A decade of blogging

04 LEADING THE NEWS

mint

TUESDAY, AUGUST 11, 2009, DELHI ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

Indian blogs still urban, niche ® FROM PAGE 1

SIDIN VADUKUT

FIRST PERSON

A DECADE OF BLOGGING

blogs does not mean the rest don’t exist, says Priyanka Saword in English: Web 2.0. char who blogs as Twilight In India, the blog has From personal sites to breaking news Fairy. Without the cushion grown steadily, if unspectac- journalism to vital news sources, the blog has of a large readership, ularly, from a handful at the seen a lively, event-packed decade. their influence, and con2006 dawn of the country’s Intersequently, their impact, In the aftermath of the 11 net era in the early 2000s to By Krish Raghav is reduced.

July 2006 Mumbai train an estimated 3.2 million, ac- krish.r@livemint.com “In the US blogobombings, the government cording to JuxtConsult’s Insphere, you would find a of India directs Internet dia Online 2008 report. lot of academics with solservice providers (ISPs) to JuxtConsult is a Delhiid expertise—the eco2008 block access to a few blogs based market research nomic and law blogs Blog search engine for spreading ”hateful or firm. there are fantastic—the Technorati, in its annual inflammatory” material.

The exact number of commentary they are ‘State of the Blogosphere’ However, most ISPs choose active Indian blogs, howable to drum up after an report, announces that it to block access to entire ever, is hard to pin down, important Supreme tracks at least 100 million domains, and access to and the size of the Indian Court judgement, for exblogs of an estimated 133 blogs hosted on blogosphere could be ample, is phenomenal,” million blogs worldwide.

Blogspot.com and “roughly between 200,000 says T.A. Abhinandan, Typepad.com is barred, then and half a million active professor of materials enrestored within a few days. blogs today”, says Gaurav gineering at the Indian Mishra, chief executive of soInstitute of Science, Banga2004 cial media research and lore, who writes a blog called Blogs become a vital news strategy company 20:20 Web Nanopolitan. “That is yet to source during the December 2005 Tech. catch up here. We have 2004 tsunami . Blogs such Popular newsblog The “When I started in June some good law blogs, but as SEA-EAT post text Huffington Post, called the 2003, the Indian blogging there is really no econommessages sent from the ‘Internet Newspaper’, is scene was mostly personal ics-oriented blog worth its ground in the wake of a launched. The Indian blog blogs commenting on each salt here—run by an acatelecommunications community calls for a ‘Blog other’s posts,” says Patrix, demic economist who can breakdown, relaying vital Quake Day’ on 26 October the founder of DesiPunmake some comment on information to the media 2005, collecting donations dit.com, a popular Indian the RBI policy or the fiand to aid workers. Blog for the 2005 Kashmir blog aggregator. The prominance ministry.” becomes Merriamearthquake relief funds. nent bloggers were so few, But the drought in variety Webster’s word of the year. he says, “You could count is not just in expert, academthem on your hand.” ic opinion.

Kiruba Shankar, now “Some of the best-fol2002 2003 chief executive of Busilowed blogs in India are Political blog Talking Blogger is acquired by Google ness Blogging Pvt. Ltd, a by people who are in Points Memo uncovers US Inc. Rediff begins offering social media consultancy some way already writing Senate majority leader hosted blogs on firm and one of India’s for a living. But where are Trent Lott’s racially blogs.rediff.com. The first earliest bloggers, rememthe amateurs and the charged comments at an iteration of open-source blog bers trying to organize a common people who event; 13 days later, Lott platform Wordpress appears. bloggers’ meet in Chenhave other passions?” resigns. Influential gossip Salam Pax, a pseudonymous nai in late 2002. Shankar asks Vinayak Razdan, blog Gawker is started. blogger from Iraq, receives was then a senior execuwho writes a blog called notable media attention for tive for Sify Technologies Ltd, At The Edge. his posts during the Iraq an IT services company.

The rise in importance invasion.

“It took me three weeks to of the so-called amateur, 2001 find five people to attend, a well-established norm in Several popular American and back then it was just reblogging communities elsepolitical blogs are started, lief that there actually were where, is much more muted including Instapundit and other people in this strange in India. “Indians are tradiThe Daily Dish. new pursuit with you,” he tionally careful about self exsays. pression. Very few companies 1999 Technorati, a search engine allow employees to blog. So The word ‘blog’ is used for for blogs, in its annual State of with this permission culture the first time, on Peter the Blogosphere report indexes Merholz’s personal website. we naturally have in place, 133 million blogs worldwide blogging—which is such a baSan Francisco based since 2002. The 11 Septemsic do-it-yourself, self-expresstart-up Pyra Labs starts ber attack in 2001, and the sion, write-what-you-want, Blogger, which allows for 1997 2003 Iraq war saw the don’t-care-what-peopleeasy blog publishing.

