Disturbing news today that Pyra, the creators of Blogger, has been forced to lay off its staff. And I make it sound like it's some company somewhere, when it's Ev having to let Meg, pb, Matt, and Jack go. I don't know any of these folks personally, but the energy that emanated from the Blogger project was obvious. It was an enthusiasm for making the world over, and in a small way, despite this setback, they did it.

Blogger is what the Internet has always been about to me: a place of community and all sorts of personal expression. A place to explore, to face the challenging ideas and experiences of others. Things like Blogger and Metafilter made thw world a little bigger for everyone who is part of them.

It is annoying now to read in the business press that the Internet is a "troubled industry" filled with silly ideas that make no money. When something new comes along, no one knows how to make money with it. The imposition of a profit-making system on what had been a publicly funded institution is not all that easy, if one wants to keep something akin to that institution intact. The Internet was not created and did not exist for twenty years to make someone money; it had other, more esoteric goals involving research and military infrastructure.

Very similar things happened to radio in the 1920s. Here was this medium, filled with the enthusiasm of hobbyists, with someone standing in front of a microphone in some barn somewhere playing the violin, and people all over the country were listening. People saw dollar signs, but no one knew how it was going to happen.

It's no different now, except that perhaps we avoid ever leaving that wonderful time of experimentation. The cost of publishing on the Web is low and isn't going to get any higher in real terms. We can all play our violin in the barn, and anyone can listen if they want.

I was always uncomfortable with the dot.com hype. It never made sense to me, but at a certain point in 1999 I stopped questioning it. I think it was the weight of all that money that made it seem possible to reinvent the wheel. Some of the business models that seem to have failed will no doubt return. Blogger should survive.