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As blogs explode, ‘blogamediaries’ emerge
I recently spoke in a panel discussion with two of the most influential figures in the world of blogging, thanks to the Delhi Bloggers’ Bloc, which holds camps to aid the community, reports N Madhavan.
I recently spoke in a panel discussion with two of the most influential figures in the world of blogging, thanks to the Delhi Bloggers’ Bloc, which holds camps to aid the community.
Matt Muellenweg is the founder of Wordpress, which provides free blogging tools and storage space on the Internet, while Delhi-bred Om Malik is a Silicon Valley-based journalist-blogger who has done to this field what another Indian born, Sabeer Bhatia, did to free Web-based email.
Om blogs on the broadband industry and champions a clutch of blogs with a venture-funded firm that makes money from advertisements and events.
Matt has done the 21st Century equivalent of what a hundred years earlier would have been somewhat akin to giving printing presses for free. What this creates is an explosion of opportunity –and along with it comes a challenge.
Wordpress has now more than 2.13 lakh blogs and I think the explosion has only just begun, because like Google-owned Blogger, Wordpress offers blogging platforms in several languages, including Hindi and Tamil and other Indian languages. With the coming of affordable mobile Internet and 3G telephony, blogs will multiply to millions. Blogs will beg for readers, and focused content is the way to attract readers or viewers.
I think intermediaries and value-added blogs will rise to define and refine the blogging universe. I call them the “blogamediaries.”
Technorati.com collects, highlights and indexes blogs worldwide to function like a hub. There are Indian companies like Blogadda.com which provides India-centric bloggers a platform to find the right audience, while Instablogs.com handpicks blogs for quality, supports “citizen journalists” and syndicates blog content for traditional media.
