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 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

Bihar Election

Satish Acharya's Cartoon on how votes were bought in Bihar My wife has been stripped of her voting rights in the revised electoral roll. She has always been a conscientious voter unlike me. I refused to vote in the last Lok Sabha election though I stood outside the polling booth for Maggie to perform what she claimed was her duty as a citizen. The irony now is that she, the dutiful citizen, has been stripped of the right, while I, the ostensible renegade gets the right that I don’t care for. Since the Booth Level Officer [BLO] was my neighbour, he went out of his way to ring up some higher officer, sitting in my house, to enquire about Maggie’s exclusion. As a result, I was given the assurance that he, the BLO, would do whatever was in his power to get my wife her voting right. More than the voting right, what really bothered me was whether the Modi government was going to strip my wife of her Indian citizenship. Anything is possible in Modi’s India: Modi hai to Mumkin hai .   ...

Nehru’s Secularism

Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, and Narendra Modi, the present one, are diametrically opposite to each other. Take any parameter, from boorishness to sophistication or religious views, and these two men would remain poles apart. Is it Nehru’s towering presence in history that intimidates Modi into hurling ceaseless allegations against him? Today, 14 Nov, is Nehru’s birth anniversary and Modi’s tweet was uncharacteristically terse. It said, “Tributes to former Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Ji on the occasion of his birth anniversary.” Somebody posted a trenchant cartoon in the comments section.  Nehru had his flaws, no doubt. He was as human as Modi. But what made him a giant while Modi remains a dwarf – as in the cartoon above – is the way they viewed human beings. For Nehru, all human beings mattered, irrespective of their caste, creed, language, etc. His concept of secularism stands a billion notches above Modi’s Hindutva-nationalism. Nehru’s ide...

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...

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...