If you want to know what blogging looks like, then you should look at this.
It’s a map: a graphical representation of the blogosphere, called “the most explosive social network you’ll never see” by discovermagazine.com, which is hosting the map on its website. It was created by Matthew Hurst, a scientist at Microsoft’s Live Labs. Matthew’s own blog is called Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media.
Lindsay, who showed me this link, commented that the blogosphere shown on Matthew’s map “looks like a place.”
And so it does. And so it is.
Map: welcome to the blogosphere, from discovermagazine.com.
You can also “walk” the web - starting at your site - at http://www.walk2web.com
Warren, thank you.
I think some people think I linked to this map of the blogosphere because it’s cool to have a map, but really I am interested in the shape of the blogosphere itself. As if it’s a physical place, because it might as well be …
It’s interesting to me that Matthew Hurst would (automatically? intentionally?) design his map look like planet Earth. Why? Why round? Is the only way we can imagine or translate something new by modeling after something we know?
I wondered that, too.
I wondered what the lines represent really and why the map turned out to be curved like a planet.
It’s interesting, though, because the internet is a place - almost like a physical place. In some ways, it almost is like another planet.
It’s called the blogosphere, which I have always thought was interesting. Is it a sphere around the internet, if the internet is the equivalent of a planet? Or is it a layer of our intellectual atmosphere (although some parts are less than intellectual)?
When I first heard of the “blogosphere” I immediately thought of Gary Larsen’s Far Side cartoon of clowns floating in a circle around the Earth. The caption was, “The Bozone Layer.”
What a fascinating communication network. Just think of all the millions of thoughts and feelings that makeup this blogosphere.
I agree. I’m fascinated by the blogosphere! I also sometimes hear people talk about the Internet as the ultimate maintainer of democracy. For example, in her April column in the Digital Journalist, Beverly Spicer wrote:
I think there’s truth in this. We all know that the rich are getting richer. But the rest of us have this very profound mechanism for connecting with each other.