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State of Indian Blogosphere 2011 – Are Blogs dead?

Arun Prabhudesai — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 06:47:48 +0000

Blogging was “the in-thing” with netizens 5-7 years back. Thanks to Google’s blogger platform & Auttomatic’s WordPress platform, literally anyone could setup their own blogs and publish their views & opinions in minutes.

It had good as well as bad consequences – Netizens had lot more quality content through blogs, but even more scrappy content started getting published.

Over time, micro-blogging platforms like Tumblr & Posterous got very popular, as it became even more easier to publish content. Once could upload content / images / videos from their mobile devices within seconds. And with recent popularity of social networking platforms like Facebook & twitter going through the roof, sharing updates, status messages on the web has now become 2nd nature to many!

If you consider India only, although we joined the blogging phenomenon much later than our western peers, we have embraced Social Media whole-heartedly and in fact, social media is now getting more popular even than sending receiving emails!

So, the big question on everyone’s mind is – with Facebook, twitter & tumblr’s of the world becoming popular – Is blogging dead?

The answer is – BIG NO

Drizzlin Media, a brand consultancy firm, recently published a study on “State of Indian Blogsphere 2011” and from what I can say the popularity of blogs has only grown over time.

And contrary to popular belief, Social Networking only enhances the reach of Blogs, rather than being a reason for its demise.

However, unlike our western peers, Blogging full time is still not a viable professional proposition for Indians as there are very few opportunities for monetization.

Here are some of the highlights of the “State of Indian Blogosphere 2011” study.

Majority of bloggers who participated in the study rated their content as bad to average
A large percentage of brands want to connect with bloggers, but are unable to maintain relationships with them on long term.
Social Networking has cannibalized blogs to a certain extent, however, social sharing of blog content has enhanced Blog reach to a very large audience.

Check out this excellent presentation that Drizzlin Media has published that offers a good insights on State of Indian Blogosphere as it stands today!

State of Indian Blogosphere 2011

[Note:If you are viewing this post in Email / RSS reader, you may not be able to see the presentation. Please click on the title of this post to view it on blog itself]

Bloggers beware–Indian Govt moving towards online censorship!

Aseem Rastogi — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 03:40:12 +0000

According to some latest statistics around 770 million people in the country have access to a mobile. Around 1/10^th of them have access to the Internet. This shows that Internet penetration is still very low in this country. But there is an increasing penetration of social networking sites (around 80% of Internet population) and other ways by which people can contribute to the growing information age. This has suddenly given rise to hacking attacks, growth of hackers, malware, cyber crimes etc.

In this situation, the government has recently published amendments / updates to the IT Rules Act. And the rules stated there make me wonder if we are slowly moving towards the Chinese way. Though there are a lot of rules which I wouldn’t talk about, the most important and influencing one is regarding the bloggers and Internet service providers.

The Internet Service providers (ISPs) are supposed to direct the bloggers and the general public on what kind of content can or cannot be published on Internet, be it photo or textual matter. In case if the terms and conditions are not followed, the intermediaries have the right to block the user from access.

Interestingly the rules are really vague which shows from the government using words like obscenity, harmful to minors etc (Check out this post on Medianama, which analyse some important points ). Whether something is harmful or obscene may differ from person to person. And here is where the vagueness comes in. Moreover the intermediaries have to ensure that the content is being efficiently managed without being compromised, failing which they are liable to be punished for non – compliance.

They also need to give the government easier access for general information. All these rules and liabilities for various intermediaries have been fixed on the basis of the fact that all sites are the same. So a user generated content site like Wikipedia is same as Times of India.

What is the government trying to do? Why is bossing around the Internet world like the Chinese regime? Aren’t we the ones who should have the right on what to see and say (aka read & write) on the Internet? Are rules and regulations like these the right thing in a democracy like ours?

With measures like the Internet kill switch, the Central Monitoring System and the recent banning of of typepad, mobango, clickatell (I got the ban message shown above when I visited mobango.com & clickatell.com) & others, one’s getting the idea that the government is in this for the long term. But then the rules of their game seem so vague that you wonder at the futility of the entire exercise.

The rules define a blogger only as a user when he / she has user generated content in the form of comments. Even the reasons for which one can be blocked are so vague that nearly 90 percent of all sites on internet can get banned (like on trak.in, everyday we get comments all the time which can be termed obscene, hateful, abusive etc…)

As someone said it rightly, since the government can’t control the content on the Internet, they instead are planning on controlling the Internet Service providers!

