blogosphere

The Blogosphere’s different, that’s for sure. But dead? Wounded? A ghost town of aging hipsters, unmotivated slackers, and sellouts? Look, if the Blogosphere’s dead then so’s every college campus in America.

It’s kind of astonishing how swiftly society can shift these days. In 2005, when I started covering this industry, the guys at the local pub would look over the tops of their sports sections with blank or puzzled faces if you uttered the word “blog.”

Two weeks ago, I gave a class on blogging.

Murdok anchor Abby Prince-Johnson was present for the State of the Blogosphere Address and Opening Keynote session at BlogWorld on Saturday.

A blog (a contraction of the term web log) is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.

The largest of stumbling blocks—well, more like walls—lain in the blogger's path to journalistic credibility has been…journalistic credibility. That concern alone has been the traditional (read: now ye olde school) journalist's trumping objection, a turned up nose progressively shrinking and less relevant. Until today, April Fools Day.You'll have to be patient on this scenic journey with me. We're headed somewhere, I promise. Whether it's some place cool remains to be seen.

I’m generally in favour of bashing those who need to be bashed, and I definitely like taking the wind out of the Web 2.0 windbags (you know who you are), but I think the blogosphere is being a little hard on Wikia Search. Mike Arrington says that it’s a letdown, Allen Stern at Centernetworks

Though the overall number of blogging teenagers has risen, far more girls than boys between the ages of 12 and 17 have blogs. But don't expect them to email you about it.The numbers come from Pew Internet's "Teens and Social Media" report, which details the results of a phone survey of nearly 1,000 teens conducted in December 2006.