I Was There When the Internet Ate Itself
Back around 2009 I ran a blog called imNsho. Stood for In My Not So Humble Opinion, which tells you everything you need to know about the register. It was a one-man political shop in what people called the blogosphere, and for a stretch of years it was a real place, not a feed. You have to understand the difference to understand what got lost.
It was an ecosystem, and it ran on generosity as much as spite. You had your blogroll down the side — an actual list of the other independent shops you read and vouched for. You linked each other. When somebody wrote something good you sent your readers to it, and they sent theirs to you, and the whole thing was stitched together by human beings deciding by hand what was worth passing along. There was a pecking order and everybody knew it. Instapundit — Glenn Reynolds, the fellow they called the Blogfather — could link your little post and send a flood of readers your way so big it had a name. An Instalanche. You’d wake up, check your traffic, and nearly fall out of the chair.