Part of my first year blogging has been to understand what the blogosphere is all about. For example, is it a monolithic monster? Clearly not.

Is it lots of small blogospheres interacting with each other? In part, yes, there are many vertical partitions, like language, culture, topic, and so on.

The problem with verticals is that many people break out of the normal restrictions, like language and culture, and become part of a wider conversation that’s common to many of the verticals. Wherever you go in the blogosphere, you’ll find people interested in Google or Microsoft products, for example.

So what kind of division would make the most sense? I decided to try dividing the behemoth by motivation, into three distinct, but leaky, packages. I don’t want to repeat what’s in the old post so you can find that here. This is an attempt at a more refined description :

1. Primary blogosphere : those who blog in small coteries, to friends, relatives, like-minded people ; who just want to chat, show their photos, exhibit their poetry or short stories.

2. Secondary blogosphere : those who blog only to make money, or to be part of a wider moneymaking process. Probloggers with gadget sites fit this category.

3. Tertiary blogosphere : those who blog for influence, cachet, the dissemination of ideas and experience, who are looking for a wider global audience, largely made up of strangers, who will not necessarily pay them money, but who will acknowledge the relevance and/or accuracy of their philosophies.

I know that’s not a snappy definition so let’s use H.G. Wells’s phrase again : “originative intellectual workers”. It’s the “originative” that captures my attention ~ we all work, and we all have some intellectual prowess, but few are originative.

In a short post below, Pitstops Around the Blogosphere, I followed the trail of the “three blogospheres” post around the world, through Pakistan, Mexico, Malaysia, the US, Canada, Scotland … etc. What interested me was that the blogs that posted on it were clearly Tertiary. Why indeed would a Star Wars fan be interested? In other words, it was motivation that cut through every vertical of language, culture and religion. People responded to it because it fitted their view of themselves.

Isn’t that the great power that the Internet confers? Isn’t that enough then to validate the classification?