A Brief History Of Ezines

Writen by Lance Winslow

There are a many Ezines specializing in nearly every sub-sector of our economy and almost every interest of human activity today. But how did it all begin and what is an Ezine anyway? Well many who specialize as Ezine Publishers believe it is an electronic magazine or newsletter sent out by email to a subscription list.

Others say that an Ezine is an electronic newsletter or magazine, regardless of the method of electronic distribution. They say that an Ezine could reside on a website, intranet system or be sent throughout any network, including the largest network of or a network of networks; the Internet. Indeed we could disagree on the definition for a moment.

If my history is correct ARPA contracted Bell Labs and Xerox park to come up with system of communication and they were the first people to call something E-Mail or electronic mail. But even before that, they were sending out correspondence- online network newsletters, announcements and notifications of discoveries in the same exact general format of many of the online newsletters or Ezines, which is what we would call them today.

So, even though back then it was not called an Ezine, because the term had not been coined, it was an Ezine, but email did not exist quite yet. Even the Internet did not exist, yet it was an electronic newsletter. As things progressed, it would not be important which came first. And with regards to that, there will be further evolution of both the chicken and the egg as the fine feathered friends of distribution still have to cross the road to get to the other side and will figure out how the road ahead (and it might be a runway) might be re-surfaced in the future. Consider all this in 2006.

Lance Winslow

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