It launched in late 1999 as a free, registration-based web crawler monitoring weblogs, was converted into a ping-server in October 2001,[1] and came to be used by most blog applications.
Web-services like Feedster and Technorati monitor Weblogs.com for its list of the latest blog posts, generated in response to pings via XML-RPC.
[2] Dave Winer, who had originally promised to get the blogs back up and running within a two-week period, was able to restore them much faster thanks to help from Rogers Cadenhead.
According to Wired Magazine,[3] "What was decried as the death of a blog universe when Dave Winer shut down free blog host Weblogs.com turned out to be little more than a four-day server outage surrounded by a heck of a flame war."
[5] In May 2009 Weblogs.com was sold to a private investor group as part of the deal that saw Moreover Technologies divested from VeriSign.