Searching For The AOL Blogfather

For a while, I thought that I might have been the first AOL employee to have a blog. I know that can’t be true, but I’m curious as to who the AOL Blogfather is (term stolen gracelessly from Reid, who is one of my blogfathers).\
If you’re an AOL or Netscape current or former employee and you have a blog whose first post is older than 7/20/2000, please let me know (you know, post a comment). It would be nice if the blog was still active.\
Why do this today? Well, another great AOLer has started a blog, Jacob Rosenberg. Jacob’s a great guy and one of my favorite operations folks. His second post is a short history of the many web servers that have come out of AOL. I’ve used all of them at some point, and remember them (mostly) fondly.\
Only nine days until this blog’s sixth birthday. I still haven’t decided what to get it yet.

By Kevin Lawver

Web developer, Software Engineer @ Gusto, Co-founder @ TechSAV, husband, father, aspiring social capitalist and troublemaker.

3 comments

  1. Thanks for giving Jacob some link-love.
    Regarding the first “AOL” Blogfather, if former Netscape employees count, I’d have to say it’s probably jwz. His LJ only dates back to 2002, but his writing dates as far back as 1994:
    http://www.jwz.org/gruntle
    It’s not exactly a blog, but maybe it counts.
    I’m guessing you’re the first person to use a formal blogging application or product. Most geeks probably rolled their own or just authored text by hand (i.e., jwz).

  2. I think I did… But, alas, I cannot prove it. :)As you can see from my first post, I went through some redesigns, some of which I ended up losing my past entries. 🙁 I can’t claim back to 1994 tho. 🙂 When did GNN/Navisoft start? That’s when I jumped on the blogging bandwagon.

  3. I wonder how far back Calacanis goes? (add not having an archive to my complaint that his RSS feed does not play nice with FF RSS readers) Or are you only looking for oldest blog while employed at or with AOL?

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