I must admit that I am lurking in FOC08. Lots of personal and business reasons.
However, I love reading everything!
I have a group of F2F friends who are spread out all over the world. We communicate via blogs. Private ones on Multiply. It is our only means of communication as a group. I would consider this a network so it falls into the idea of smaller ones. A mini-network inside of the larger one.
I too think of the blogosphere as a larger, intangible item. It’s like modern mythology. No more Zeus, now we have Blogosphere!