The term ‘weblog’ is coined emergence of a large think medium—only a small American programmer

by American programmer number of personal and percentage will take to that,” Bradley Joseph Fitzpatrick John Barger to describe his political blogs. In 2004, says Ashok. starts blog hosting service personal site Robot the first year Technorati It’s still early days for the Livejournal to help his Wisdom, where he linked published its report, it blog in India, however, and friends stay updated on to articles on the Internet. tracked four million change, says Pradhan, will each other’s activities. blogs. By October 2005, that come with a greater critical number had risen to 19.6 milmass. “Unless the blogosphere Source: Mint research lion. grows sufficiently large, its inBut in Indian blogging, there pooled in money to donate to Chennai-based blog, look at fluence would be limited,” he were no such tipping points. relief funds) and regular blogs merely as a way of mak- says.

“Indian blogs have always events that result in collective ing a quick buck, or a lazy The beginnings of that grown organically, steadily anger among bloggers...who short cut to instant fame. change are already being felt “A lot of the questions I get by some bloggers. “There is through word of mouth. expect(ed) DesiPundit to lead They’ve never suddenly ex- the charge and collate posts on are: ‘How do I get readers?’, quite a bit of diversity now ‘What do I write about?’ It’s a —simply because a lot more ploded onto the scene in terms the topic,” he says.

The Indian blogosphere’s very ‘exam’ attitude, like ask- people have entered blogging,” of numbers,” says Shankar.

There have, however, been growth has also been stymied ing ‘what can I write to get the says Abhinandan. “The diversporadic incidents that made by technical factors: low Inter- most marks?’” says Meenakshi sity is reflected in what is being existing bloggers the centre of net penetration, estimated at Madhavan Reddy, who writes blogged about—for example attention. In the wake of a tele- 60 million people, or 5.22% of the popular blog Compulsive politics—very leftist to very communications breakdown the total population, and the Confessor and also authors a libertarian. A lot of blogs that following the 2004 tsunami, only recent arrival of regional column on blogs in the Hin- talk about Dalit issues and so the South-East Asia Earth- language blogging. As a result, dustan Times newspaper. on—these voices were not that Blogospheres have always prominent in the early days.” quake and Tsunami blog (SEA- it remains a small, urban-cenbeen scattered, disorganized EAT) published text messages tric, niche community.

“The blogosphere has defi“A blog with a daily reader- communities, and in the statis- nitely given space to a lot of sent from affected areas by the people on the ground, ena- ship of 1,500-2,000 would be tical bell curve of blog popu- marginalized voices—for exbling bloggers to provide use- considered fairly successful in larity, at least 90% are confined ample, support for LGBT (lesful information from around India; in the US, in contrast, to the infinite recesses of Inter- bian, gay, bisexual, transgenthe region. The now defunct the superstars measure their net obscurity. But blogs in der) communities,” adds PradSEA-EAT blog became one of readership in hundreds of countries such as the US are han. the world’s top ranked thousands,” says Rohit Prad- organized on subject lines, And in small but sure ways, blogs—at one point more pop- han, who’s associated with with a cluster of popular and says Razdan, the blog is beginular than the BBC website—in Pragati: The Indian National influential blogs acting like ning to assert itself as a space the immediate aftermath of the Interest Review, a current af- hubs. From cooking advice to for political opinion. “During fairs publication, and blogs at Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan- L.K. Advani’s Adsense blitztsunami. dom, there are blogs and hubs krieg during the 2009 elecPatrix found a similar trajec- Nationalinterest.in.

But more than technical lim- for every occasion and pur- tion,” he says, “some bloggers tory with DesiPundit. “It evolved slowly but there were itations, it is the idea of the pose. did block his ads from displayThat variety in subject mat- ing on their blogs, even though a few watershed moments like blog, some bloggers say, which the whole IIPM brouhaha people find difficult to concep- ter is a strength the Indian bl- it was one on the best money (when, in 2005, the Indian In- tualize. The maturing of the ogosphere does not enjoy yet. making ads at the time. I don’t situte of Planning and Man- blog from a personal publish- A few topics —Humour, Bolly- think the mainstream media agement sent legal notices to ing medium to a veritable al- wood , Cricket, opinion on could have afforded such idebloggers who’d featured a sto- ternate medium has not yet breaking news—work. The as.” personal blog, unperturbed as ry on the institute), the Blog happened in India. ayeshea.p@livemint.com Most people unfamiliar with it is by the need for readership, Quake Day (when, after the PaThis is the first in a four-part kistan earthquake in 2005, the medium, says Krish Ashok, works. But this unbalanced series. Tomorrow: The blog as a nearly 100-125 bloggers an IT professional who runs a importance for a few kinds of publicity tool.

