The Blogathon took place on Saturday, July 25th at 6am PDT.
Esoteric Renaissance was blogging for AICR, you can read her reasons for taking part here. We will have an update shortly on how much money she raised during her mammoth blog!
What’s a Blogathon?
First some terminology: “blog” is a shortened version of “weblog” which is a frequently updated personal website. Most blogs have date stamps on the entries, and consist of links and commentary.
Now, remember when you were in school and you would bowl for charity? And for every pin you knocked down you got, say, ten cents? Or run for a dollar a mile? During the Blogathon, people update their websites every 30 minutes for 24 hours straight. For this, they collect sponsorships. Pledges can be a flat donation, or a certain amount for every hour the blogger manages to stay awake.
What’s the history of the Blogathon?
In the summer of 2000, blogger Cat Connor decided that a free weekend could be combined with a marathon session of insomnia to have some fun with her personal website. In fact, Cat decided to update frytopia every 15 minutes for an entire 24 hours, for a total of 96 posts over the course of a single day.
Armed only with a stack of movies and a case of Mountain Dew, Cat plunged headfirst into a day’s worth of blogging and wound up surviving it well enough — even earning some notoriety among her blogging associates along the way.
Along with her newfound attention, Cat came to a realization: staying up all night to update her website could represent a lot more than a caffeine-and-cinema-drenched exercise in butt-numbness. Or, in the more eloquent words of Cat herself, “I’ve always felt the best thing about the web was its ability to affect the real world. The web can be a major force for good.”
Thus, Blogathon was born. The first annual event occurred in 2001, when Cat invited friends and other bloggers to join her in her sleepless marathon. Over a hundred participants stayed awake on July 28 and 29, some doing so in spectacular fashion: there were virtual mix tapes, physical collages, shoes aplenty, and even dreams for the sleepy. Altogether, bloggers raised over $20,000 for 77 different charities in 2001 and garnered even more attention than Cat had on her own the year before, prompting her to confirm Blogathon’s perennial nature: 2001’s success outstripped all my expectations, so we’re here for good.”
This year while Cat had a rest, longtime staffers and ‘thonners Heather (’thonning since 2002!) and Sheana (’thonning since 2001!) took over the reigns.
You can find out more about the Blogathon here.
