The ability or the freedom to express yourself freely, it will take a generation to understand the true impact of it.
History is written by the victors, industries are known by the big companies in that space. And this mindset always makes us judge the success by the size. What is the success of blogging, number of hits, amount of money you make, ranking in technorati ??? But think about it the true power of blogging is that it has given the distribution channel to all of us small people who would have been lost. We are small but we sure have unique insights and unique ideas and using this platform we can share these with those who seek such unique things.
Think about it, 10 years ago the only way of distribution was broadcasting. The basic idea behind that was or still is, one thing fits all or to have content that majority of people like. But with this new medium we can have a narrowcast, you can make content for specific audience. The mindset is turning around. We are the people who propagate one size fits one or fits few.
There has been a lot of debate about traditional media Vs the new media. There have been a continuous tussle between the two. I think the reason is that ... or let me put it this way, people who are older than 40 - 45 years they have spend better years of their life getting to know about world and other things through TOI (newpapers) or other magazines, so most of them dismiss new media. People of my generations have spend a mixed time on getting updates through traditional and new media, so there is a tussle. We have to accept that we are part traditional and part new in our approach and in our upbringing. If you talk to youngsters and kids they hardly read newspaper or follow TV, that in the generation of broadband, online games, online streaming and they follow the world online. For them traditional media is too slow and not up to their unique taste.
Coming back to blogging as I said at the start that we all are trying to make sense out of this big phenomenon. People keep scratching this surface in their unique ways. A lot of people have found ways to make money out of this platform and they keep innovating. Innovation has not only been in the ways to make money but in the way to interpret this phenomenon and thats why we have different flavors like photo blogs, Podcasts, video blogs and latest of all micro blogs and mobile blogs.
We always tend to look at big blogs and stigmatize small successes. If your blog gets 10 hits a day you will be labeled as failure. But isn't it a nice thing that you are able to share your thoughts with 10 people, 10 right people, who actually want to read what you write. That's the magic magic of blogging where you can be yourself. As the number of reader grows on your blog you tend to become generalist saying things so as to suit the masses. I think most of the bloggers here would agree that they wrote best when they wrote for themselves or for those few who cared.
This is all I had in my mind and it stayed in my mind. One tip to myself never stand up to talk unless you have sorted things out in your mind :) Life has its unique ways to make you learn!
Updated:
You can find a good coverage of Blogcamp Mumbai Style on Deep's Blog.
Tarun Chandel
Life, Learning and Technology
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