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.
Famous quotes containing the words open and/or diary:
“GOETHE, raised o’er joy and strife,
Drew the firm lines of Fate and Life,
And brought Olympian wisdom down
To court and mar, to gown and town,
Stooping, his finger wrote in clay
The open secret of to-day.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it, dull to the contempory who reads it, invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it!”
—Ellen Terry (1848–1928)