Scripting News: A decade of Scripting News

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Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

A decade of Scripting News

On this day, ten years ago, a weblog named Scripting News appeared for the first time at this address.

Today, it is the longest continuing running weblog on the Internet.

This site played a big role in several important trends.

1. It helped bootstrap the blogging world. Many of the earliest weblogs were patterened after this site. The software that was used to build many of those blogs came from Scripting News.

2. It was the focal point for the communities that created RSS and podcasting.

3. Many of the political and social innovations that sprang from the blogging world got their start in the Scripting News community.

Earlier today SN more or less reflected what the site looked like on its first day, 4/1/97. It was an approximation -- in some cases the sites it linked to are gone, but archives were available at archive.org. In those places I've linked to the archive.org versions. In other cases there was no backup at archive.org -- those links are broken. But there is a lot of interesting non-broken stuff hanging off this page. If you're interested in the roots of blogging, you'll find a lot of treasure here. It may be worth an hour or more exploration on a Sunday afternoon.

I've archived the 1997 version of the home page.

Here's the downloadable archive of the first decade of Scripting News, in HTML. And for outliner fans, in OPML.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:00:37 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Mar May