An online diary or web diary, is a personal diary or journal that is published on the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...

on a personal website or a diary-hosting website.

Overview

Online diaries have existed since at least 1994. As a community formed, these publications came to be almost exclusively known as online journals. Today they are almost exclusively called

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...

s, though some differentiate by calling them personal blogs. The running updates of online diarists combined with links inspired the term 'weblog' which was eventually contracted to form the word 'blog'. In online diaries, people write about their day-to-day experiences, social commentary, complaints, poems, prose, illicit thoughts and any content that might be found in a traditional paper diary or journal. They often allow readers to contribute through comments or community posting. Modern online diary platforms may allow the writer to make entries from a PC, tablet or smartphone. Writers might rate how they feel each day, invite someone to engage in a personal conversation or find counseling.

Early history

Online diaries soon caught the attention of the media with the publication of the book ''

24 Hours in Cyberspace ''24 Hours in Cyberspace'' (February 8, 1996) was "the largest one-day online event" up to that date, headed by photographer Rick Smolan with Jennifer Erwitt, Tom Melcher, Samir Arora and Clement Mok. The project brought together the world's top 1 ...

'' (1996) which captured personal profiles of the people involved in early web pages. The earliest book-length scholarly discussion of online diaries is

Philippe Lejeune Philippe Lejeune (born 13 August 1938) is a French professor and essayist, known as a specialist in autobiography. He is the author of numerous works on the subject of autobiography and personal journals. He is a cofounder of the ''Association po ...

's ''Cher écran'', ("Dear Screen"). In 1998, Simon Firth described in ''

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'' magazine how many early online diarists were abandoning the form. Yet, he said, "While many of the movement's pioneers may be tired and disillusioned, the genre shows plenty of signs of life – of blossoming, even, into something remarkable: a new literary form that allows writers to connect with readers in an excitingly new way."

Formation of a community

As diarists (sometimes called escribitionists) began to learn from each other, several Webrings formed to connect various diaries and journals; the most popular was Open Pages, which started in July 1996 and had 537 members as of 20 October 1998. A community website called Diarist.net was formed and awarded "The Diarist Awards" quarterly from 1999 through 2004. There were a number of lists of diaries and journals by topic, called "'burbs", which allowed people to find sites that had some correlation to each other.

Mailing list A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is re ...

s helped solidify the community. "Collabs" were collaborative projects in which people wrote on given topics and subjects. The launch of Open Diary in October 1998 provided the first website where online diaries could be posted together as a community. Open Diary innovated several features that would become important to online diary communities, including comments, activity feeds, and friends-only content.

Technologies

Some early diaries and journals showcased different emerging internet technologies, including interactive message formats, online stores,

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RealVideo RealVideo, or also spelled as Real Video, is a suite of proprietary video compression formats developed by RealNetworks – the specific format changes with the version. It was first released in 1997 and was at version 10. RealVideo is supported ...

as on the early literary blogger's website nakednovelist.com (founded in 1990), live

webcam A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in videotelephony, livestreaming and social media, and security. Webcams can be built-in computer hardware or peripher ...

s, notify lists, and daily self-photographs. Today's diaries and journals may feature

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosin ...

s, trackbacks, permalinks, blogrolls and a host of other cutting-edge technologies. With the popularization of mobile apps, diary or journaling apps have become available for iOS and Android. Proponents have cited numerous reasons for journaling using digital applications, including ease and speed of typing, mobile portability, and search capabilities. Digital diaries are also tailored towards shorter-form, in-the-moment writing, similar to user engagement with social media services such as

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

and

Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...

References

External links