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.