Dave Winer, a pioneer of an online journal format known as Web logs, thought he was doing people a favor by hosting 3,000 of such blogs for free.
So he was taken aback this week when he endured a barrage of criticism for deciding to stop the free service — an episode that reveals deep passions about blogging. Winer launched his first Web log in 1997 and began hosting other people's blogs in 2000, when he headed UserLand Software, a Web publishing company.
After UserLand dropped the service to focus on selling blogging-related tools, Winer bought some servers and offered free hosting on Weblogs.com, a site that also tracks blogs hosted elsewhere, making it an important blogging hub.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/21/tech/main625198.shtml