It is Saturday night, so I want to do a quick post on the difference between ‘Blogswarm’ and a ‘blog swarm’.
In short, the first is a proper noun and the second can be a verb. In 2004, I adopted the online handle ‘Blogswarm’ because of a quote I read about the term ‘blog swarm’. At the time, there wasn’t a single google result for ‘blogswarm’ and if I remember right, 12 results for ‘blog swarm’ which were all variations of a single quote..
The original quote about the verb was from Halley Suitt (2-9-2004):
The blog swarm giveth, the blog swarm taketh away. (What bloggers write about — jump all over — swarm all over — put at the top of the charts — these issues can define the discussion, not because they are necessarily more correct, more fascinating or more important — but because they are so FAST AND FRESH.)
As a political hack, I read that and immediately realized that fast and fresh weren’t the only reasons, it could also be done on purpose. I tried and found some success that cycle working for Ginny Schrader (D-Blogosphere), but I don’t think the idea of offline coordination of online action really took off until late 2004, early 2005 DNC Chair race where bloggers worked as a team and threw everything they had into teamwork.
I love my friends at drinking liberally Oakland, but the proper headline is ‘blog swarm’.