If you ever wondered what was the first blog site. It is the place where the first internet writings were published. Created by then student Justin Hall, a pioneer blogger.
Links.net, was the place he posted his personal writings and some links. Made in 1994, the website is still standing, growing and breaking down. At first glance, you might think it has still not changed. From the format to the style.
And I think it hasn’t too. I visited the first ever look of Google in the Internet Archive, or the website web.archive.org. I saw a TikTok video featuring the site so I tried it.
In the Wayback Machine, you can search any website or page from the internet and see what it looked like from screenshots and pictures taken year by year.
You can scroll to any date and you can see what the site was like on that exact time.
The website of Justin Hall, titled Justin’s links, looks just like the first ever look of Google in 1998. Did Justin Hall beat the creators of Google? Haha! (See thumbnail for the photo)
From the color of the letters to the same blank background. The words with black and the links, with blue highlight.
Here is a screenshot of his blog post from on January 10, 1996:
Below is a screenshot of the site as of June 20, 2021.
In 2004, the New York Times referred to him as “perhaps the founding father of personal weblogging.”
He made a documentary where he tells the story of his personal site, he called it Overshare: The Links.net Story.
“It is a documentary about fumbling to foster intimacy between strangers online. Through interviews, analysis and graphic animations, I share my motivations, my joys and my sorrows from pioneering personal sharing for the 21st century.”
Sources:
Karol Mabazza Blog 