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 — typically of the medium, no one can agree on the exact date — the tribe of those who put fingers to the keyboard and their thoughts to the "homepages of the 21st century" is growing every day. 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.
Call it narcissistic drivel churned out by those who think the minutiae of their lives is worthy of a global audience or the pretentious rantings of wannabe authors looking for that elusive book deal, but there's no denying the fact that blogs are changing the way we date, work, teach and live. 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.
Meet Madmomma, a Delhi-based mother of two who started her parenting blog a year ago. "Partly out of boredom," she says. "I started writing on a blog because I thought these are the kind of thoughts no one would pay me for." Now, she posts daily — on everything from potty training to playschools. "It's amazing to see how complete strangers get involved, asking about my husband's job hunt and my daughter's skin problems," says the 28-year-old, who is just one of the many moms in the country who's taken to blogging. Even her daughter's haircut turned into an online poll, with the majority vetoing the idea. "They thought she looked cute as she was, so I dropped the haircut," says the anonymous MM, whose MOMoblogue has received over two lakh visitors.
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. From making the first public announcement of a new film to private confessions of kicking the butt, Aamir Khan makes sure he keeps fans posted. "I read ALL posts personally.
And I personally write all my posts. NO ONE is allowed to write in my place," he declares on lagaandvd.com/blog.
Aamir even invited suggestions for the title of his latest film which got him over a thousand responses. Another regular is filmmaker Anurag Kashyap who discusses shot breakdowns with strangers and vents his frustrations at working within the star and money-driven movie industry.
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 furore that many people who didn't have a clue what a blog is found out about it," says Amit Agarwal, a techie who gave up an MNC job in 2004 to become the country's first professional blogger.
Today, the blogging bug has bitten so many that Agarwal, who brings out a directory of the best Indian blogs, gets over five review requests a day. "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." Agarwal should know — he makes a living from his technology blog Digital Inspiration, which averages a whopping 1.2 million hits a month. Most of the revenue generated is via online advertising. "I work more than 12 to 14 hours a day, answering queries and reading hundreds of RSS feeds to track what's hot and what might interest people," says this IITian-turned-blogger.
Blogging isn't just about big bucks, it can bring other kinds of success, too. Arun, a 32-year-old who works with a software company in the US, is hoping his blog Trak.in will be a launch vehicle for the entrepreneurial venture he wants to start back home. "A blog gives you exposure, helps you build a reputation and is a great networking tool," says Arun, whose three-month-old blog has already made it to The Times, London's picks for best business blogs in India.
But success didn't come easy. "A lot of thought and research goes into it," he says. From getting tips from other bloggers, optimising keywords so that the blog comes up in search engines to finding thought-provoking topics of discussion that increase "the pop" (number of hits), Arun's at it almost every spare minute he gets. At the end of the day, the traffic makes it all worth it. "It's such a fabulous way to communicate...like you're 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're writing about what you had for breakfast. If you have a voice, there's a blog for you.
neelam.raaj@timesgroup.com
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Sunday_Specials/Blogs_10/articleshow/2274640.cms
Call it narcissistic drivel churned out by those who think the minutiae of their lives is worthy of a global audience or the pretentious rantings of wannabe authors looking for that elusive book deal, but there's no denying the fact that blogs are changing the way we date, work, teach and live. 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.
Meet Madmomma, a Delhi-based mother of two who started her parenting blog a year ago. "Partly out of boredom," she says. "I started writing on a blog because I thought these are the kind of thoughts no one would pay me for." Now, she posts daily — on everything from potty training to playschools. "It's amazing to see how complete strangers get involved, asking about my husband's job hunt and my daughter's skin problems," says the 28-year-old, who is just one of the many moms in the country who's taken to blogging. Even her daughter's haircut turned into an online poll, with the majority vetoing the idea. "They thought she looked cute as she was, so I dropped the haircut," says the anonymous MM, whose MOMoblogue has received over two lakh visitors.
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. From making the first public announcement of a new film to private confessions of kicking the butt, Aamir Khan makes sure he keeps fans posted. "I read ALL posts personally.
And I personally write all my posts. NO ONE is allowed to write in my place," he declares on lagaandvd.com/blog.
Aamir even invited suggestions for the title of his latest film which got him over a thousand responses. Another regular is filmmaker Anurag Kashyap who discusses shot breakdowns with strangers and vents his frustrations at working within the star and money-driven movie industry.
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 furore that many people who didn't have a clue what a blog is found out about it," says Amit Agarwal, a techie who gave up an MNC job in 2004 to become the country's first professional blogger.
Today, the blogging bug has bitten so many that Agarwal, who brings out a directory of the best Indian blogs, gets over five review requests a day. "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." Agarwal should know — he makes a living from his technology blog Digital Inspiration, which averages a whopping 1.2 million hits a month. Most of the revenue generated is via online advertising. "I work more than 12 to 14 hours a day, answering queries and reading hundreds of RSS feeds to track what's hot and what might interest people," says this IITian-turned-blogger.
Blogging isn't just about big bucks, it can bring other kinds of success, too. Arun, a 32-year-old who works with a software company in the US, is hoping his blog Trak.in will be a launch vehicle for the entrepreneurial venture he wants to start back home. "A blog gives you exposure, helps you build a reputation and is a great networking tool," says Arun, whose three-month-old blog has already made it to The Times, London's picks for best business blogs in India.
But success didn't come easy. "A lot of thought and research goes into it," he says. From getting tips from other bloggers, optimising keywords so that the blog comes up in search engines to finding thought-provoking topics of discussion that increase "the pop" (number of hits), Arun's at it almost every spare minute he gets. At the end of the day, the traffic makes it all worth it. "It's such a fabulous way to communicate...like you're 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're writing about what you had for breakfast. If you have a voice, there's a blog for you.
neelam.raaj@timesgroup.com
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Sunday_Specials/Blogs_10/articleshow/2274640.cms
