1997-1998ish I helped run a site with a bunch of forums. Regular members could request their own Diary forum, which worked exactly the way blogs would work later on. Some were literal diaries, others became grand works of fiction, some were collaborative storytelling, some favoured pictures etc.

It saddens me that many people feel the need to seemingly monetize their creative outlet.

And back in the day sites like kuro5hin and even slashdot, allowed their users to have a public diary, or scratchpad.

Then there were sites like Advogato which were built around diaries as well as reputations.