Coining The Statusphere

So, today, I want to introduce a new concept: the statusphere.

How do I know it is new? Because I just googled for a definition and turned up nothing. And, as of right this second, googling for any web documents for "statusphere" turns up the wrong definition first (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=statusphere) although the second hit is correct (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/10/are-blogs-losing-their-authority-to-the-statusphere/). The third hit is for http://www.statusphere.com/ but that is a site that hasn't launched (as of now) so maybe it is what I mean and maybe it is not.

So, what is this neologism? By statusphere, I mean things like twitter, facebook, friendfeed and all the other ways of communicating what you're doing, what's on your mind and so on. This idea of setting you status for others to see dates back a long time (at least as far back as AIM and the other instant messengers of yore). However, I think that these various services, despite their differences, are sufficiently similar that they deserve their own collective noun. So, taking a lead from "blogosphere" (the totality of all blogs in their myriad forms) we get "statusphere" (the totality of all ways of communicating your status). (The term "blogosphere" is itself a modeled on "logosphere"- the world of words/the community of discourse. Or maybe it sounds enough like "atmosphere"?).

"Statusphere" has the added bonus of sounding a bit like "stratosphere". Paving the way for weak Facebook statuses like "I took month-long vacations in the statusphere and you know it's really hard to hold your breath."

OK. So, a "new" concept today. Tomorrow, a very old concept.