Just over a year ago, I started to blog along with the monthly newsletter. As it's turned out, I didn't blog regularly, but I did leave some wannabe entries on my disk. Here's an entry I could have published in June 2002, so I'm ex-post-factoiding it now. It's mostly what would have been, just some copy-editing and gap filling.

Impressions of Blogs Taking Off
June 2002

The last six months, I've been watching the flurry of articles and Web-Buzz on the Blog phenomena. Though I've been partly sucked into the insider's well, still I feel, for lots of reasons, that the Blog phenomena is real. It's a trend, not a fashion.

A number of interesting facts make me feel it's a bit like 1993 or 1994 of the Web:

• Articles and Columns in New York Times, Washington Post, and other mainstream press.
• The word, "blog," gaining some acceptance, some concurrence in the community on its source, and OED looking at including it in their dictionary
• Two upcoming books ... how many more are to come later?
• Active exploration of the technologies, several technology companies, and missionary zeal evolving into a strong sense that some people are looking for business models and slightly little less open then typical of blogs

How will the trend of blogs develop?

There will be as much diversity in the use of blogs as there has been in the use of Websites, ... except there is something about voice over time that makes this a little different. The conceptual model of "fragments of articles" is different from "columns"

Why am I drawn to the blogging myself? It might get me to adopt a more regular pattern of writing. Something a lot of bloggers point out ... for example, Scott Lofteness ...

Just the possibility of audience helps you clarify your thoughts, actually burns out some of the solipsism.

And with some irony, let me add, I talk often as a way of working out ideas. If I wrote a lot more, I think I'd talk less, which some around me would appreciate. Many writers advise starting the day by doing your own work. I notice that I get awfully short emails from an acquaintenance who is an incredibly successful writer.