Do you think online censorship in India is the right thing?

Important IT Act documents

Watch what you write, Wipro tells its Employees – comes out with Employee Blogging Policy!

Arun Prabhudesai — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:47:45 +0000

Indian Corporates are slowly waking up to the hazards of content going online, often damaging enough for the company to sit up and take notice. Last month, Infosys was the first company to come out with official Social Media Policy for Employees of the company.

Now, Wipro has gone ahead and published blogging policy for all their Employees. This, to ensure that any content (Blog post, article or comments) published by Wipro Employees on internet are governed by the strict guidelines.

While some of the pointers are quite standard, few of them can really create problems for Wipro Employees if they are not careful enough.

Here are guidelines given in Wipro blogging policy

BLG.1 General Principles:

BLG.1.1

you must seek written consent from your managers

BLG.1.2 You must think of the consequences of posting any content prior to actually posting on the blog especially, while writing comments related to the Organization / Competition / Customers / Business Partners / General Public.

BLG.1.3 You must not refer or post any Wipro/Customer specific references like email addresses, logo, trademark information, employee numbers, account information, internal project / customer information, financial information, strategic decisions, internal email excerpts, internal security details, internal communications that are limited to circulation within Wipro, Wipro name along with blog site domain name/ blog site URL itself or any copyrighted material which are available to you by virtue of working with Wipro.

BLG.1.4 Any transactions/promotional activities on behalf/in the name of Wipro through blogging sites could be considered as long as it doesn’t violate the Code of business Conduct and Ethics defined in the Organization.

BLG.1.5 You must not use blogging sites (including the posting of information) for any unauthorized purposes targeting Wipro colleagues and other general public in areas, such as but not limited to:

BLG.1.5.1

BLG.1.5.2 Defame, abuse, harass, stalk, threaten or otherwise violate the legal and privacy rights.

BLG.1.5.3 Transmit, upload or download any material that potentially contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, or any other malicious code.

BLG.1.5.4 Post messages that have racial or sexual slur, political or religious solicitations, or any other message that is in-appropriate and/or has the potential to cause Wipro or its customers and business partners, harm or embarrassment.

BLG.1.6 Wipro reserves the right to monitor online blogs and interfere legally, if necessary, considering any content posting which is not in compliance with the policy.

BLG.1.7 Your breach of information confidentiality, through blogging, is considered as non compliance to this policy. This could necessitate an investigation and appropriate disciplinary action to be taken, up to and including termination from services.

BLG.1.8 This policy applicability is subject to country specific laws/regulations (For e.g.: Employee Workplace related/Privacy laws). Relevant Country Specific laws/regulations shall supersede this policy wherever applicable.

BLG.2 External Blogging*

BLG.2.1 Views expressed by you on blog sites (including URLs or references) must be considered as PERSONAL ONLY and NOT the views of Wipro Limited. If the blog posting clearly identifies that you work for Wipro, you must add a disclaimer such as “The postings on this blog are my own and doesn’t necessarily represent my employer”.

BLG.2.2 You must not cite or post (including any links to other websites) any Wipro or Customer proprietary Confidential Information in blogs since disclosing such information could negatively impact the Organization and may result in regulatory/confidentiality violations.

BLG.2.3 You are SOLELY RESPONSIBLE for the information (commentary) posted by you on blog sites, on the internet.

BLG.2.4 When you choose to go public via blog sites, you shall abide by the ‘Terms of use & Guidelines’ if any, set by the blogging sites.

BLG.2.5 If you happen to post information in any of the media blogs (run by electronic/print news/media websites), you must adhere to the “Media Relations Policy” released by Wipro Marketing team.

BLG.3 Internal Blogging*

BLG.3.1 You must follow the Internal Blogging guidelines as published in the Internal Blog sites, prior to using the same.

BLG.3.2 Internal Blog posting will be controlled by the Moderator from content perspective and Wipro reserves the right to publish the information posted by you in compliance to BLG1.5

BLG.4 External Blog Sites setup by Wipro*

BLG.4.1 Blogging guidelines must be published in the blog site, so that the users of the site could clearly refer and adhere to the same.

BLG.4.2 Publishing of the user views posted must be published on the blog site only after the review by Wipro Moderator.

BLG.4.3 Employees involved in sharing views with external users in the blog site must be aware of this policy and must exercise extreme caution prior to publishing information related to Wipro.

