Blogging in India
Blogging has seen several phases in India. 2 yrs back, there were very few people who used to blog. And most of them were either the technical folks or few people like journalists who used Internet as a media to expose certain facts.
But things grow in a very fast pace in india. Be it population or be Blogging :) Infact Scoble also thinks the same :)
Government's ban effect:
Now you would find every 1 out of 10 (approx) educated Indians maintaning a blog.
And i think things have suddenly picked up in last 4-6 months , especially after the Indian Govt releasing the ban on blogs. I had blogged about the Govt's act sometime back in my other blog here
Corporate blogging:
These days corporate blogging is growing in leaps and bounds. I have witnessed this transition in my own company as well. And corporates are greatly encouraging their employees to maintain blogs and use it as a good source of information.
Media is also giving lot of attention to blogs and bloggers:
Sometime back one of my buddies Sudhakar had been invited for an Interview in the TV9, a popular Andhra Pradesh and North American TV channel on Blogging and dos and don't of blogging. The channel was trying to promote local language blogging. Local language blogging has also increased tremendously in the recent times.
Recently CNN IBN has started a new section called Blog Buzz on Connect show which will cover the best of Indian blogosphere. Amit Agarwal talks more about the program here, as he was the first person to be interviewed by CNN IBN. Amit Agarwal, one of the popular indian bloggers earns his living only with Blogging and Adsense:) And he earns more than I or many of us do :). So now Blogging in India can also be a livelihood.
Blog camps:
Recently there was also a Blogcamp at Chennai , one of the managers being Kiruba Shankar, one of the leading Indian Bloggers.
This actually saw people coming from various places meet at a single place to discuss on blogging phenomena.
This might become a tradition soon and might get replicated in other states as well.
Blogging contests :
Not only that now there are Blogging contests as well, which acts as a motivating factor for non-bloggers as well.
Sometime back Microsoft had conducted Indic Blogger awards for local language bloggers. Now it's come up a contest for Dev bloggers called Microsoft Blogstar contest for India . People who would win this would be a part of the MS Blogging Leadership Cell (MBC), apart from winning some cool prizes.
The other contest is Personal Website and Blog designing contest by Usability Professionals Association.
While all this in happening, one group of folks who look worried are the legal folks, who have started thinking seriously about legal issues that can be related to blog and how such things can be controlled :)
However, if you are a Microsoft blogger, and you are from india, then you should be here