Dave Winer, the godfather of blogging, and in my mind, the singular most influential thinker on all things Internet, media and mediums, shared a link to a Wired post about DaveNet, which in 1995 was a forum which involved Dave writing an essay and emailing it to others and then creating conversations within those who read his stuff. That eventually led to blogs which transformed the media landscape. And now we are back to doing email newsletters.
Coincidentally my blog started as an email newsletter too — Dotcomwala — but eventually transformed into a blog. It is the same wine; bottles keep changing. In the end, what matters is words, thoughts, and continuity. Mainstream media folks, unfortunately, follow the hype, not a desire to write. In a weird twist of fate, the story was authored by Todd Lapin, with whom I worked at Business 2.0.