BLG.4.4 Views expressed by employees in these blog sites are generally considered as that of the Organization and hence you must consider liabilities to Wipro while publishing your opinion for the benefit of intended user community.

It is quite clear that we will be seeing a lot more of this from other large Indian companies. Internet Audience is growing, especially on the Social Media platforms, where the discussion can go out of hand. Such steps can ensure that company does not have to face the music due to some Individual’s foolishness.

Your thought ?

Drastically Improve your site-speed or get your search rankings killed !

Arun Prabhudesai — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 12:50:38 +0000

Google is God when it comes to search – more than 70% of traffic to majority of blogs / sites comes from Google. Most of you know than Google has around 200 parameters on which it ranks a particular webpage.

It has now added one more parameter that will determine where your site is placed in search rankings – Site Speed.

We have been hearing about google making noise about site speed for quite sometime, and hence it included features like “site performance” in Webmaster tools to benchmark your site speed. Google has also released a firefox addon called “page speed” which will evaluates the performance of web pages and gives suggestions for improvement.

While site speed is a new signal, it doesn’t carry as much weight as the relevance of a page. Currently, fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal in our implementation and the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com at this point.
We launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing. If you haven’t seen much change to your site rankings, then this site speed change possibly did not impact your site.

This announcement is first sign of things to come – Although, currently this change will affect around 1% of all the search queries, over coming months and years this percentage is going to increase for sure.

This is an especially important announcement for bloggers, who use CMS like wordpress to publish their blogs. Many times in bid to add new functionality (through plugins or modules) to your blog, the blog speed is compromised that could cost you site the your search rankings.

If you have not already, it is high time to look at your site speed in the bid to retain your Google ranking position. If you are a site owner, webmaster or a web author, here are some free tools Google suggests that you should look at:

Page Speed, an open source Firefox/Firebug add-on that evaluates the performance of web pages and gives suggestions for improvement.
YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages’ load performance plus an optimization checklist.
In Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world as in the chart below. We’ve also blogged about site performance.

Note: Would love to know form readers as to what do you think is a good benchmark speed for page load. Trak.in takes about 5-6 seconds to load on average – what about your site?

Copyright issues for bloggers, website owners and other content creators [Part 5]

Navin Kabra — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:07:30 +0000

This is the last in my series of articles that give a practical, simplified overview of Intellectual Property Rights. It would be a good idea to skim the overview article, and the article on understanding copyrights further before jumping into this one.

There is widespread ignorance of copyright issues amongst website owners a bloggers. Many of them don’t understand the kind of trouble they can get into for improperly including copyrighted material on their sites. Others don’t understand their rights under copyright law, and are easily scared when served with a baseless legal notice. This article is intended to give a quick overview of what is allowed and what isn’t.

Basically, you cannot put anything (text, images, music, videos, photos) on your blog that was created by someone else. Except in the following circumstances (also known as fair use):

If you are reviewing or criticizing some work, you can use excerpts from that work in your review. This includes photos, movie stills, short video clips, a paragraph or two from their text.
A newspaper, magazine or similar periodical can reproduce part of a work (or sometimes even whole) for reporting current events. Whether a “blog” constitutes a “similar periodical” is a legally grey area, but is probably acceptable.Thus, if someone gives a public talk, you can quote them in your blog without their permission. However, including his entire PowerPoint slideshow would require his permission.
Use of a logo, or trademark, or product photos in a review of someone else’s product is allowed, as long as it is clear that you are not selling the product.
When in doubt, remember: re-use of short excerpts of text is almost always OK in most circumstances. However, re-use of parts of images, or sound/music/video are usually not OK, except in the circumstances listed above. Using a part of a photograph that belongs to someone else in the theme of your website can result in a hefty bill being sent to you. (This has happened to people I know.)Including some nice music in the background audio of your flash intro is a copyright violation. You are liable, even if the violation was done by some lowly employee of the outsourcing company that did your website.
Don’t be afraid of legal threats. A company cannot force you to remove a negative review, or report of some event from your site, and neither can it force you to remove it’s name from the article – as long as what you write is the truth, or your opinion.
Note however: If your website has statements damaging to someone’s reputation, and those can’t be proven to be true, then you could be in trouble with defamation laws and you better remove the content.

Creative Commons

After the success of the free and open source software movement some people felt that a similar movement was needed for the non software world of creative works. The Creative Commons movement is essentially a movement that allows artists and authors to publish their work under the Creative Commons license, a GPL like “free” license.

