Blogosphere
Blogosphere is the collective term encompassing all
blogs as a
community or
social network. Many weblogs are densely interconnected; bloggers read others' blogs, link to them, reference them in their own writing, and post comments on each others' blogs. Because of this, the interconnected blogs have grown their own culture. Other terms in use include
Blogtopia,
Blogspace,
Blogiverse, and
Blogistan.
The term blogosphere was coined on
September 10,
1999 by Brad L. Graham, as a joke [
1]. It was re-coined in 2002 by William Quick (quite seriously) [
2] and was quickly adopted and propagated by the
warblog community. Many people still treat it as a joke; however,
National Public Radio's programs
Morning Edition,
Day To Day, and
All Things Considered have used the term several times to discuss public opinion. The term bears a similarity to a much older word, "logosphere". In the Greek roots, "logo" means "word," and "sphere" can be interpreted as "world," resulting in "the world of words," the universe of discourse. The term also recalls the pronunciation and the meaning of the term "
noosphere."
The notion of a blogosphere is an important concept for understanding blogs. Blogs themselves are essentially just the published text of an author's thoughts, whereas the blogosphere is a social
phenomenon. What differentiates blogs from
webpages or
forums is that blogs can be part of a shifting
Internet-wide social network formed by many links between different blogs.
Sites such as
Technorati,
Blogdex,
Bloglines,
Blogrunner,
Blog Street,
BlogsNow,
PubSub, and
Truth Laid Bear use the links made by bloggers to track the interconnections between bloggers. Taking advantage of
hypertext links which act as markers for the subjects the bloggers are discussing, these sites can follow a piece of conversation as it moves from blog to blog. These also can help information researchers study how fast a
meme spreads through the blogosphere, in order to determine which sites are the most important for gaining early recognition.
*
Blogdex*
Blogdigger*
Bloglines*
Feedster*
PubSub*
Technorati*
Bloggernacle*
Canadian blogosphere*
Datablogging*
Deaf blogosphere*
J-Blogosphere*
New Zealand blogosphere*
Romanian blogosphere*
Blogospheres of The World*
Article on growth of the blogosphere.*
Wanabehuman: The Chinese blogosphere*
Wanabehuman: The Persian blogosphere*
State of the Blogosphere, April 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth by
Dave Sifry*
State of the Blogosphere, April 2006 Part 2: On Language and Tagging by
Dave Sifry
