Even though weblogs have been in existence since the very beginning of the world wide web
itself, free, commercially available “blogging software” of the type discussed in this article
seems to have made its first appearance in July of 1999 (Blood, 2000). Because of the relative
quickness and ease of publishing this type of software affords, the number of users has grown
tremendously since then, and we can now observe blogs being used for personal, educational,
journalistic, and commercial purposes.