Internet holds great potential for blogging

New Delhi, Nov 14: With two million internet connections being installed every year, the 'new-age' people to people communication or blogging promises to hold an unlimited potential for growth in India.

''The number of internet subscribers will zoom and so would the number of blogs in the coming few years. Number of blogs is on the verge of crossing one million mark in the country,'' said Instablogs Network CEO Ankit Maheshwari.

Instablogs Network has over 100 blogs under its flagship.

Having offices at New Delhi and Shimla, Instablogs has been a premier internet news organisation based on blogging.

Instablogs, launched about one year ago, presently serves over a million visitors per month by generating consumer oriented news through its 16 channels which include politics, technology, social issues, lifestyle, entertainment, environment, etc.

It has now launched a new e-venture to provide a country wide interface to the growing number of individual bloggers in the country to effectively use new medium of bloging, apart of the new media and web 2.0. It is the public version of Instablogs community with the purpose of bringing bloggers and readers closer.

Mr Maheshwari said that in recent days with growing number of blogs, new writers taking up blogging are not able to succeed as easily as few years ago.

Two of the biggest problems faced by new writers are technical knowledge about blogging and gettig an active readership for their new blogs.

Instablogs community has stepped up to solve these two problems for new authors by providing a very user freindly interface by which submitting an article is easy as sending email, and providing many social media tools which help writers to socialise with other members easily and build a steady readership very quickly. Even existing bloggers can benefit by integrating their blogs with the Instablogs community.

The Instablogs community endeavours to capture the spectacle of blogging and present it by keeping the focus on the readers and actually making them a part of the whole process.

The Instablogs community has a plethora of social tools which not only empowers the readers but help them to become writers themselves.

The new version encourages better communication between writers and readers and symbolises the crux of 'Citizen Journalism' or 'Participating Journalism' in its true sense, 'Journalism by the people'.

The Instablogs community gives a new direction to Citizen Journalism and takes the perception attached to blogs being merely personal diaries to a step further and presenting it in the form of a powerful and user-friendly interface allowing users to pitch in their views and opinions inviting a healthy and constructive conversation from its readers.

''The whole idea revolves and aims to bridge the gap between media and public, keeping the traditional goal of 'objectivity' intact at the same time,'' Mr Maheshwari said.

He said that blogging will help in the growth of the traditional media. In coming days we are going to see Citizen Journalists becoming a vital part of the media ecology.

Bloggers, citizen journalists, traditional journalists, TV reporters will interact more, helping each other to build their stories. Media business will move from handful of people right now to consumers, and readers having conversations and discussions about an issue, rather than just reading or viewing news being reported to them.

Traditional media outlets have not been very succesful in being interactive with its readers. Even the ''Letter to the Editors'' column in newspaper and magazines serve only a limited purposes as only a few letters can be published as the letters are selected by the editors.

Conversations can not be made on these letters. One has to wait for days to see the reaction in the form a letter being accepted and carried by a newspaper or magazine. Therefore, interactivity is curtailed and restrained.

On the other hand, in blogging the interactivity is the ultimate goal. Blogs encourage people to discuss the news and many a times comments are more informative than the original post itself.

UNI