Pyra Labs

Pyra Labs is the company that coined the word Blog, creating the service Blogger.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. 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.

In 2002, Blogger was completely re-written in order to license it to other companies, the first of which was Globo of Brazil.In 2003, Google acquired Pyra. At the time of the acquisition Evan Williams, Jason Shellen, Steve Jenson, Jason Sutter, Jason Goldman and Rudy Winnacker were at the company.In 2004, Williams left Google, later going on to form Obvious Corp.In 2006, Jason Goldman also left Google.Hourihan was associated with Kinja and some other sites.

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Blogger Features More Features

New! Earn money

With Blogger, you can earn money just by posting high quality original content on your favorite topics. Blogger has a dedicated Monetize tab that allows you to easily place AdSense ads on your blog. Also, through Blogger’s Amazon Associates program, you can search Amazon’s product catalog and add links to products you recommend that earn you commission when your readers buy these products.

Develop your community

Let your readers follow your blog by adding the Followers gadget to your layout. With this gadget, your readers can click the "Follow This Blog" link to add your blog to their Blogger Dashboard and Google Reader account. They also have the option to add their image and profile to your blog to tell the world that they're a fan.

Feedback from your readers

It's easy for readers to leave comments on any of your blog posts, giving you useful, timely feedback. They can leave comments right below the post, in a pop-up window, or on a separate page. You can also use Reactions to let your readers quickly provide feedback with just one click.

New post notifications

Your readers can choose to subscribe to your blog's feeds, so they're notified whenever you publish a new blog post. You can also customize what's shared in your blog's feed, and set up your blog to email new posts automatically to specific email addresses or mailing lists.

One simple ID

Because you can login to Blogger with your Google Account — which also gives you access to Gmail, iGoogle, orkut, etc. — you have one less username and password to remember. Your blog's address can also be used as an OpenID to give you a single digital identity across the web. Since your blog can accept comments from OpenID users in addition to registered Blogger members, it'll be easier for all your readers to leave feedback and participate in your conversations.

Languages of the world

Blogger is currently available in 41 languages including English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian speakers can use Blogger with Right-to-Left display and formatting. And transliteration is available for five Indic languages.

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