From the category archives:

bloggers

What you may not know about Ganesh Festival: An appeal !

by Arun Prabhudesai on August 17, 2009

Ganesh Festival is really a time for festivities; it slowly starts to get Indian people into festive season mood that spans till end of Diwali. If you live in cities like Pune and Mumbai, you will know the kind of celebration that happens for 10 straight days. The streets are overflowing with people to see the beautifully decorated Ganesh Idols. The roads are closed at night, loud music and expansive lighting greets you everywhere.

{ 20 comments }

Blogging in India: A Research report

by Arun Prabhudesai

Blogging scene in India is steadily growing. I remember when I started blogging in May 2007, there were hardly any blogs that were popular except, Labnol and couple of others. But now the blogging scene in India is improved. There are number of Indian blogs catering to various fields that are [...]

1 comment July 11, 2009 Continue Reading →

Are bloggers entrepreneurs?

by Sriram Vadlamani

Dictionary.com has this definition for entrepreneur : a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, esp. a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.

I think business is something which produces something and in return generates some money. Blogging fits that. Post is the product and the advertising money is the revenue.

Now, for us to separate [...]

10 comments May 31, 2009 Continue Reading →

Will 2009 be the year of Blogging in India?

by Sriram Vadlamani

3 incidents mark 2009 and it is all set to become a year of blogging in India. It first started with Chetanye Kunte and the Mumbai blasts. It marked the way blogs has gained prominence at a broader level when NDTV took it seriously.

Next up in the chain is the fake IPL player blog. I [...]

1 comment May 31, 2009 Continue Reading →

Lets bully the poor blogger

by Sriram Vadlamani

Indian Blogosphere is abuzz with the recent incident of blogger Chyetanya Kunte. He has (oops had) a post about NDTV and Burkha Dutt’s coverage of Mumbai attacks. I read the post from google’s cache and the whole post is supported with logic. Many people have said the same thing but it came down to the [...]

2 comments January 31, 2009 Continue Reading →

Bloggers do not trash your company, either you already are trash or you are doing it yourself!

by Arun Prabhudesai

I read this really disturbing news. Companies are employing agencies to clean-up negative feedback online. Their target is “crazy blogs”. The definition of crazy is at best undefined. Who will be defining crazy? If I narrate my experiences about some product or service which I bought or experienced and if that helps someone to make a better decision, what’s wrong with that.

This is a direct stab at our democracy and freedom of speech. India is more becoming like China. A police state. Through official and sometimes not so official channels, India slowly but surely is becoming a police state. Yesterday was the ban on smoking in public places where the definition of public place is debatable.

Now this is underground Internet Mafia Style Company !

Companies who are offering these services are eBrandz, Communicate2, Value Pitch, and Id8lab.

Their main targets are the websites like mouthshut, complaintboard and customercomplaint.

11 comments October 5, 2008 Continue Reading →

Do you want to be a Successful entrepreneur ?

by Arun Prabhudesai

I just stumbled upon an excellent post by Neil Patel. He is all of 21, but is one of the most successful Internet entrepreneurs I know of.

He has written an excellent article called “10 Reasons You Are Not A Successful Entrepreneur”. If you are serious about becoming an entrepreneur, this is a must read.

All the ten points he has mentioned are extremely important, but the 1st point – You don’t know how to manage money and 2nd point – You don’t have multiple game plans are of paramount importance if you are taking a dive into entrepreneurship !

2 comments July 18, 2008 Continue Reading →

Trak.in June Statistics and other updates

by Arun Prabhudesai

WOW…What a month June has been ! The traffic went even beyond my expectation. Google seems to love trak.in. It ranks my blog very well on number of high traffic keywords.

A lot has happened in the month of June apart from registering high traffic growth. The feed subscriptions also went up, only marginally. I have moved to a new house personally. My startup hover.in also moved to new bigger office. We secured funding for hover.in as well in May.

Apart from this, hover.in is in the last phase of alpha. It will come out in Beta on August 1st. I am extremely excited about the way hover.in is turning out. I am sure Web publishers and bloggers will feast on our offering.

Moving on to Trak.in June Statistics, here is the snapshot of Google Analytics and Feedburner.

3 comments July 3, 2008 Continue Reading →

kwippy: Close network nano-blogging through Instant Messenger

by Arun Prabhudesai

Microblogging as name suggests is extremely condensed form of no-frills-blogging. Best example of this is tumbleblog, where a user shares his content, videos etc…etc within minutes without spending time on going through routine of writing a whole post.

Nanoblogging is even more condensed form where the content shared is in form of short messages. This has been hugely popular thanks to Twitter.

