1997, and RasterWeb! in August of 1997. For each of those you can still get to the archives, and the first posts. I consider this somewhat important. We’re bloggers, who believe in the long-term. I’ve seen people who say they’ve been blogging since 1996, and when pushed they say how they had a journal or a Geocities site that is long gone, or they changed sites 5 times or whatever. Blogging is somewhat about the permanence, the fact that you stand behind what you say, and people can link to it, and that link is gonna be there a month or a year, or 5 years later. I worked meticulously to re-write any links when I moved from zymm.com to rasterweb.net many years back. My first thought, as a blogger, was that I didn’t want to break the links of people who linked to things I was saying. I hated when big media sites did it, so I didn’t want to.

So while Dave Winer and Cameron Barrett are pretty well known, I am definitely not “internet famous” in any way. I don’t live in California, or New York, and haven’t done anything amazing to bring attention to myself, I’ve just been blogging for 10 years. I’m probably most well known as being the guy who told Drew (of Dawn and Drew fame) that he should try podcasting. That’s just fine with me. I’ve gotten a lot out of blogging over the years. No, it didn’t help me get a job when I needed one, or make any amazing business deals, but what it has done is help connect me with many amazing people over the years, people I consider my friends. This to me is much more valuable than anything else, the connections I’ve made, and the people I’ve met. That’s what it’s all about.

Now, on a less serious note, I’ve take Cam out of the list of “continually running weblogs” since he often goes months without a post, and then may only have 1 in a month, so really, after Dave’s Scripting News, I think RasterWeb! is the second longest continually running weblog on the internet with all archives still available and all old links still working” So there. As soon as Dave quits, I will earn the title! And that’s the real reason I keep doing this. (But not really, I’m just kidding about that part.)

So that’s it. 10 years. I look forward to another 10. See ya on the internets…