Who Saved Whom? Blog vs. Micro-blogs

It was 2004 and unless you were in your 20s (or an enormous geek in your 30s), you considered blogging to be solely an online diary for those wanting attention. How did bloggers get the attention? Through their Juno or AOL accounts? Word-of-Mouth ("Hey, checkout my blog on the Interwebs! It's http://www.ILikeToSparkle.geocities.com! It's the greatest!) - Not too effective.

Time Magazine 2004 Best Websites List

A look through Time Magazine's 2004 Complete List of Best Websites, you'll find sites of Christmas Past like Mojam.com, Noggi.com and Yoox.com - a look through the "Communities" list and you'll probably only recognize 2 or 3 from the 8 listed (Craigslist, of course and maybe Friendster).

What was the future of Blogs (or "Web logs" as Time Magazine helpfully points out)? What would have happened if that Zuckergeek hadn't been coding his college experience away during those long nights in 2004? Thankfully, we'll never know. What we do know, is that sites like MySpace, Facebook and eventually Twitter would come to not only change the world offline - but online as well.

Blogs now had a separate community and audience to say "Hey, checkout my views on why Bush deserves a second term!" or "Here's my movie review on why the new Tom Hanks film, Ladykillers, will be his best ever!"

People no longer had to ask what blogging platform someone was writing on and then use non-helpful search boxes to search for a specific Web log. They would go to Facebook and see it posted on their friends' Facebook accounts as most of you have undoubtedly done today. Thus, blogs live on. They give the microsites, that you're now more familiar with, content and people to truly be personal journalists. Which begs the next question...who will save whom next?

Will micro-blogs save or hurt professional journalism? Only Time (Magazine) will tell.

Facebook 2004