I have had a problem with the widespread use of the term "the blogosphere" for a little while now. While I certainly use it frequently in casual conversation, it doesn't seem to accurately describe its subject. The term glosses over the multiple nature of the network and network interactions.

"The blogosphere" is actually made up of multiple networks, to refer to it as a singular entity ignores the different types of interaction that go on. A personal blog in which a person writes about their daily events is likely part of a network that mirrors that person's social network. The blogger will link to and read his or her friends' blogs; there may be a visitor or two from the outside but the system in which they interact is essentially closed and reflected. Interaction on the blog-network occurs parallel to, and in conjunction with, interaction in the non-Web social network.

In the crude illustration below, the red lines represent the non-Web social network links, the green lines the interaction between blogger and blog, and the blue represent linking between blogs.

Interest-focused blogs operate in a different manner, on a different style of network. Rather than being a reflection of an outside network, the bloggers are interacting using their blogs as intermediaries. For example, I write in Swarming Media and link to Matt McAlister, who then may link to me. We are interacting through our blogs and have created a network connection. As this process multiplies across a number of blogs a neighborhood arises, a group of comparatively closely interlinked blogs. This is what forms what is commonly referred to as the echo chamber. It is this second type of network interaction that makes up the "big butt" or "magic middle" of the long tail.

Again, the crude illustration below demonstrates that interaction in this second type of network happens solely along the blue lines.

A more interesting implication of this second type of blog network is the role that the blog plays as substitute for the blogger. The writing, the design, the links become a surrogate for the blogger, it becomes one face of his or identity. Others will interact with me through my blog, thus my blog has become one of my main signifying entities within the network. (for more on projected/deterritorialized identity within a network see this post)

A third type of blog-network interaction is done among blogs that act more as broadcast entities. These are often the "A-listers" or the blogs that are more unidirectional and less reactive than either of the previous forms. PBS' MediaShift is an example of this. It is an interesting blog that covers pertinent issues thoroughly, but it remains largely unreactive to interaction in a sort of neighborhood that interaction in the second type implies. The process of interacting with MediaShift is similar to interaction with PBS itself. A network of viewers can form and there is the possibility of reaction on the part of content creation, but for the most part it is a unidirectional hub/spoke system.

In this crude illustration the yellow lines represent the directed interaction between blog and reader.

These are just three types of interaction within blog-networks, I'm sure there are many more variations. Additionally, breaking up these networks into separate categories doesn't demonstrate that these networks are often interlinked, but they importantly show the neighborhoods in which interaction chiefly occurs. Over all, the existence of these very different modes of network-based interaction shows that to refer to all of these with the singularizing term "blogosphere" is reductive. It implies a unity that goes against the very nature of what it is trying to describe. We interact in multiple networks, with an inherently multiple, deterritorialized identity. Perhaps a remedy for this would simply be to pluralize the word: to speak of "blogospheres" rather than the blogosphere.