With an Indian blog by Kajal Tejsinghani nominated for the Blogger's Choice awards, city's bloggers talk about whether the Mumbai blogosphere really that popular.
With an Indian blog by Kajal Tejsinghani nominated for the Blogger's Choice awards, Speak Up asks city's bloggers whether the Mumbai blogosphere is really all that popular
Mumbai has many good blogs
I travel all over the world and Mumbai blogs keep me abreast of what is happening in the city. I read a couple of Mumbai blogs and I think they are all very good. There are millions of blogs in cyberspace and ‘just another blog’ can’t attract many users. Bloggers need to go that extra mile to attract more traffic. It is also very important that they market their blogs. People from Australia, Asia, the Middle East and all over the United States read what I write (aapplemint.blogspot). Blog statistics say that I get 10,000 clicks per month with an average of 400 clicks daily. I write back to people who send me feedback and give the readers a sense of comfort so that they might visit my blog again. I even changed my name to Kate. It helps me get more traffic on the blog as many readers don’t understand my Indian name.
—Kajal Tejsinghani
We are up to the mark
Why are we judging Bombay blogs by these awards? There are as many good or bad blogs from this city as any other. Why is this Blogger’s Choice Award so special? Awards have value only when they’re well known. Aside from the Bloggies, and the Webby Awards, there are no blog awards that are really universal. And even those are rather US-centric. The Net, by nature, is very fragmented. People move in their own circles, and care about what happens in those circles. Besides, you also have to ask whether people are blogging for awards. We have the Indibloggies, in which a few hundred people bother to vote. And there are at least 40,000 bloggers on Blogger.com alone, who list their country as India. Bloggers around the world collaborated, putting together information about the disaster after the tsunami. Blogs can help mobilise people, spread ideas; bloggers can get together and make a difference. Another big moment for the city’s bloggers, as a community, was the collaboration after the deluge of 2005.
—Peter Griffin
Influence is immaterial
I am a regular blogger and I had no idea about this Blogger’s Choice Award. People need to be aware that these awards exist in the first place so they can vote and get Indian blogs nominated. The blog traffic on my blog (calamur.org/gargi) is usually around 120 to 130 clicks per day. You cannot numerically say how many people are influenced by blogs in a country like India. We are so diverse as a nation that there can hardly be any blog that interests everyone, or even a majority. Blogs could influence one person, or maybe even a hundred, but they are very important as voices previously unheard. Whether they influence people or not is immaterial. At the end of the day, if you read the opinions of 10 different people on a particular issue, you end up thinking differently about it. The most significant milestone for Mumbai bloggers according to me came during the 26/7 floods. The blogs did a commendable job of forming support groups and passing on valuable information especially when phone lines were blocked.
—Harini Calamur
Our blogs lack specialisation
I believe that the one thing Indian bloggers lack is an area of specialisation. Though there are many specialist bloggers in Mumbai, they seem to be relatively smaller in number in comparison with blogs abroad. Due to the lack of Internet access in India the blog, as a medium of communication, fails to affect public opinion. However, I look at the unbiased opinion on blogs as a positive aspect of blog culture. Most of the people these days prefer accessing blogs by means other than the direct link. It thus becomes difficult to predict the traffic on my blog. There are hardly any people who read my blog through the direct link. However, blogs connect a lot of people and this was greatly visible during the tsunami in 2004. Bloggers worldwide collaborated to set up the tsunami blog in which Mumbai bloggers made specific contributions by setting up help lines for the same. Thus I see blogs as an alternative to mainstream media. I’m glad that the number of bloggers in Mumbai is growing by the day.
—Charukesi Ramaduri
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