In the past I've mentioned that I don't like the phrase Web 2.0 because it is vacuous and ill-defined making people who use it poor communicators. However, some of the neologisms used by computer geeks are much worse because they just plain dumb. One such neologisms is blogosphere which started off as a joke but is now taken seriously by various pundits.
The blog post that has gotten my goat is Steve Ruble's post The Center of Gravity is Shifting where he writes
One of the themes I kept hitting over and over is that the blogosphere is not where all the action is going to be in the months ahead. Yes, you read that right. Don't adjust your set. For sure the b'sphere will continue to remain the largest galaxy in the social media universe in the short term. It's a major center of gravity that pulls people toward it. However, over the last few months a number other social media galaxies have rapidly risen to prominence. Take YouTube, digg and MySpace. These are just three examples, but they are drawing huge audiences. Richard Edelman is gushing over a fourth - StupidVideos.com.
For sure the b'sphere will continue to remain the largest galaxy in the social media universe in the short term. It's a major center of gravity that pulls people toward it. However, over the last few months a number other social media galaxies have rapidly risen to prominence. Take YouTube, digg and MySpace. These are just three examples, but they are drawing huge audiences. Richard Edelman is gushing over a fourth - StupidVideos.com.
The first thing that confuses me about this post is that it implies MySpace isn't part of the blogosphere. Why not? Is it because Technorati's coverage of MySpace is sorely lacking as Steve Rubel claims? Do the media talking heads really think that Technorati covers all the blogs in the world? After all services like MySpace, MSN Spaces and Xanga each have more than the 30 million blogs that Technorati claims to cover. This isn't the first time I've seen someone assume Technorati's numbers actually measure the total number of blogs out there.
The thought that one can lump all the blogs in the world into a lump category called the blogosphere and generalize about them seems pretty silly to me. We don't make similar generalizations about people who use other social applications like email (the mailosphere), instant messaging (the IM-osphere) or photo sharing sites (the photosphere). So what is it about blogs that makes such a ridiculous word continue to be widely used?