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 of bigoted, narcissistic, and widely uninformed high-school kids and college drop-outs.

Weblog culture in 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, as well as other useless crap. In reality, weblogs--even those created by individuals working in IT--tend to be about nothing in particular except for the individual's own incoherant babbling. Weblogs can range from a simple list of personal links to diary-style sites such as LiveJournal. From the beginning in (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 terrible joke which left him embarassed and emotionally scarred for life. [1] It was re-coined in 2001 by William Quick (quite seriously) and was quickly ridiculed by people who have jobs.

Web sites to track discussions in the blogosphere:

Blogdigger Bloglines blogsnow Feedster Technorati The Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem