Skip to main content

A blogger community

 



Indiblogger was a blogger’s paradise once upon a time. The bulk of my readers came via that platform. Each of my posts used to get over a hundred votes in those days. Now the posts feel nostalgic about a double-digit vote which comes rarely. Quite many bloggers have abandoned this community. Understandable. There isn’t much happening here anymore.

Back in the heyday of Indiblogger, hundreds of bloggers thronged the platform every day. There used to be a lot of activities and gifts too. I got gift vouchers worth thousands of rupees. There was a time when I didn’t spend a single rupee from my pocket to buy all the books I loved because Indiblogger’s gift vouchers kept coming like an endless bonanza.

Good days don’t last long. The gift vouchers stopped altogether. The regular meets of bloggers arranged by Indispire in different cities stopped too. Soon the platform metamorphosed into the ghost of its earlier being. It continues in existence and a few bloggers like me have retained our loyalty though there is little benefit. I’m happy to be in touch with some old timers like Rajeev Moothedathu, Deepak Amembal, Vincent Augustine D’Souza and Sreedhar Bhattaram who keep submitting their posts at the site faithfully like me. I am also happy to have Jitendra Mathur coming to my posts via Indiblogger though he is not as regular with posts as he used to be.

I have often wondered why a platform like Indiblogger, which was one of the best of its kind, just petered out as it did. Was it because some people flocked there with intentions that were not bona fide?

That question brings me to the quality of writing we find nowadays in such public domains as blogs. While I accept the freedom of each and every individual to write, I am often left bewildered by the kind of stuff people put up for others to read. I wouldn’t dare to insult the public with that sort of writing. That’s the least I would like to say in this regard.

I’m happy Indiblogger continues to exist. I’m happy to meet some serious bloggers there too. I’m grateful to the person(s) who keep the platform alive just for its own sake. Not everything is done for the sake of profit.

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 428: Shouldn't we be grateful to Indiblogger for keeping this platform alive? In spite of.... #Gratitude

Comments

  1. Hari OM
    Not knowing that platform, I cannot add anything. I had the great privilege of meeting Deepak before departing India; he was one of my earliest commenters when I began blogging and we have remained connected through our blogs. I have enjoyed reading posts by Rajeev and Sreedhar over the past couple of years.

    As a rule I find places such as this, Blogchatter, NaNoWriMo and so on, great for refreshing one's inspiration, but ultimately, we all blog from an entirely personal point of view... unless we are among those who are seeking to commercialise. As one who is a loyal commenter, I have found that very few are prepared to reciprocate and build proper connection. It may be that which ultimately reduces the value of these platforms. The illusion of community drops away.

    I guess the same is true 'in the flesh'... ultimately, there are few people with whom we have a genuine and lasting, deep and meaningful bond. No matter how much of a social butterfly we might make of ourselves. (And I am definitely not the latter!) YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think the community feeling that you mention is at the core of the issue. I've seen that working at Blogchatter to some extent especially among certain members. That spirit disappeared from Indiblogger.

      Today too many bloggers are interested in monetization and that affects too.

      In my case, I'm conscious of the distance many people feel with my political views.

      Delete
  2. The real reason for several active members abandoning this once very popular platform is that its administrators have left it on auto-pilot mode or left to fend for itself as no technical issues are resolved now, no grievances are addressed to now and no communications sent to the administrators (via email or twitter) are responded to. Any problem once propped up never gets resolved (say, never heeded upon). That's the issue. The administrators (or the owners) must still be earning from it without doing anything for it. An esteemed Indiblogger - Parwati Singari had written a post on the same lines some time in the past. I visit your posts regularly but comment only when feel that I have something to say in the given context.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. True the admins or founders abandoned Indiblogger. But what could be the reason? If it was commercially profitable they wouldn't have. So what went wrong? That's the real question, i think .

      Delete
  3. Nowadays, the majority of money-making applications in India are liberal in educating you how their apps function. In-app lessons are common and can help you understand how things function fast.

    https://gromofinance.wordpress.com/2022/10/10/the-best-indian-money-making-applications-online-money-making-app/

    ReplyDelete
  4. I remember a time when I was new to blogging and had thought about joining that platform, though never did ( it was the inherent laziness in me wrt to blogging at that time). It feels like and end of an era but no?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. For me, personally, it's the end of an era since no other platform gave such a fillip to my blog.

      Delete
  5. Your post leaves me guilty because my blog also grew during the initial days via indiblogger. I met you via indiblogger too. I hardly get time to share my posts there or anywhere for that matter but it affected my blog too. My writing became irregular but as you said I tried to maintain the quality. I will surely restart sharing in indiblogger.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I remember your regular presence at the community. You were missed later.

      Delete
  6. Yeah now I remember. I am no longer able to share my blog there because the Url of my both blogs changed and I am unable go

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...

Chitrakoot: Antithesis of Ayodhya

Illustration by MS Copilot Designer Chitrakoot is all that Ayodhya is not. It is the land of serenity and spiritual bliss. Here there is no hankering after luxury and worldly delights. Memory and desire don’t intertwine here producing sorrow after sorrow. Situated in a dense forest, Chitrakoot is an abode of simplicity and austerity. Ayodhya’s composite hungers have no place here. Let Ayodhya keep its opulence and splendour, its ambitions and dreams. And its sorrows as well. Chitrakoot is a place for saints like Atri and Anasuya. Atri is one of the Saptarishis and a Manasputra of Brahma. Brahma created the Saptarishis through his mind to help maintain cosmic order and spread wisdom. Anasuya is his wife, one of the most chaste and virtuous women in Hindu mythology. Her virtues were so powerful that she could transmute the great Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva into infants when they came to test her chastity. Chitrakoot is the place where asceticism towers above even divinit...

Why do good to others?

Courtesy: polyp.org.uk “Most people would rather die than think and most people do,” said Bertrand Russell in his characteristic witty way.   Professor of Philosophy and author of many books, A C Grayling, is of the opinion that religion has continued to survive even in today’s scientific world because people don’t want to think.   They would rather accept readymade answers given by religion.   God is the ultimate readymade answer for a whole lot of problems.   And a very easy answer too. If we really think and evolve our own moral systems instead of borrowing them from religion, we will be far better human beings, says Grayling in his latest book, The God Argument.   If we think sensibly (common sense would do if we cared to use that faculty), we will realise that we all have a duty to contribute to the welfare of the entire human species.   The simple logic is that when the species is “flourishing” (Grayling’s word) we too flourish.   ...