Pyra Labs
|
|
Pyra Labs is the company who coined the word Blogger, and made the service a big success.
The co-founders were Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan, and the company's first product, also named 'Pyra', was a web application which would combine a project manager, contact manager, and to-do list. In 1999, while still in beta, the rudiments of Pyra were repurposed into an in-house tool which became Blogger. The service was made available to the public in August 1999, when likely fewer than 100 weblogs existed. Much of this coding was done by Paul Bausch and Matthew Haughey.
Initially, Blogger was completely free and there was no revenue model. When the company's seed money dried up, the employees continued without pay for weeks or, in some cases, months; but this could not last, and eventually Williams faced a mass walk-out by everyone including co-founder Hourihan. Williams ran the company virtually alone until he was able to secure an investment by Trellix after its founder Dan Bricklin became aware of Pyra's situation. Eventually advertising-supported blogspot and Blogger Pro emerged. The company was acquired by Google in 2003.
In 2004, Evan Williams left Pyra Labs.
External links
- Official site (http://www.pyra.com)
- Blogger's history reimagined (http://www.megnut.com/2003/02/bloggers-history-reimagined)
- the interview with matt haughey (http://lite.waferbaby.com/corner/matthaughey/)
- King of the Blogs (http://www.matthewmckinnon.com/kingoftheblogs.html)
- How the Blogger Deal Happened (http://danbricklin.com/log/blogger.htm)fr:Pyra Labs