Nine Years.

Nine years ago today, I became one of approximately 300 people in the world who had something called a “weblog.” It was hosted on AOL. I wrote it in MS Notepad.

I’m under no delusion that it was very good, then or now.

At the time, blogging was cutting-edge. Now, it’s a punchline. A marketing cliche. But it’s also a powerful tool. A still-growing, diverse channel of information. It was started by a few score of people, and I was fortunate enough to be in their number.

I still am.

Do you have any friends you would never have known unless you met them online? Most of us do. I do. Most of them are fellow webloggers. And we “met on the net” long before it was cool.

Sometimes cool is overrated.

Blogging became very cool, very quickly. And then suddenly, it wasn’t cool – it was corporate. And common. And not worth discussing. But it’s pervasive, and powerful, and in hindsight, we’ll probably recognize it as the second step, behind only the Web itself, to the future where everyone is plugged in, all the time. (Just ask Evan Williams.)