Blogosphere Turns 10
Do you dig link love, hate blogasms, tag memes and can’t stand to ignore a ping? If you don’t know what on earth this is all about, it’s probably time to take your first tentative steps into the blogosphere. As blogs turn 10 this year (exact date unknown) - the tribe of those who put fingers to the keyboard and their thoughts to the “homepages of the 21st century” is growing everyday. Blog tracker Technorati counted 93.8 million bloggers worldwide in July 2007 as compared to 100,000 in March 2003. In India, blogging is the most popular internet activity after emailing and the number of bloggers runs into lakhs though no exact count is available.
The fact that blogs are changing the way we date, work, teach and live cannot be denied. A majority of blogs are online diaries- for the kind of stuff not good enough for print, but too good to waste on after-dinner conversation or, worse, mere thinking. Sometimes, the thoughts run out and sometimes, the time. But amid the army of irregulars, the diehard blogophiles can’t stop posting.
The complete strangers get involved in the matter. It’s the comments that give blogs a life of their own-pouring in from smart, dumb, creative, sadistic strangers who show up on the blog to be rude, flirt, veer off topic or simply to connect. The latter’s probably the reason why everyone from Indian CEOs to Bollywood celebs is blogging.
Be it Bollywood or business, sex or spirituality, there is little that Indian bloggers don’t tackle. But how did a trend that was slow to pick up initially in India become a phenomenon that has embraced so many? The opinion’s almost unanimous on this one: a government directive that led to the blocking of blogs in July last year proved to be the turning point for the Indian blogosphere. “Till then, awareness was very low. The ban sparked such a furor that many people who didn’t have a clue what a blog is found out about it. Some people like Amit Aggarwal, a techie gave up an MNC job in 2004 to become India’s first professional blogger.
Though readership of most Indian blogs isn’t very high, some of them have extremely good content. But readership is what cyber success is all about and that’s where most blogs flounder. Making money through blogs isn’t easy. It takes vision, creativity, commitment and a lot of hard work-more than you would give to a job.
A blog gives you exposure, helps you build a reputation and is a great networking tool.
But success doesn’t come easy. A lot of thought and research goes into it. From getting tips from other bloggers, optimizing key words so that the blog comes up in search engines to finding thought-provoking topics of discussion that increase “the pop” (number of hits). It’s such a fabulous way to communicate…like you are talking to a friend yet you have thousands of people listening in.
Blogging’s become the 21st century soliloquy – heartfelt, candid, self-absorbed. It’s meant for no one in particular yet the reader hopes the world will read it. And so what if you are writing about what you had for breakfast. If you have a voice, there’s a blog for you.
The fact that blogs are changing the way we date, work, teach and live cannot be denied. A majority of blogs are online diaries- for the kind of stuff not good enough for print, but too good to waste on after-dinner conversation or, worse, mere thinking. Sometimes, the thoughts run out and sometimes, the time. But amid the army of irregulars, the diehard blogophiles can’t stop posting.
The complete strangers get involved in the matter. It’s the comments that give blogs a life of their own-pouring in from smart, dumb, creative, sadistic strangers who show up on the blog to be rude, flirt, veer off topic or simply to connect. The latter’s probably the reason why everyone from Indian CEOs to Bollywood celebs is blogging.
Be it Bollywood or business, sex or spirituality, there is little that Indian bloggers don’t tackle. But how did a trend that was slow to pick up initially in India become a phenomenon that has embraced so many? The opinion’s almost unanimous on this one: a government directive that led to the blocking of blogs in July last year proved to be the turning point for the Indian blogosphere. “Till then, awareness was very low. The ban sparked such a furor that many people who didn’t have a clue what a blog is found out about it. Some people like Amit Aggarwal, a techie gave up an MNC job in 2004 to become India’s first professional blogger.
Though readership of most Indian blogs isn’t very high, some of them have extremely good content. But readership is what cyber success is all about and that’s where most blogs flounder. Making money through blogs isn’t easy. It takes vision, creativity, commitment and a lot of hard work-more than you would give to a job.
A blog gives you exposure, helps you build a reputation and is a great networking tool.
But success doesn’t come easy. A lot of thought and research goes into it. From getting tips from other bloggers, optimizing key words so that the blog comes up in search engines to finding thought-provoking topics of discussion that increase “the pop” (number of hits). It’s such a fabulous way to communicate…like you are talking to a friend yet you have thousands of people listening in.
Blogging’s become the 21st century soliloquy – heartfelt, candid, self-absorbed. It’s meant for no one in particular yet the reader hopes the world will read it. And so what if you are writing about what you had for breakfast. If you have a voice, there’s a blog for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment