Horologium

August 06, 2002
Entering the blogosphere

After discovering the Blogtree Project (via Ipse Dixit) and adding my blog's details, I thought a little about where/when I first discovered blogs.

One day last November, I ran a google search on either Wan Chai or Sham Shui Po (they are both subway stations in Hong Kong), and one of the returned results was a personal site run by a guy in Hong Kong (www.vanderwoning.com, which redirects to his new URL, Big White Guy). The only other blogs I knew about were the blogs of his friends, which didn't hold my interest like his did.

I continued reading his blog, because his writing style was interesting, and I was vaguely familiar with some of the places he described, from my previous visits to Hong Kong. One day, he noted that he had been nominated for some type of web award, and when I followed the link, I discovered several categories of blogs. Following links at random, I stumbled across VodkaPundit, which served as a portal to the rest of the "warbloggers", to use a term I really hate, but describes most of the blogs I read and to which I link.

My questions to you:

What was the first blog you discovered? How did you encounter it? If it is not a blog that fits into the "warblogger" circle, how did you come across those blogs? I am assuming that virtually all of my readers originally came from a site that links to me, and they are almost all political commentary of one stripe or another.

posted on August 06, 2002 02:59 PM

Comments:

If I rember correctly, it was Oliver Willis' site. My "Only a Crazy Person Picks A Fight With Someone That's Nuts" rant made its way around the web and boards like a virus, he commented on it, and after a google search for the false "Orion Ramsey" author... I saw his weblog.

Then, I had no idea what the heck the weblog concept was, didn't have a clue I had written warblogger-bait, and I wandered off for another month or two before stumbling across the concept again.

As for coming across you, well, I think I just chased a referral rabbit back to your little hidey-hole. (here? blogspot?)

posted by Laurence Simon on August 6, 2002 03:21 PM

USS Clueless-- as a new MetaFilter reader curious about SDB's style.

posted by sassafrass on August 6, 2002 04:56 PM

Technically, I think it was Lileks which was Site of the Day at NRO. I didn't pay much attention to the bleat as I was completely captivated by the Institute of Official Cheer and spent most of my lunch hours laughing hysterically and hoping someone would notice when I choked on my sandwich.

The first warblog was AndrewSullivan.com which, again, I think I found on NRO.

I am a promiscuous link-clicker so AS led me to Instapundit and the rest, as they say, is history.

posted by Carol on August 6, 2002 05:45 PM

I was an NRO site of the day? Dang.

posted by Lileks on August 7, 2002 08:16 PM

Let's see, that would be Lucianne.com to Reason online, Reason to Virginia Postrel, Postrel to Glenn Reynolds. But how did I get to Lucianne?

posted by Janis Gore on August 8, 2002 09:33 AM

Long time no see (and now you solved yet another old-site-referral mystery). Nice place you've got here (are old timers allowed to stick with Scutum?).
As for your questions - not one of your assumed averaged visitors:
first blogs encountered - Cameworld + Zeldman's daily report - the Webies kind, around May 2001 (the credit goes to an independent Israeli Webzine, by which I hang around ever since, "Concept"); first warblogger - as far as I recall, that was Instapundit (but the encounter was not an act of volition... I read one of Glenn Raynolds' legal-articles and noticed, at its bottom, a note saying the gentleman runs his own independent site. So I step right in); as for finding your old site, as I said back then, via the Vodkapundit, who linked to your brief about the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
and just for the sake of reaffirming the notion that it's a small world - I myself "encounter", from time to time, BWG's comments, as Jimformation is on my personal blogroll. and so are the Bleats...
I hope you find all that of some interest.

posted by Michal, Israel on August 11, 2002 07:28 PM