Open Diary (often abbreviated as "OD") is an online diary community, an early example of social networking software. It was founded on October 20, 1998 by Bruce Ableson and Susan Ableson, known on the Open Diary website by the title of his diary, The DiaryMaster. Ableson has described Open Diary as "the first web site that brought online diary writers together into a community."
Open Diary has hosted more than five million diaries since it was founded, and continues to be home to over half a million diaries. As of October 2008, there are over 561,000 diaries on OpenDiary.com, including diaries from 77 different countries and all 7 continents. The site innovated some key features that later became central to the architecture of other social networking and blogging sites, including reader comments and friends-only privacy.
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