History of MotivateUs
MotivateUs.com started in 1997 at a little Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Bingham Farms, Michigan. Our Founder, Marlene Blaszczyk, was learning to code Html and design websites and needed a way to practice her new skills, so she started one page of positive quotations.
She would add a new quotation each day, and one day, a visitor from South Africa sent an email explaining how much she liked the page and asked if one of her quotes could be added to our collection.
Why did she ask this? Back then, there wasn't any Twitter (@MotivateUs), Facebook, Snapchat, or Instagram - social networks where people could post. The majority of people, the majority of businesses too, didn't have websites. There were only newsgroups, some blogs, and only about a hundred thousand websites in Google Search.
It was challenging to share your thoughts, ideas, or opinions if you couldn't code or know how to use web publishing software to create your own website.
According to Steve LeBlanc, in a Quora post in 2011: "Before Blogger, it was possible to start a weblog. But very few people did it. They didn't have the right encouragement, examples to follow, tech to make it easy, or community to join." (Oh yes, Blogger was founded in August 1999.)
Soon, more people started to email and comment about the quotation web page - could you publish my thought too?
Now came the vision: To create a place in cyberspace where real people from all walks of life could participate in this new medium called the Internet.
For the first time, people could have their quotes, thoughts, stories, and historical and personal writings published on a community website. Also, they could send comments and questions to a real person and receive an answer.
This was the beginning of our global publication and The MotivateUs.Com Community.
In addition, FYI, many people have become quite famous after using MotivateUs.com as a springboard to showcase their thoughts and ideas.As we move forward with the times, a new MotivateUs.com is emerging, and you can be part of it too.