The basic idea behind the Creative Commons license is that anybody is free to use the creative work as long as they follow one or more of the conditions listed below. The author can pick and choose any combination of these conditions. At the time of publishing, the author indicates which ones s/he wishes to enforce. The conditions are:

Attribution (BY):

If this condition is chosen, anybody who re-uses the work must attribute the original author. Use of the work without attribution is then a copyright violation and the original author can sue for damages.
Non-commercial (NC):

If this condition is included, then the work can be re-used only for non-commercial purposes. If your blog has ads, you cannot use such works. If you are a for profit company, your website cannot use such works.
Share-alike (SA):

If this condition is included, then anybody who re-uses the work, must release the new derived work under the same license. For example, Wikipedia articles are licensed under a creative commons share-alike license. So, if I use a substantial chunk of material from Wikipedia in my article, then I would be forced to release the entire article under the same license.
No-derivatives (ND):

If this condition is included, then this work can only be re-used as-it-is, without any modifications.

Each of the above conditions is known by the two letter abbreviation given in parenthesis. A creative commons license indicates which conditions are included by mentioning the abbreviations. Thus, the copyright notice on my own website states that it’s a CC-BY-NC license – meaning that people can copy it as long as they attribute me, and don’t use it in a commercial context.

Note for those who read the open software licenses article: The CC-BY license is like the Apache license, and the CC-BY-SA license is like the GPL.

If you wish to embed photos, music or videos in your website, make sure you’re doing it legally. There is lots of CC-licensed content out there, and a number of websites sites (like EveryStockPhoto) allow you to search for this content to reuse in your site. But make sure you follow the BY/NC/ND/SA rules.

Other Articles in Series:
Copyrights, Patents & Intellectual Property Rights: An Overview
Understanding Patents further
Understanding Copyrights further
Understanding Open Source Software Licenses
Copyright issues for bloggers, website owners and other content creators (current)

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

Arun Prabhudesai — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:57:59 +0000

[Note: I had written this article in September 19, 2007, but I am reproducing this again before Ganesh Festival, so that you will take proper precautionary measures while buy Ganesh Idols. The links in the article are not working anymore, but the information in the post is very pertinent. Please spread the word]

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.

At the end of 10 days, the Ganesh idol immersion is done with even bigger processions. It’s like a carnival. Dhol and Tasha sounds fill the air.

What happens next ?
Have a look…

Source: Ultrabrown

The sight of these Ganesh Idols is appalling. To be honest I could not even see the pictures, it is so awful. Seeing the Ganesh Idols lying on the shores like these, whom we worship all our lives is mind boggling. Thanks to Ultrabrown blog to bringing this pictures up.

This post is an appeal to Trakin readers to spread the awareness and importance of using Environmentally friendly Ganapati Idols. Read this…

The idols are made out of Plaster of Paris(PoP), which casts typically disintegrated water, thus making it necessary to be non-suitable for bathing, showering, or other activities involving contact with water. In addition, Plaster of Paris casts are not air permeable, and thus do not allow for the circulation of air beneath the cast which greatly facilitates the evaporation and removal of moisture trapped between cast and skin. This often leads to skin maceration, irritation, or infection.

These idols are then painted with ‘some’ dyes which contain poisonous elements like lead,mercury,carbon and cadmium.

In Mumbai alone every year 70-80 thousand Ganpati idols are immersed at about 50 different places during Ganesh Chaturthi resulting in huge amount of pollution. This polluted water is a threat not only to water creatures, but to us equally.

*** Do you know that photography is not allowed the next day at the beaches where immersion takes place? If you ask why then that’s because the beaches are full of desecrated idols, decaying flowers and dead fish the next day, and the Government tries its best to hide this from media and other activists.***

EcoGanapati is an initiative by bunch of guys from fropper. I wish them all the best in this initiative and I am sure Indian bloggers will join this cause, spread awareness and sign the petition that they have put up.

Here is the message from EcoGanapti:

Since internet is one of the greatest sources available in the modern world, it will assist us in spreading knowledge, escalating the matter and, thus, a greater and a purer revelry.

So, what we intend to do is:

Spread knowledge

Seek public interest

Learn more ways and ideas of celebrating the occasion with more purity

Share the results of this activity with the Government, the Mayors of Mumbai and Pune and the other concerned authorities.

