In 1995, John Katz wrote in Wired magazine that “net culture, as it happens, is an even greater medium for individual expression than the pamphlets cranked by hand presses in colonial America.” Katz wasn’t referring to blogs; the term “weblog” was coined two years later. He wasn’t referring to social network sites or online newspapers. Instead, he was talking about a sprawling network of textual internet communication that included Usenet, listservs, and personal homepages, which existed years before the dot-com boom, and which were often described using the familiar rhetoric of self-expression, participation, and demo cratization. This rich digital culture gave rise to personal homepages and in de pen dent e-zines, online magazines positioned as alternatives to mainstream media.

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 80