FROM BLOG BASICS TO ‘WHATAY SMART BOY!’ I

t happened one day in Chennai in October 2002. I normally ate lunch at my office workstation. And simultaneously read articles on the Web, checked personal email and, ever so often, wrote up one of my mega-long email newsletters to a list of friends from college.

And when I say “newsletter” I mean unsolicited, 2,500-wordlong email rants on airlines, food, movies, office gossip and so on. (As with most bloggers, going back to one’s earliest works entails much embarrassment and non-stop cringing. Mine are no exception.)

So I’d been shipping out these emails sporadically for about a year when, that October, during one of my lunch-browse sessions, I happened upon this service called Blogger.com run by a company called Pyra Labs. (Sadly I remember nothing of the details: did someone recommend Blogger.com, or did I stumble upon it by accident? Alas, this was before Gmail.com and its limitless memory.)

Blogger.com had a nice catchy tag line, “Push button publishing for the people” and the sites on it seemed clean and uncluttered. (As against the prevalent Bappi Lahiri design aesthetic of most free website services of the day.) Best of all it was free to do the bare essentials: type and post. No code knowledge necessary at all.

This meant no more spamming inboxes with my occasional missives.

I signed up and on 30 October 2002, I wrote my very first post titled “Of Rains And Vaastu” on http://sidin.blogspot.com.

There were still a year or two to go before the terms “blog” and later “blogger” really became part of the Indian social zeitgeist.

So I just called it “my website”. People were suitably impressed. When I went for family functions, my father proudly said “He has his own website you know?”

“Oh, whatay smart boy!”

Of course those were innocent times.

Innocent and thankless times. Traffic peaked at 30 visits a week, most of which was me showing it off to other people. I didn’t have a commenting system for one and a half years. I didn’t even know what a commenting system was for one and a half years.

Oh and there wasn’t a blogroll either. In fact, I remember there were start-ups, such as Blogrolling.com and Sitemeter, that purely focused on trivial things such as blogrolls, link lists and hit counters. Hundreds and thousands of hit counters in all shapes and sizes. (Most of them would get obliterated as blogging platforms got sophisticated, and Google Analytics became the standard for analytics.)

Innocent, thankless but polite times. Bloggers would actually ask you for your permission to add your URL to their blogroll or to quote you. And readers actually sent detailed feedback on your posts via email and you replied politely in return.

The only agenda, really, was to write and publish. Blogs truly were the cheapest, easiest way to get people to access and read your writing. And I doubt if, in 2002 or 2003, anyone had an agenda for their blogs, besides that.

And then something happened in 2004. I can’t pinpoint when it happened. But I’d say somewhere around the summer of 2004. Blogging lost its geeky, polite virginity. Suddenly bloggers began to take themselves more seriously and blogs began to have a purpose: social causes, authors desperate for book deals, antisocial psychopaths seeking like-minded companions and so on. Comments and blogrolls were now serious business.

As some bloggers became stars and the others not so much, factions and feuds developed. And finally mainstream media picked up the blogging phenomenon. Cue undue hysteria.

(And in an interesting role reversal of sorts, while things such as blogrolls and meters became a default element of blogging platforms, today we have start-ups that focus purely on commenting systems, forums and so on. You can rest assured this won’t be the last turn of the blog start-up dice.)

Then, with platforms such as Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, LiveJournal.com and others becoming ever more easier to learn and use, thousands of people signed up, wrote a post or two and then gave up blogging forever. (For instance, the mysterious http:/ /chang.blogspot.com that has only one entry dated 28 January 2001. Which is complete gibberish. Spooky.) And there were others who couldn’t handle the negative commenting and bitching and simply made access to their posts password enabled. Or gave up on blogging altogether. (Many of the leading lights of blogging from 2002-2005 disappeared without trace.)

A far cry from the innocent days of yore.

Personally speaking, May 2004 was an inflexion point for my blog. After posting an oft-emailed blog post, traffic jumped around 200-300 times the usual. Thankfully, much of that fresh traffic kept coming back and another three years later, in May 2007, I moved my blog from Blogger.com to a much more professional Wordpress platform. (The exact antithesis of why I went to Blogger in the first place.)

By then the blog had already helped me move to a full-time writing job. When the time came to send out resumes to potential recruiters the blog served me valiantly. Nowadays no one calls it a “website” anymore. Websites are for losers.

“My boy has a blog you know?”

“Oh, whatay smart boy!” www.livemint.com Sidin Vadukut blogs at blogs.livemint.com/playthings