*** I intend to take print-out of the Petition page and, personally, deliver it to the concerned ministers and the Mayors.***

Also, the matters will not end with just submitting the petition, I will keep on updating about the action being taken by the authorities in this matter and will follow up diligently.

What you can do is:

Participate

Spread knowledge

Learn more waysÂ and ideas of celebrating the occasion with more purity.

Please also check Relevant Links page to read more about this and to learn how to make eco-friendly Ganesha idols at home.

So, please do sign the petition and leave your comments. The onus lies on us to make a difference with whatever resources we have. For suggestions, or if you are interested in joining this awareness campaign, please leave me a mail at ecoganpati@gmail.com.

Again, sign the petition and help the cause.

Blogging in India: A Research report

Arun Prabhudesai — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:07:41 +0000

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 getting traction and good amount of traffic (still dismal though compared to our western counterparts.)

This research report shows what and how does Indians Blog. This report is called

“I Blog therefore I am”

This report has been written by Sneha Gore as part of her curriculum of Masters in Communication Studies programme conducted by University of Pune.

The reason I am publishing this report is that I have not found any comprehensive study on Blogging in India, this is probably the first one that gets into some details about what is the thought process of Indian bloggers.

The report primarily looks at behaviours of the Indian bloggers and how
are the blogs used by them from a communication perspective.

The aim of this research is to study the young Indian urban bloggers with reference to their psychosocial activity and other factors influencing that.
To achieve this aim it was broken in objectives of studying the blogging activity, understanding the motivations behind blogging and other factors influencing it, as well as looking the bloggers with reference to various entities existing in real and virtual society.
The goal here is not to generalize the findings, but to show a range of blogging contours. To achieve this aim, 20 bloggers were selected based on specific criterion, and a qualitative method of in depth interviews was executed.

Here is the full Report – “I Blog therefore I am”

For any questions on this report, you can get in touch with the author on her email ID (given on the first page of report)

Are bloggers entrepreneurs?

Sriram Vadlamani — Sun, 31 May 2009 18:00:16 +0000

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 out what we are talking about, let us restrict our discussion to bloggers who has registered a domain, and paid money for hosting. This would obviously eliminate the WordPress and blogger blogs. Because there is no money input element.

Since the blogger has put in an initial amount of money in terms of domain registration and hosting he or she should be qualified as entrepreneur. Now he will be investing his time in reading and researching the relevant material to post on the blog. He will also invest time in search engine optimization to drive traffic and wait for the advertising money to trickle in.

There is an input, process and the output.

Input: Time and money

Process: Reading, researching, re-reading, writing, re-writing, proof reading and commenting.

Output: brand recognition and money (if lucky)

With this whole process my question to you is Is blogger an entrepreneur?

There is also a lurking feeling that they might not be as entrepreneurial like a person who has started up. That feeling comes from the fact that bloggers do not take any risk (like me) to become a full-fledged blogger or take blogging as a career. The only risk they take is the money invested in.

Am I missing something here?

PS : I know there is something called blogtrepreneur but how many of you believe in that?

PPS : The heavy use of He is only understandable. If you are a she then forgive this he. And please don’t say that I am not inclusive because that’s not what inclusiveness means.

Will 2009 be the year of Blogging in India?

Sriram Vadlamani — Sun, 31 May 2009 13:49:08 +0000

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 stopped following this blog but this is remarkable turning point in blogging history of India. The accounts given by the fakie are almost real and provided good fodder for 5 weeks for the cricket crazy nation. It will not be far fetched if I were to say – Fake IPL Player gave the first taste of blogging to many Indians.

3rd and most recent is the blogger who helped to solve a case between TVS and Bajaj over a patent case. The judge actually referred to the content in the Spicy IP blog to arrive at the judgement. This is for sure the first of its kind in India. Not sure about the rest of the world. In fact, I haven’t heard of any case solving blog posts in the blogging world.

What gave the case significance beyond being just another chapter in the Bajaj-TVS tussle was that it set a precedent for the future use of blogs in courts. Indian courts have traditionally relied only on books and journals whose reputation has been firmly established. (Mint)

This is a triumph of sorts and makes me think if 2009 will be the year of blogging and if blogger’s will get the man of the year award – if there is such a thing.

This phenomenon rise of blogs is the best thing as far as I am concerned. Much more than the UPA government’s success and Sensex’s 2000 point raise in less than 5 minutes.

Do you agree?

Image credit