My very first blogging exploit — a relatively short-lived blog entitled "Shades of Grey" — was "born" on April 9th, 1998. No, that was years before "Fifty Shades of Gray!
At the time, I was fascinated by this whole new concept of "journaling on the Internet," so I decided I wanted to give it a try.
Hard Coding Web Pages...
These first tentative steps were little more than adding my own individually dated web pages to my growing personal web site. I literally hard coded a new page, whenever I wanted to add a journal entry.
That first post was about the psychology of people who were unable to "hear" anything other than glowing opinions about themselves.
It was short lived, as I said. Coding a new page — even when using a template — was a lot of effort.
But that was OK, because shortly thereafter the first centralized blogging communities started to pop up.
The effort/logistics issue was soon solved when Blogger and LiveJournal came along in 1999-2000, and I resumed online journaling under the header "Orbiting The Fuzzwad." I even took the time to "hand migrate" the best of my previous efforts.
The whole idea of instant publishing was amazing, along with the notion that other people might share feedback and comments. Engagement.
Engagement really became a "thing" with the rise of the first social blogging site, Xanga... where I changed "name" again to "Inner Reflections," and and got far more involved in the Social Internet. In many ways, the community we know as Hive today is not unlike the Xanga community of 20 years ago!
Xanga Becomes a Big Deal!
The idea of "Social Blogging" actually caught on in a big way... with Xanga actually reaching close to 30 million users before MySpace and Facebook came in and "stole" the social end of the gig. A web site with 30 million users in 2003 was a huge deal!
I've often thought that Hive's "target user group" should be those 30 million users who were committed to creating actual content on a regular basis.
As it turned out, Facebook would go on to more or less kill social blogging by turning the social aspects into a giant circle jerk of smileys and friends lists without anyone contributing much of substance.
The Changing Landscape of Blogging...
Facebook had a huge effect on blogging, substantially changing the entire genre from social to something more centered around niche information.
By about 2010, "Inner Reflections" had more or less fizzled out — along with the popularity of Xanga — and my blogging endeavors had shifted to narrow-niche hobby/specialty blogs about Stamp Collecting, Beach Combing, sensory-Processing Sensitivity and the like. The personal and human angle had pretty much been written out of the picture.
Gradually, blogging — at least for me — stopped being about personal journaling about life, and instead became a "marketing adjunct" to my microbusinesses. In many ways, it made me sad and the majority of my personal writing "retreated" to a couple of closed (non-public) blogs I kept purely for my own enjoyment.
Along Came Hive!
Well, maybe not exactly Hive, but our predecessor.
I never really liked Facebook much, although I did gradually become somewhat active there... mostly in the sense of using it to share pictures and updates with my family back in Europe; convenient when you're separated by a 9-hour time difference.
My very first thought when I came across "Hive 1.0" was that "this is Xanga, re-imagined on the blockchain!" Because it is, in many ways. I never really joined for the crypto, or for the decentralization or any of that stuff... I joined because I was RE-joining a genre I had given up as more or less lost.
Six years and three months later, I'm still here, and grateful that we have a community such as Hive! But really? It sometimes feels like we've been doing this for 25 years!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week ahead!
Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!
Greetings bloggers and social content creators! This article was created via PeakD, a blogging application that's part of the Hive Social Content Experience. If you're a blogger, writer, poet, artist, vlogger, musician or other creative content wizard, come join us! Hive is a little "different" because it's not run by a "company;" it operates via the consensus of its users and your content can't be banned, censored, taken down or demonetized. And that COUNTS for something, in these uncertain times! So if you're ready for the next generation of social content where YOU retain ownership and control, come by and learn about Hive and make an account!
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(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly and uniquely for this platform — NOT cross posted anywhere else!)
Created at 2023-04-09 23:30 PST
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