Tag Archives: blogging

A good year !!

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I know its a bit late to be rambling about the year that was but given the fact that I was in hibernation for the last week or so, I have no option. More than anything, this post is a personal memoir for the year 2008 and what it had in store for me.

2008 has been a good year over all both personally and professionally(I am glad I still write in that order). I can vaguely remember how it all changed, from being just a regular software engineer cum web junkie working for one of the very few global web startups in India (Slideshare) to getting into social media, to co-founding kwippy and much more. It’s been a crazy, happening year with lots of learnings, relearnings and unlearnings. Some of the good things(online mostly) that happened to me in the last year

Kwippy: From a simple thought of archiving gtalk status messages to microblogging to conversations, Kwippy is most definitely the best thing that happened to me during the last year. It’s been really challenging and exciting playing different roles at different times, a front end developer, a customer service rep, a community manager, executive head and more. Talking about web apps is one thing, building an app is another and it’s this transition that teaches you a lot. Not only you get to experience things(and situations) first hand, you learn to appreciate things around a lot more. Kwippy will get to see a lot more action in days to come and I am really looking forward to the planned changes and improvements.

Blogging: I started blogging regularly this year only and have written 75 posts in total, which have  received  92 comments so far. Blogging, started as a hobby and is now a passion. Now it feels weird if I don’t blog for a few days and that urge to express my thoughts makes me sit through the night and scribble my thoughts. I’ve written quite a few event driven posts about Twitter off late, as the way I see things and I hope they are not taken in any other way. I plan to blog more regularly and stick to writing about business, marketing and social media mostly.

Reading: I started reading a lot, both online and offline this year. Its customary now to read at least a couple of blog posts daily. I became more regular with reading books(as opposed to just buying them) and magazines(primarily Tehelka).

Friends: Thanks to various social networking sites and startup related events, I’ve made some really nice friends over the last year and learnt lots of things from them. Hope things to continue being good in times to come.

While 2008 has been a good year, I hope this year brings on a lot more for everyone and leave us as better humans.

Lifestreaming is not Micro-blogging !!

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Disclaimer: The post that follows is a personal take and is by no means against anyone or anything.

Microblogging has been one of most oft used and abused term in recent times by internet junkies and bloggers alike.

Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually 140 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web. — wikipedia

Everything is fine till here but the trouble begins when people(including me till a while back) start using the term “microblogging” loosely and confuse it with life streaming, where people send updates about what they are doing and not doing etc to update their friends/followers/fans (referred to as friends going forward). This gets particularly messy when people start using a service to do both microblogging and lifestreaming leaving their friends to do the tedious job of finding relevant bits of information that’ll be useful/relevant for them. Also its difficult for the user and his/her friends to take note and keep track of important matter/content as the chances of it being lost in the huge flow of lifestreaming are pretty high.

The instinct to share details of one’s daily life is a basic/innate one and so is the instinct to be aware of what people that matter to you are upto. Couple this with the ability to easily broadcast/stream your life and you get a viral but not exactly useful combo. Most of the minute details of what one did today won’t be relevant to him/herself leave alone their friends. While I by no means am opposed to the idea of streaming one’s life I am saddened by the fact that there are very few people who understand this and microblog in this sense, and most stream their lives instead.

I would really love to see people start microblogging i.e writing micro posts (100-200) characters about their ideas/feelings/fantasies/stories/philosophy whatever and share it with their friends online with ease using IM’s, browser pluggins, SMS etc. You can do this with the service of your preference, the updates will be less no doubt because tiny updates of life stream like having lunch, watching tv, on phone etc are more frequent but for that moment and many to come these microposts will be more relevant and precious for you and for your friends.

Share a link to your microblog below if you are doing it already or starting now.

The Power of MicroBlogging

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Random Tweets on Twitter

Ne1 know of women entrepreneurs who are doing ‘green’ businesses using technology? Or thinking of it? Women 2.0 are looking …….
anyone knows how to search for a string in mysql?…..
is experiencing a foolish moment of optimism…..
The baarat or procession of the groom is 90 mins late. But it is grand!……..

MicroBlogging is the latest rage among geeks, bloggers or rather every netizen(almost)..
Wiki defines MicroBlogging as a form of blogging with 200 character limit. Almost synonymous with Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce MicroBlogging has led to what I’ll call “Blogging Renaissance“. MicroBlogging has brought about a disruptive change in the whole approach to blogging, the shift from
Long posts to Short n Crisp updates,Daily/Weekly posts to Hourly updates, Posting via blogging platforms to Updating from Web, IM, Mobile n more and Posting for the web in general to updating for Friends/Followers/Fans

The content has shifted from “Macro” to “Micro” and it could be just about anything from a piece of news to the current weather, from a favorite quote to a small query about something.Its impromptu content served hot, straight from the pan, as its created.

The special/unique aspect of MicroBlogging is that its not about objects its about people..What are they doing, feeling, thinking and much much more..It’s like “RSS feed for people“. Other interesting aspects are

1) Closer & more Collaborative Networks – because of the personal touch involved and assumption the people hooked to one’s updates are interested to know what’s that person is up to and thus are more willing to collaborate/coordinate .
examples could be answering questions, giving feedback, sharing online resources or better people messaging you back asking how you are doing if you said “not feeling well” .
2) Easier to connect with more new people – given the ease to connect and the fact that unlike blogging your MicroBlogging updates can be about almost anything thus increasing chances for more people having things/interests etc in common.
3) Super Fast and Super Viral medium – given the size of content, time taken to reflect on it and forward it..it is undoubtedly one of d fastest viral medium

There’s something for everyone in MicroBlogging, while for content creators it could be an easy way to stream their lives, for content consumers its an easy way to stay updated, for advertisers(if and once they get into it) it has huge potential in terms of targeted ads based on data mining.In this world of instant gratification MicroBlogging is God sent and as tweeted by a friend I too will wait for the day when if at an eating joint I MicroBlog “anyone else here”, get 10 replies and we all end up having a nice time together

Yes, this post was about MicroBlogging 🙂