In a sense the blogosphere is a social network because blogging is social. I read blogs. I comment on blogs, use the little “comment” widget at their site to respond to what they said. The blogger often responds to my comment. Sometimes other readers respond to my comment. I may even respond to their responses. In addition to the comment process, I may come back to my blog and write about what they said on their blog. I may even create a link to their blog so that you can look at what they said yourself, in its entirety. If I like what a blogger says about something, chances are good that I’ll look at his site again in a week to see what he’s talking about now (and whether I like it). I don’t even have to like it; I may read and comment on his blog because I hate it. And, of course, he may delete my comments…
Why don’t we just call it the Internet and leave it at that? Blogging has developed into a genre of sorts. So there are a couple of reasons.
First is that the blogosphere has a different level of reliability than the Internet in general. If, for example, you want to know about Quiznos (my favorite place to get sandwiches on the run), you can Google them and you’ll find a link to their company website. It’s informational – an online copy of their menu, a company history, job opportunities, etc. You’ll also find Wikipedia’s page on them (Wikipedia has a page on everything), and it contains similar types of information. You’ll find a nutrition page from Calorie Count (that shows things like that their large Philly cheese steak sub has 721 calories and 16 grams of fat) and a similar page from Dottie’s Weight Loss Zone. And you’ll find a link to an article in the Denver Business Journal about how Quiznos get high marks in customer service. You get the idea…
If, on the other hand, you use the Google Blog Search function and search just blogs for Quiznos, you get a link to the Break Dot Com where they have a video of a Quiznos manager punching out “a bum,” according to that website. You also get a blog about food in Oregon that has a story about the problem Quiznos was having in New Jersey (why, I don't know); in New Jersey (if you believe this blog) Quiznos will evidently sell someone a franchise license and then the license holder can’t find a spot to open the restaurant. Antidotes: fun stories, probably true and maybe useful to you (or not). My favorite is the blog by a vegetarian marketing law person about how Subway is suing Quiznos over its commercials...The second difference is tone. Blogs are generally much more personal in tone than most websites. And, hand in hand with that, blogs generally represent the voice of one individual person while most websites represent the voice of an organization or some sort.
A final difference is that bloggers (the people who write blogs) tend to develop relationships with each other. Web pages may link to other web pages, but those links tend to be more static and the process is informational, not personal. Reading a blog (and the associated comments on a busy blog) can be like listening in on a conversation. Looking at non-blog web pages is more impersonal and detached – like reading books or magazines on a computer screen.
The blogosphere really is a place unto itself, its own little corner of the Internet...
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