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. Yamini MacLeanNovember 12, 2022 at 4:56 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 13, 2022 at 8:32 AM

      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. magiceyeNovember 14, 2022 at 11:05 AM

    I echo your views! :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. जितेन्द्र माथुरNovember 15, 2022 at 1:24 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 15, 2022 at 1:36 PM

      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
  4. Akash BlogsNovember 16, 2022 at 2:04 PM

    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
  5. Harshita NandaNovember 17, 2022 at 7:49 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 18, 2022 at 1:20 PM

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

      Delete
  6. Rakhi JayashankarNovember 25, 2022 at 4:49 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 25, 2022 at 6:18 PM

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

      Delete
  7. Rakhi JayashankarNovember 25, 2022 at 4:52 PM

    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 Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Indian Knowledge Systems

Shashi Tharoor wrote a massive book back in 2018 to explore the paradoxes that constitute the man called Narendra Modi. Paradoxes dominate present Indian politics. One of them is what’s called the Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS). What constitute the paradox here are two parallel realities: one genuinely valuable, and the other deeply regressive. The contributions of Aryabhata and Brahmagupta to mathematics, Panini to linguistics, Vedanta to philosophy, and Ayurveda to medicine are genuine traditions that may deserve due attention. But there’s a hijacked version of IKS which is a hilariously, if not villainously, political project. Much of what is now packaged as IKS in government documents, school curricula, and propaganda includes mythological claims treated as historical facts, pseudoscience (e.g., Ravana’s Pushpaka Vimana as a real aircraft or Ganesha’s trunk as a product of plastic surgery), astrology replacing astronomy, ritualism replacing reasoning, attempts to invent the r...
17 comments
Read more

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...
31 comments
Read more

Waiting for the Mahatma

Book Review I read this book purely by chance. R K Narayan is not a writer whom I would choose for any reason whatever. He is too simple, simplistic. I was at school on Saturday last and I suddenly found myself without anything to do though I was on duty. Some duties are like that: like a traffic policeman’s duty on a road without any traffic! So I went up to the school library and picked up a book which looked clean. It happened to be Waiting for the Mahatma by R K Narayan. A small book of 200 pages which I almost finished reading on the same day. The novel was originally published in 1955, written probably as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and India’s struggle for independence. The edition that I read is a later reprint by Penguin Classics. Twenty-year-old Sriram is the protagonist though Gandhi towers above everybody else in the novel just as he did in India of the independence-struggle years. Sriram who lives with his grandmother inherits significant wealth when he turns 20. Hi...
9 comments
Read more

Ghost with a Cat

It was about midnight when Kuriako stopped his car near the roadside eatery known as thattukada in Kerala. He still had another 27 kilometres to go, according to Google Map. Since Google Map had taken him to nowhere lands many a time, Kuriako didn’t commit himself much to that technology. He would rather rely on wayside shopkeepers. Moreover, he needed a cup of lemon tea. ‘How far is Anakkad from here?’ Kuriako asked the tea-vendor. Anakkad is where his friend Varghese lived. The two friends would be meeting after many years now. Both had taken voluntary retirement five years ago from their tedious and rather absurd clerical jobs in a government industry and hadn’t met each other ever since. Varghese abandoned all connection with human civilisation, which he viewed as savagery of the most brutal sort, and went to live in a forest with only the hill tribe people in the neighbourhood. The tribal folk didn’t bother him at all; they had their own occupations. Varghese bought a plot ...
8 comments
Read more