The Locus Portal in the Wayback Machine

I don't know about you, but I rely on the Locus links portal when wandering around the web, and I've relied on it for years now. Of course, all of Locus Online is great, and Mark Kelly does a phenomenal job keeping it updated and interesting, but the links portal is the page that gets the most consistent use from me.

I noticed today, and quite happily, that the list of weblogs on the portal nearly takes up an entire column now. It's an eclectic and ecumenical group, and impressive no matter how you slice and dice it. Within the last year, the list has seemed to grow with marvelous speed and fecundity. This made me wonder what it looked like in the good ol' days (which, in internet time, is a couple years ago).

Thanks to the ever-handy Internet Wayback Machine, we can see. On February 26, 2000, the earliest date for the portal page in the Wayback Machine, there were eight weblogs listed. I couldn't get Honeyguide to load, but all of the other original weblogs did, with only one, Windowseat, proclaimed to be on hiatus. Arts & Letters Daily, Romenesko's Media News, Memepool, Peterme.com, Robot Wisdom, and SciTech Daily are all going strong. (Hint: Click on the links at the archived portal page for some nostalgic fun.)

By February of 2001, the portal's design had changed, but the same weblogs were listed. By January 2002, there's one addition: Boing Boing. January 2003 shows some growth, with the title of the section now "Weblogs -- skiffish" and some contents shuffled to other categories. By October the category is called "SF Blogs & Journals", which is what it remains. By February 2004 the list is quite long, and civilization is imperiled by the inclusion of The Mumpsimus.

The range and diversity of weblogs has grown tremendously even in the short time since I started, and it's exciting to see so many different sorts of people adding their interests and ideas to the conversation.

By the way, does anybody have a weblog -- any category or subject welcome -- that you have discovered recently and find yourself returning to?

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