Thanks to Dylan who pointed out that blogs are 10 years old. Kinda hard to believe, honestly.
Gave me a chance to review the reger.com platform history (scroll down). In 1997 I was starting to build the datablogging concept although at the time I was just trying to track my own stuff on a web site. I had heard of the blogging thing but thought of it as something different because it didn't incorporate charts, graphs and data. But over the next year or two I noticed that the things blogging platforms had looked a lot like what I was building. They didn't steal from me, of course. We were just dealing with similar problems. Over time I incorporated most of the key pieces of a blogging tool while still developing the data side of things. Viola, datablogging.
But the most exciting things that have happened to me in the blogosphere have had nothing to do with technology. I inadvertently summarized these things in a post called joereger.com is the Worst Blog Ever. I've met a bunch of great folks. Nat, who I met through blogging, even got me a Christmas present despite the fact that we've never met in person (note: if you're a guy you'll want to check out the link... and not because of my present.)
Blogging is really about the people.
Well, actually, I've long held a strong belief that blogging is 1/2 about the social element... having a pulpit from which to voice an opinion and interact with others. This social outbound property is what's universally discussed when it comes to blogs.
But I believe that the other 1/2 of the value comes in the form of having your own history recorded for you to look back on later. The more you record the more you'll trigger memories (which I also sometimes call nostalgia triggering). And let's face it, life is about building memories so if you have a tool that helps you keep and maintain more of them then it's valuable.
People have been logging for centuries. Captain's logs. Explorer's logs. King's logs. War logs. Blogging is the latest and arguably most powerful form... web logging. It's exciting to see that it's ten years old now. I can't wait to see what happens to it in the next ten.
My guess/hope is that the blog will become the repository... a place to store your digital life. Complete with privacy controls that allow you to share/protect everything. Integration with physical devices like GPS, camera, bathroom scale, car, etc will feed your repository with stuff. And you'll annotate that stuff, providing perspective in much the same way that you blog today. It's a concept that I know will happen but that I don't have the resources to affect yet.
30 Min Swim, 10 Min Stationary Bike