Say what? The birth of the blog

Blogging has been around for roughly a decade, in one form or another. But even for something that recent, relatively speaking, it's not easy to suss out the starting point, to figure out whose online scribblings were the harbinger of the soon-to-be Web phenomenon.

Clearly, DNA tests won't help in determining the paternity of blogs. Several candidates do stand out, from Dave Winer to Jorn Barger and from Les Earnest to Justin Hall, and in News.com's inquiry into the early days of the blogosphere, each has something to say on the matter.

Borger, for one, isn't shy about taking credit: "By my strictest definition Winer wasn't quite a blog--he mixed up the reverse-chronological ordering too much. So--unsurprisingly--the first 100 percent Weblog would be mine."