Changing times with blogger

On the weekend, there was not much to do except watching a cricket match, a movie, a short trip to a friend's home and reading. In the mean time, I was able to get through many blogs. Most of them were from my juniors. After going through all these, I realized that most of the blogs are starting from first quarter of 2005. Many of regular bloggers started from last of 2004. After looking at so many blogs and reading some good posts, especially on blogcritics, I realized that different people have blogs for different reasons. Ahh.. That’s not a new thing; everyone knows that different people have different views, different thinking and different motives. But the most striking thing that I noticed in most of the blogs I read today was that none was anonymous. Most of the juniors had blogs for sharing their thoughts with all of their friends. Blogs were updated with long breaks and were read by also the same contact group. Some US blogs were for flaunting, writing anything to get noticed by random surfers and get more hits. One guy was stand out, I was able to dig in his 3 blogs, all were on very specific topics, mainly information related to that topic, not his thoughts. He was successful in getting more traffic by pinpointing some general stuff available on net and putting at one place. That's same all the big blogsites are doing. They collate interesting stuff from internet and put it at one place on their blogs. Blogs have become more like magazines, with added functionality of getting updates daily. When initially blogs were launched, idea was that blogs will give people an online diary, where they can share their random thoughts with an option of not giving their identity. Now, blogs has become just a name, you can just keep updating a website with some random news and can call it a blog. People are making money out of this as ‘adsense’ and other tools are paying money for getting more hits. Bloggers are putting the posts to sustain and grow their number of viewers. It’s the same thing done by news and other websites. So, difference is getting thinner between the blogs and normal website. Blog has become more of a personal website for bloggers.

Making economic gains out of blogs is great but isn’t being bound by this against the idea of starting blogs at first place. Blogs were started to give people a free space to let them share their thoughts without any limitations. Economy gain has now bound the ideas with making bloggers aim to retain and growing their viewers. It is the same limitation all newspapers and magazines share with blogs. They also try to retain their customer and publish only those articles which can help them to retain their reader's interest.
Blogs have an advantage in this, as there are no constraints on who is blogging (in most of the countries), everyone have their own space. It’s the different thing that they get noticed or not. On ‘blogcritic’ there was one post (I forgot the link) that more than 70% blogs are not read by anyone (except owner himself). Some use blogs to share their thoughts with close friends but sending a group e-mail or just general chat session or talk is enough for this. To share your thoughts with your friends you don't need a blog, you can just talk to them or send a mail to your mail group.

I will try to divide bloggers, in the following categories:

Journalist/Reporters: These bloggers are professional writers and they use blogs as another let out of their articulated expressions. Their blogs make most of the popular blogs.

Students/Teens: These bloggers put general thoughts and their day to day activity in their blogs. Most of them are full of pictures and use fancy templates. These blogs are viewed by their friends circle mainly.

Common: These bloggers also put their day to day activities and general thoughts on the blog. Added to this, they use blogs as a let out of their grievance against their employers. These blogs help these bloggers to keep in touch with their old friends.

Creative commons: These are the bloggers with some purpose; either to show off their writing skills as writers or showing information on a particular topic. Reason may be any social issue or just funny bones, they get selected audience. Some even use this mode to get more viewers and earn through adsense.

I have to limit this post, as I have some work to do. If someone can add more then it will be great.