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> Markdown was popular long before Github. I looked for the origins (not popularity, but a lower bound): Markdown 1.0.1 (18 KB) — 17 Dec 2004 source: http://

• talideon 10y ago
  More accurate dates would be March 2004 (original release) for Markdown and April 2008 (public launch) for Github, which is a significantly larger amount of time. By the time Github launched, Markdown had eaten most of the lightweight markup language for lunch. If you want to compare its popularity, you first have to look at the relative popularity of the other lightweight text markup formats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_markup_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_markup_language Also, you have to keep in mind the amount of cachet Schwartz and Gruber had at the time, which helped no end in popularising it. Popular blogging platforms at the time of its release, such as Bloxsom and Moveable Type quickly got support for Markdown. Arguably, if you wanted to choose a site that's done a lot of popularise Markdown, Reddit, which launched in 2005, would be a much better example.