The term “weblog” was coined in December 1997.  The short form, “blog,” was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999.  Back then, blogs were a very small and largely unknown part of the Internet.

Political blogs starting appearing in 2001, and went mainstream after 9/11 (although the majority of people in the United States wouldn’t know what a “blog” was for another few years).

But one of the earliest political blogs was Andrew Sullivan’s AndrewSullivan.com — eventually entitled “The Daily Dish” and now, simply, “The Dish” — launched in October 2000. It gained readership during 2001, especially in the wake of the September 11 attacks.  His standalone blog eventually became part of The Atlantic Monthly for a while, and then Time.  Sullivan himself was lofted to television pundit (on Bill Maher’s show, for example).

And on one day in 2007, he pointed to something I wrote on THIS blog (regarding Pat Tillman) sending over 4,000 people to this blog in a matter of hours  This is what his post looked like:

That was it, but the spike in traffic was scary AND funny.

Less than an hour ago, Andrew “Sully” Sullivan announced that he will be giving up blogging after a nearly 15-year run.

“There comes a time when you have to move on to new things, shake your world up, or recognize before you crash that burn-out does happen,” Sullivan wrote in a post entitled, “A Note To My Readers.”

I wasn’t a huge fan; he was an apologist for Bush and the war, and a bit of a misogynist.  Progressive on gay rights issue, but he was, you know, gay — so it was kind of self-serving.  Still, this is the end of an era I suppose.

Andrew Sullivan started in the days when old people would ask, “What’s a blog?” and ends in the days when young people ask, “What’s a blog?”

— Daniel Radosh (@danielradosh) January 28, 2015