What is a blog?

• It’s about publishing by individuals

• It is not a passing fad

• It has become a mainstream technology

• It will have as deep impact as e-mail 4 or 5 years down the line

When did all this started?

• In the year 1999 Evan Williams founded blogger.com

• Just like yahoo or hotmail it started as a personal project.

• He wanted to find an easy way to save what he was reading on the net (like newspaper clip book)

How did it grow?

• By the year 2001 blogger.com had 10 Lakh registrations. But only half of that were regular writers.

• It was a group of 3 people at blogger, who looked after everything!

• They could not find any way to make money out of it….

• Finally in March 2003 blogger was sold out to google.com

Competition

• Soon there were blogs everywhere.• New softwares like PHP and MySQL made it

easy and cheap to host blog site.• liverjournal, onclave, easyjournal, antville all

came up with their own versions of blog• A few CMS (Content Management Systems)

softwares changed their name to add the word blog in their domain name.

What are the types of blog?

• News Aggregator: The original intention of blog was to collect interesting text you read on the net and the links where you found it.

• Diary blog: You can write private or public diary on some websites.

• CMS: Some wise websites intergrated blogs in their organizations and reduced the cost of a Content Management Systems.

• Collaborative: If you want to introduce a concept and find out what others think about it, you can allow others to comment, edit, review what you have said.

Who are the major players?

• blogger.com

• CrimsonBlog.com

• EasyJournal.com

• UpSaid.com

• Blog-city.com

What are the other blog sites?

• LiveJournal.com

• onClave.org

• BlogStudio.com

• rediff.com

What are the types of blog?

• All the blogs mentioned earlier are hosted blogs.• It means you simply register at the site and start

using it. (like yahoo or hotmail)• You can also host a blog software on your own

site. You need to know the programming language and your server should support the growing requirements of blog community.

What if I want to host blog?

• b2.com

• Drupal

• NucleusAnd many other softwares are available for free or for a nominal fee.You can start by downloading one of these software and install it on your server so that your customers, community, family can start writing on YOUR OWN server.

What is the difference?

• Web based• Less Reliable• No Backup• Limited features• Support is absent

• Hosted• As reliable as you• Regular backups• You decide the features• You support customers

What are the growth potentials?

• 30 Lakh people are already registered with one service or the other.

• The number is growing at 25% per month. (Yes, per month and not per year)

• It’s the biggest thing happened on the net after e-mail

• E-mail made communication easy but blogs are changing the fundamentals, the way we live, think, communicate and our attitude towards the world.

Easy to publish

• “Blog” Concept has made web publishing as easy as pie

• You login, You type, You push a button and look ma! the whole world can read it now!

• You want to save something you read on the web? No problem! Highlight the text, right click and select blog it. You don’t just save it, you republish it!

• You e-mail a memo to an employee and cc to your blog. Let everyone out there know the nasty things he has done!

Easy to read

• You can read current writing as well as browse through the archives by visiting the site.

• If you are like me who read 20 blog sites everyday, you can download the software called feed reader.

• It will collect the recent entries from all those sites and display in the outlook express type layout.

• You can read the cnet technology news, BBC Asia news and your mom’s blog entries in the same software window without even starting Internet explorer!

RSS Code reader Software like Feed Reader

The site broadcasting RSS feeds

It works like a radio

Website broadcasts the latest contents in RSS language. The software like Feed reader and awasu accepts the code, convert it into plain language and display the text in a outlook express type software.

How it will affect the traditional media?

• Bloggers tend to democratize the reading process • headlines from a blog in an obscure part of the

world have equal weight with those from the Washington Post or the New York Times

• TV, Radio, News Papers will have to work hard to maintain their credibility which was taken for granted in the good old days!

Information Flow Chart

Publishing Houselike cnn, BBC

Blog Writer

Reader

News New

s

Comment Com

men

t

News

Comment

What are the types of bloggers?

• Personal blog: Services like blogger, easyjournal and CrimsonBlog allow you to write and publish what ever you want. You can even use it as your personal diary and keep it private.

• Collaborative blog: Services like upsaid and blog-city allow others to comment what you have said. You can send automatic e-mail alerts to them whenever you update your site. They can read your blog entries in a outlook style software.

What is the cost of a blog?

• It’s not just easy, It’s free as well.

• The basic service is free, however you have to pay around 2 to 4 dollars per month for extra features like comments, image storage space, post via email.

• A banner at the top will be displayed if you are using the free service.

So, what are the final numbers?blogger EasyJournal Crimson

Blog

UpSaid blog-city

Free/Pro Free Free/Pro Free Free/Pro Free/Pro

Cost -- 6 Month $15

12 Month $25

-- $5 - 2 months

$14 - 6 months

$24 yearly

$2.50 monthly

$15 - 6 months

$27.50 yearly

RSS No No Yes Yes/Pro Yes/Pro

Posting via e-mail

No No No Yes/Pro Yes/Pro

Comments No Yes/Pro No Yes/Pro Yes