Blogosphere? What's That?

Simply put, the Blogosphere is the entire collective of Blog sites that exist on the Web (including this one!) and their interconnections. Much like the term Blog was created by means of a joke, so to was the term Blogosphere. It was first used by a gentleman named Brad Graham in 1999, but was not  generally accepted terminology until William Quick adopted the term in 2002

Blogosphere actually comes from the Greek word “logosphere” which in Greek is interpreted as the “world of words”. Brad Graham added a “B” to this to make Blogosphere. Although this term started out as a relative joke (and took several years to become a mainstream term), thinking about it, it’s actually quite a good fit!

Blogosphere Interesting Facts

The Blogosphere is definitely an interesting and varied place! Here are a few fun facts about what makes up the Blogosphere:

• 2/3 of Bloggers are male!
• 48% of Blogs exist within the continental US
• 1 out of 4 Blogging Sites earns over $100k per year (Wow!)
• 63% of Bloggers say they have become more involved with things they are passionate about
• 19% of Bloggers are worried their employers might not approve of their Blogs including me!
• On average, Bloggers receive 28% of traffic from social media sites such as Facebook!

Mapping the Blogosphere

What a mess! Basically that over-sized spider web is a representation of all the interconnections between mapped out Blogs that makes up the Blogosphere. The more dense the connections, the more active that part of the Blogosphere is.
The numbers 1 to 6 are highlights (or in the case of #5, the low-light!) of the Blogosphere. Here’s what each of the numbers represent:

1. Those white dots represent uber popular Blogs. The biggest of the white dots is home of DailyKos - recipient of over 500,000 visitors per day, wow!
2. Boingboing! Everone’s favorite high-tech and fun to visit Blog!
3. The users of Live Journal – one of the oldest established Blog networks (1999)
4. The blue/purple blob represents highly popular, interconnected personal Blogs
5. Yup, even the Blogosphere has Pornography, here’s where it lives!
6. Sports enthusiast Bloggers, but unlike the introvert blog sites mentioned in 5, these Blog sites have links pointing into the most popular types of Blogs within the Blogosphere

Sources: Wikipedia and Discover Magazine