Meg Hourihan

"Meg Hourihan didn’t intend to start a revolution when she cofounded the San Francisco Web application company Pyra Labs with fellow TR100 honoree Evan Williams in 1999. The duo, along with programmer Paul Bausch, created the pioneering application Blogger. Web logs, or “blogs,” are frequently updated, Web-based journals kept by individuals or groups; they have become wildly popular, with people around the globe now posting Web links, political commentary, or even diaries on them. Before Blogger, one had to be fluent in HTML code- and rent server space- in order to put up a Web log. Blogger removed this barrier with a simple interface that allows anyone to create a Web log, hosted free on Pyra’s servers. Today, Blogger has more than one million registered users. After leaving Pyra Labs in 2001, Hourihan cofounded the Lafayette Project in New York City, where she directs development of a Web-based search tool to help manage the growing glut of blogs. Last February, Pyra Labs was bought by search engine giant Google, where Blogger and its servers live on."