A Blog by Any Other Name…Musings on the Term Blogosphere
A Blog is a Blog is a Blog and I understand that blogosphere seems a great way to describe the kind of world that bloggers like myself operate in, but really, what kind of word is blog to begin with? It certainly is not pretty or even cute. I don’t think many of us like the word but we go about our blogging anyway. Noone seemed to ever protest it. It is hard to believe that blogs have been in existence since the late 1990s but yet blogging has only become a major political, commercial and social tool over the past five years or so. Blogging has marked influence (for good or bad) over politics and decision making in many venues. In the beginning of last decade, there were estimated to be 1 million blogs out there. At the end of 2008 there were 112 million blogs in existence at a growth rate of about 175,000 blogs per day.
Listening to NPR, about a month ago, I came across this amusing commentary about ? tribute to Brad Graham (creator of the term)? the origins of the word “blogosphere’ by Jeff Jarvis, commentator and author of the bookWhat Would Google Do?:
Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images Jeff Jarvis is the director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author of What Would Google Do?
Have a listen to the audio of this commentary.
