To Blog or not to Blog?

Here’s the question – Should you start a blog?

Ever wondered how many blogs exist on the Internet? Technorati claims that there were 112 million blogs in the year 2007. More googling shall reveal that by the end of the year 2009 there were as many as 126 million blogs on the Internet. Basically a million new blogs started each month between 2007 and 2009! Bloggers are increasing every day, as a result, more and more information is being posted. How much of this information is useful remains unanswered, which in turn gives rise to a bigger question – Is blogging really worth it?

I have been asking myself a question for a long time now, to blog or not to blog? Eventually, I decided to jump in and start off. A lot of the credit for this goes to my colleagues who have started their blogs on all kinds of topics. Apart from the chance to win an iPad (as a part of the first of its kind Online Social Networking competition at PROTON business school encouraging the students to use social media in the most effective way possible), there are several other reasons to blog. The most prominent one is the feeling of expressing yourself. They say that there is a book inside everybody and I feel websites like Blogger and WordPress have become libraries for these books.

But then like every other thing on the web, blogs too are easy to start and hard to maintain. Whether or not you decide to start a blog, it is important to understand that writing coherently is one of the most difficult and time-consuming tasks. Thus, most of the bloggers simply stop posting after a few initial posts. But those who continue, fall in love with it. I was recently chatting with one of my friends who told me how Twitter was almost his second girlfriend,

“I tell my girlfriend every small thing that happens during the day and I tweet the same.”

Amazing!

Computers have given a new dimension to the ways of communication. First we had the emails and then the personal web pages (your facebook profile page for example) and somewhere in between blogs have always been there. Even Indian celebrities like Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan blog, the leading politician L.K. Advani has his blog which was started as a part of BJP’s election campaign. There are innumerable examples.

I have decided that my blogs would keep things simple. I will try not to be too much technical or philosophical. You may even get reviews about the latest hindi movies or the top 5 excuses for not reading case studies! I hope to continue posting stuff that interests most of my readers. Since this is my first post, just like our first orientation session that we have for every subject at the start of each trimester, this can be treated as an orientation blog! Suggestions, complaints, comments and insults 🙃 are most welcome!