Blogging like it's 2003

When I first began blogging regularly, in 2003, I used a product called Radio Userland. It was a desktop app that also doubled as an RSS Reader. It was especially convenient to subscribe to fellow Radio Userland bloggers, which meant that a community formed around the product. We even had something called the "Radio Community Server," which helped people discover other Radio blogs.

For these reasons, in the early days of Read/Write Web I most often linked to other RU bloggers. We felt like a little tribe, because we were using a (let's be honest) very niche web product and many of us were interested in similarly niche topics — RSS, blogging, wikis, open web, "social software." I remember the feeling... it made me very quickly realize that I was part of an online community of like minds and fascinating new people. And I was in New Zealand at this point, so I was very isolated from anything happening in Silicon Valley. That was the power of the web in action.

Leaflet feels a bit like 2003-era Radio Userland, only its early users are specifically exploring the Atmosphere and "open social." I would say Leaflet is still very early, even compared to RU in 2003. But I hope its use expands, because I think we — as an open web community in 2026 — need to move beyond microblogging . I want to bring back just plain ol' blogging (hence why I've re-started my Leaflet).

Speaking of which... Another key aspect of RU was that it encouraged informal blogging — very similar to the appeal of Leaflet now. As Bluesky's @pfrazee.com put it recently :

"If you're not in the know, Leaflet is an EZ blogging platform. I call it "EZ blogging" because it's regular blogging but with a kind of casual F-it energy. Making a blogpost is a Business Decision, while making a Leaflet? that's just EZ blogging."

Radio Userland felt like that in 2003, and I loved it because I was still figuring out how to 'write' to the web in a way that felt sustainable (I had a full-time job at the time). Eventually, RWW became ReadWriteWeb and I started writing more journalistic posts. So I turned into a more formal blogger from around mid-2004 — which not coincidentally is when I switched from RU to a more 'professional' publishing tool, Movable Type. And then later, RWW became my full-time job, then it became a group blog and an actual business.

But I do miss those more innocent days of 2003 and early-2004, when I basically treated my blog like most people treat Bluesky or Mastodon now: as a way to fire off takes and connect with a community. In my case, my "takes" took more words to generate, because the act of blogging helped me to think through subjects. Which is why a tool like Radio Userland was ideal for me; and perhaps why Leaflet is what I need in the current era.

Here's what my RWW blog looked like in May 2003 . And btw, can we get a sidebar for Leaflet — a "leafroll" perhaps, as a 2026 version of a blogroll?