2004: YEAR OF THE BLOG
Although the term "weblog" was coined in 1997, 2004 is the year the blog achieves critical mass. Salam Pax, the "Baghdad blogger", becomes popular during the Iraq war, while in the US, Fox news anchor Dan Rather resigns after bloggers discredit one of his stories. AOL begins to include blogging tools in the latest versions of its software, while Microsoft launches its MSN Spaces blogging service. Today there are an estimated 14.7 million blogs, with a new one created every 7.4 seconds.