Now an Indian startup – kwippy – brings you nanoblogging with couple of interesting twists. Users can actually send messages via their favourite Instant messengers like Gtalk or Yahoo. The messages send through IMs are stored on your personal page or nanoblog in threaded discussion format. The user just needs to add kwippy as a friend in his/her Instant messenger. All messages and status updates will reflect on the personal page.

6 comments June 4, 2008 Continue Reading →

The new mantra of PR: Marketing through blogging and Social Networking

by Arun Prabhudesai

Indian blogging scene has grown quite a bit over last 12 to 18 months. Last year in May when I started blogging, there were hardly any blogs that one could name which were even remotely popular, other than Labnol and couple of others. However, over last year or so Indian blogging scene has grown and now we have number of blogs that command decent traffic.

I see exponential growth in Indian bloggers in coming months , thanks to Aamir, Amitabh and host of other celebrities (latest being Salman Khan ) embracing blogging quite seriously. Yes, it is may be money making source for some, but these celebrities are bringing "blogging" into Mainstream media. Not a single day passes by without some or the other blog content being quoted in our national dailies.

With blogging becoming popular, most PR agencies are looking at bloggers as a serious marketing avenue. During early days of my blogging I used to get standard PR material mailed frequently, most of which could be termed as spam mails, as little consideration was given to who the blogger was, what subject does he write about and so on.

5 comments May 26, 2008 Continue Reading →

Is Amitabh the highest paid blogger in the world?

by Arun Prabhudesai

Just came across this news – Amitabh Bachchan is being paid Rs. 100 crore for writing on his blog – that is nearly 25 million dollars ! Now thats a HUGE sum to be paid to write a few paragraphs daily, even if it is from an iconic figure like Amitabh Bachchan.

I have been an ardent admirer of Amitabh not only for his acting skills, but more so in the way he has conducted himself off-screen through-out his illustrious career. It is tough being in public eye constantly for more than 35 years and he has handled the media glare exceptionally well. Never has he stirred up controversy, always keeping mum and never really criticizing or putting down his fellow actors. However, since he has started blogging, things seem to have taken a total U turn. Nearly every post he has written have been controversial and widely covered by Indian media.

2 comments May 16, 2008 Continue Reading →

Are Indian blog readers comment shy ?

by Arun Prabhudesai

I came across an interesting comparison done by Saad Mohammad on his blog oodami. Saad rightly points out that very few Indian blog readers actually leave quality comments. He makes his point by mining the comment statistics from 5 different Indian blogs and compares it with RSS subscribers and post count.

Here are the comparison charts.

A great job done by Saad to make his point !

11 comments May 9, 2008 Continue Reading →

desiwiki:The wiki for Indian Startups

by Arun Prabhudesai

Do you know what are the biggest pain points faced by entrepreneurs while starting their new venture?

It is the lack of knowledge in legal, financial and company incorporation areas, especially if you are an online startup.

I am saying this from my personal example. The amount of frustration that I have been through over last couple of months cannot be described in words. Just getting the company incorporated was a big project in itself. And if by any chance the startup is getting invested from outside, the formalities and paperwork involved turns into a nightmare (I can vouch for it).

However, like I mentioned, problems are more due to lack of knowledge than anything else. Yes, there are plenty of resources online, but they are scattered all across the web. If you are a US/ UK based startup, you will find plenty of resources online that will really help you out in understanding the whole process in a streamlined fashion. In India though, the ball game is all together different. There is information available online including government websites, but is presented in a haphazard way. It will get you more confused than simplify your life.

4 comments May 9, 2008 Continue Reading →

The new rules of Business Blogs

by Arun Prabhudesai

Just came across this wonderful free E-book by Linas Simonis called "The new rules of Business Blogs". This short and concise e-book explains how business owners and managers should act in blogosphere if they want to make maximum utilization of this new communication channel.

This e-book explains how the today’s business blogging rules have changed compared to the ones that have been traditionally followed since early blogging years.

2 comments May 6, 2008 Continue Reading →

Trak.in Blog celebrates its First Anniversary

by Arun Prabhudesai

WOW ! Today Trak.in blog is One year old. It was officially launched on 1st May, 2007 (although a few posts were published in April end).

Looking back, it has been one of the best years of my life and lot of the decisions I have made were influenced by this blog. Two most important things have happened – I moved back to India and have taken a plunge into entrepreneurship.

One of the biggest accomplishment for me is that this blog has enabled me to network with hundreds of new people over last one year. Something that would have been nearly impossible for me otherwise.

Having said that, I have also had my share of ups and downs. Blogging is tough, especially when you have regular readers coming to your blog with expectations of finding something useful. There have been numerous occasions when I just could not write for days together and ended up writing some really poor quality posts. But positive comments and mails from my regular readers have kept me going through all these tough moments.

6 comments May 1, 2008 Continue Reading →

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