ever existed (which was created and maintained by a Filipino) is currently held by Lauren Dado. She was only 10 years old then. Her online journal (http://www.worldkids.net/kids/lauren/journal) was first published online on December of 1996, almost 9 years ago. The Wayback Machine was only able to archive Lauren’s online journal from October 1997 but her very first entry was dated on December 22, 1996. It is still up until now though she has a new blog site at nimrodel.net. The term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger in December 1997. The shorter version, “blog,” was coined by Peter Merholz, who, in April or May of 1999, broke the word weblog into the phrase “we blog” in the sidebar of his weblog (http://www.peterme.com/archives/00000205.html). This was interpreted as a short form of the noun (http://www.bradlands.com/weblog/1999-09.shtml#September%2010,%201999) and also as a verb, to blog, meaning “to edit one’s weblog or a post to one’s weblog.” It was only in 1999 that the usage of the term blog spread and became popular. It was also the same year that Blogger.com launched its hosted blog tools providing one-click publishing for bloggers and run their blogs on BlogSpot.com. A few months earlier, LiveJournal (or more commonly referred to as LJ) also launched their online journal service catering to students and friends. It was only then that blogging became an online fad, with anyone having internet connection can create a Blogger or LJ account and publish their own blog in a matter of minutes. Pinoy bloggers started to get noticed. In late 1999, the IndayWorks.com (
[email protected]) was the first blog site that won the People’s Choice Award (under Family & Personals category) of the 2nd Philippine Web Awards. The regularly updated (and dated) content of her site was the very recipe why her blog was voted as most popular site. Though it did not provide any commenting system, her guestbook and forum became the avenue for feedback and comments from her regular visitors. The site went to win again the following year and in 2002, under the same category. In October 2002, PinoyBlog (www.pinoyblog.com) was launched to provide online resources to bloggers. The site offered custom-made blog scripts (plogBox, plogBack and plogCount) with commenting along with a hosted shoutbox. PinoyBlog was the first one to initiate a blogger community thru it forums which numbered about 236 by December 2003. The first local full-service Filipino blog hosting was offered by plogHost (www.ploghost.com) on January 2003. Though there were already several other local web hosts existing during that time, plogHost was the one who pushed for the hosted blogs thru it’s auto-installer scripts for b2, and later on extended it to other blog CMS like WordPress, Drupal, TextPattern and Nucleus. Several other local web host followed suit offerring from free to paid blog hosting services. By February 2003, Philippine Blog Awards (www.philippineblogawards.com) was put up to recognized Filipino bloggers. A similar awards site, Philippine WeBlog Awards (www.philippineweblogawards.com), was launched on May that year. Only the Philippine Blog Awards continue to exist and is now on its 3rd year of awarding and recognizing blog sites. In January 2004, the HouseonaHill.net (Connie Venaracion) was the first Filipino blog that was nominated and eventually made it to the finals of the 4th Bloggie™ Awards (http://www.fairvue.com/bloggies/) under the Best Asian Weblog category. The Bloggies™ are publicly-chosen awards given to weblog writers and those related to weblogs in 30 categories. Started in 2001 by Nikolai Nolan, it’s now the biggest and most popular blog awards in terms of prestige, Asus Zenbook UX31 Asus Zenbook UX31: The Macbook Air found its match with the Zenbook. : The Macbook Air found its match with the Zenbook. Follow us: Tracing Back the Philippine’s Blogging History | YugaTech | Philippines, Tech Reviews Blog http://www.yugatech.com/projects/tracing-back-the-philippines-blogging-history/ 2 of 5 3/27/2012 1:01 AM