'India's blogging comm young, male-dominated'

Kolkata, Nov 28: India's blogging community is "young" and "male-dominated" compared to its counterpart across Asia, according to "Blogging India: An MSN and Windows Live Report".

Indicating the Asian trend, where blogging is evenly spread between both men and women, in India it is heavily male-dominated with 76 per cent of all bloggers, the report released recently said.

"The country's blogosphere is driven by youth and a passion for self-improvement and entertainment, with 42 per cent of the online users reading blogs to stay informed about world events, and 49 per cent citing entertainment as the main reason they read blogs," it said.

The research, based on an online survey of more than 1,000 MSN portal visitors in India, highlighted that while it growing in popularity, the blogging community was still nascent with only 14 per cent of India's netizens actively blogging, although 39 per cent were aware of blogs.

"India's blogosphere is heavily dominated by men; 76 per cent of its bloggers are male while women only account for 24 per cent," it found. This goes against the trend in the region although some Asian markets such as Singapore are only slightly more female-dominated.

India's blogosphere is also fueled by young adults with 54 per cent of bloggers between the ages of 25-34 years, 32 per cent under 25 years, and 15 per cent over 35 years.

''When asked which subjects they enjoyed reading the most, the majority of respondents cited technology (32 per cent), followed closely by news and education (24 per cent), illustrating the impact of India's booming technology sector on society,'' it said.

Blogs written by business leaders were found by half of all Indian online users to be the most enjoyable to read. Blogs by politicians were found by 24 per cent of respondents to be of regular interest. ''This is in contrast to the region where the blogs by business leaders and politicians were far less popular at only 26 per cent and blogs by politicians accounting for only 13 per cent share,'' it said.

The report said the majority of India's online users find reading blogs to be an excellent source of entertainment with those written by actors, popular music artists, and sports personalities rating as the most popular at a combined 77 per cent.

"Blogging Asia: An MSN and Windows Live Report" was conducted online on the MSN portal and across seven markets in Asia like Hong Kong, India, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. Over 25,000 people took part in the survey which took place in August and September.

UNI