Indian blogging: a survey by Top Blogs
Updated in 2021
This post was published in February 2011, a few months after the Top Blogs was created. These quick observations made more than a decade give a glimpse of Indian blogging when blogging in western countries had peaked and then plateaued but blogging was in ascendance in India. These were followed by much detailed observations as can be seen here:
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The ranking of blogs for their inclusion in the list of top blogs in India - which we intend to call The Directory of Best Indian Blogs - is over. As we said before, we have kept the quality of blogs much higher than their popularity in ranking the blogs. The first comprehensive list of India's best blogs in English will have top blogs (Platinum rank), followed by excellent blogs that have minor issues of design, regularity, interactivity, etc (Gold blogs) and other good blogs (Silver blogs).
We have been able to look at about 12,000 Indian blogs and properly examine about 1,000 of them. It was a big task for our 4-member team. Instead of including a few thousand more blogs, we thought to rather stick to our deadline. We admit that it is only a minuscule of the Indian blogosphere but we could not go further. We will add more blogs to the ranking when we do it next.
Interestingly, in trying to rank blogs we ended up doing a sort of survey of blogs. With this sample, we found that most of the bloggers have been very occasional bloggers or they post in spurts only to go on hibernation for long times. One main reason for waning of the initial enthusiasm of these bloggers could be that they found blogging more demanding and time-consuming than they had thought. The return, monetary or in terms of satisfaction, perhaps did not match their expectation. Another important reason for this could be their new-found love with social networking sites such as Facebook, Orkut and Twitter, and new apps on their devices.
Quite a number of bloggers do post frequently, with a remarkable discipline. Some have monetized their blogs by offering photographs, using AdSense, affiliate advertising, etc. and some bloggers have made the blog an extension to their main site.
Blogs on information technology, partly automated blogs and blogs run by large groups or corporates are quite regular. A number of blogs with travelogues, routine photography and musings too are very regular. Unlike what came in papers a few days back, we found that most of Indian bloggers we encountered are young – mostly in their 20’s and 30’s.
Except for some, not even highly popular and regular blogs have taken care to design the blogs with care. Some have, after doing a good job at the beginning, never thought of refreshing the dated-looking design.
Interestingly, in trying to rank blogs we ended up doing a sort of survey of blogs. With this sample, we found that most of the bloggers have been very occasional bloggers or they post in spurts only to go on hibernation for long times. One main reason for waning of the initial enthusiasm of these bloggers could be that they found blogging more demanding and time-consuming than they had thought. The return, monetary or in terms of satisfaction, perhaps did not match their expectation. Another important reason for this could be their new-found love with social networking sites such as Facebook, Orkut and Twitter, and new apps on their devices.
Quite a number of bloggers do post frequently, with a remarkable discipline. Some have monetized their blogs by offering photographs, using AdSense, affiliate advertising, etc. and some bloggers have made the blog an extension to their main site.
Blogs on information technology, partly automated blogs and blogs run by large groups or corporates are quite regular. A number of blogs with travelogues, routine photography and musings too are very regular. Unlike what came in papers a few days back, we found that most of Indian bloggers we encountered are young – mostly in their 20’s and 30’s.
Except for some, not even highly popular and regular blogs have taken care to design the blogs with care. Some have, after doing a good job at the beginning, never thought of refreshing the dated-looking design.
