The last year has taught me one major lesson: you can save yourself a lot of time and wasted effort by networking upward.

There is no greater law for humanity: people form social groups and look upward for advice.

People form social groups built around common interests. Some of those people emerge and "experts" or "leaders" often because they are the best at what they do.

Online is no different. Every conceivable topic has it's corresponding social group. And every social group has it's leaders. The leaders set the agenda.

So, if you want to set the agenda, you need to influence the leaders of your targeted social group.

My term of choice for the leaders of online social groups is "key distribution point" - I've argued elsewhere that the best way to leverage influence on the web is by strategically targeting distribution points with either irresistible content, or targeted advertising.

Point of fact: if you master the science of influencing the key distribution points in your niche, it's like opening up a damn at the top of mountain. The river flows all ... the ... way ... downhill. But once the damn has been opened, you've done all your work. You can sit back and enjoy the flood.

According to an entry within Wikipedia, the term was first coined by Brad L. Graham on September 10, 1999 as a joke. It was then later coined by William Quick in 2002. The term was then quickly adopted and its use today describes the large number of blogs who pack an influential punch. Here is a little more history in regards to the word. The term resembles the older word logosphere (from Greek logos meaning word, and sphere, interpreted as world), the "the world of words", the universe of discourse.

This article will highlight various events which have taken place online and off where the blogosphere has played a major role in the outcome. Although a single blogger such as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.com can wield a significant amount of influence, no one thus far has been able to stand up to the enormous amount of influence the blogosphere can have as a single entity.

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