Blogosphere

Blogosphere (alternate: blogsphere) is the collective term encompassing all weblogs. Weblogs are heavily interconnected; bloggers read other blogs, link to them, and reference them in their own writing. Because of this, the interconnected blogs have grown their own culture.

Weblog culture overlaps with hackerdom, but the two are not identical. Warbloggers often divide the blogosphere into warbloggers and techbloggers, but this wildly oversimplifies the variety that exists among weblogs. As the terms are perceived by warbloggers, techbloggers write about technology and technology policy, while the warbloggers are more politically focused and tend to be preoccupied with U.S. and world response to the post-9/11 war on terror. In reality, weblogs--even those created by individuals working in IT--tend to be about a variety of subjects. Weblogs can range from a simple list of personal links to diary-style sites such as LiveJournal. From the beginning (1997), weblogs have dealt with current events and politics, though usually not exclusively. The overlap with hackerdom is heaviest among the techbloggers, but several of the most prominent warbloggers are also hackers. Bloggers in general tend to be aware of and sympathetic to the hacker culture.

The term was coined on September 10, 1999 by Brad L. Graham, as a joke. [1] It was re-coined in 2001 by William Quick (quite seriously) and was quickly adopted and promulgated by the warblog community.

Web sites to track discussions in the blogosphere:

Blogdigger Bloglines blogsnow Feedster Technorati The Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem