Have you heard this word yet? Opinions?

Quote from Library Journal "The power of the blogosphere as a new way to communicate ideas and spread news electronically has been reinforced for all of us."

editorial titled "The Power of Blogs" by Francine Fialkoff, Library Journal, April 1, 2005, pg. 8.

Hmmm, I thought we'd talked about that before here, but I could find no matches. However, our search system still doesn't work as well as it once did, so we very well may have discussed it.

I have heard the term from time to time. I am just amazed sometimes by how quickly blogs pick up information. When BoingBoing picked up my limerick from OEDILF, suddenly all sorts of blogs were also quoting it.

Wordspy says the earliest use of the term was on April 16, 2002. Here's one from March 28, 2002, near the end of the blurb titled "A Quick Note on Conspiracy Theories".

Wikipedia says that the term 'blogoshere' "was coined on September 10, 1999 by Brad L. Graham, as a joke. It was re-coined in 2001 by William Quick (quite seriously) and was quickly adopted and promulgated by the warblog community."

Here is Graham's 1999 usage (scroll down to the last of the Sept. 10 entries): "A year ago, "weblog" was hardly a common word, and then it was used to describe sites like this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and you get the idea. Then the supremely urbane Peter Merholz decided it would be fun to pronounce "weblog" as "wee'blog" and I thought that was kind of cute. Then folks started truncating that to merely "blog" and -- ugh! -- it's stuck! (The BradLands is, I suppose, roughly blog-like. In fact, if you kiss my blog, it becomes a handsome prince.)

So, now then. Where are we headed? Will personal publishing soon be described as being "as simple as falling off a blog"? Shall we see ultra-conservative gays start weblogs and dub themselves Blog Cabin Republicans? Track the tides with an Ebb Blog? Is blog- (or -blog) poised to become the prefix/suffix of the next century? Will we soon suffer from (and tire of) blogorreah? Despite its whimsical provenance, it's an awkward, homely little word.

Goodbye, cyberspace! Hello, blogiverse! So, now then. Where are we headed? Will personal publishing soon be described as being "as simple as falling off a blog"? Shall we see ultra-conservative gays start weblogs and dub themselves Blog Cabin Republicans? Track the tides with an Ebb Blog? Is blog- (or -blog) poised to become the prefix/suffix of the next century? Will we soon suffer from (and tire of) blogorreah? Despite its whimsical provenance, it's an awkward, homely little word.

Goodbye, cyberspace! Hello, blogiverse! Blogosphere? Blogmos? (Carl Sagan: "Imagine billions and billions and billions of blogs.") "

yes. I have heard it several times. The phenomenon of weblogs forming a wider blogoshere is being exploited by the chinese and iranians to circumvent political controls on the internet. More power to the Blog.