Gauravonomics Blog

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Lynn Berry at Associated Press reports that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who has been posting videos on his blog for a few months, allowed comments for the first time, only to be bombarded with critical comments.

Surprisingly, his rather innocuous video on the importance of sports and recreation has attracted more than 500 comments, mostly criticizing the limited access to low cost sports facilities in Russia.

I’m surprised that the blog does not have comment moderation to begin with. Also, given that no criticism of the government is permitted on the Russian national television stations or the newspapers, it will be interesting to see how much open criticism and debate the Kremlin would tolerate.

Cross-posted at Social Media in Business, Development and Government.

Introduction

Late on November 26, 2008, India was shaken by a series of terrorist attacks across ten prominent locations in Mumbai, India’s cultural and financial capital (Wikipedia).

The ten terrorists, linked to Islamic terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba, managed to hold Mumbai hostage for more than 60 hours and killed 171 people, including several foreign nationals.

Citizen journalism played an important role in covering the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack and several observers, both in the mainstream media and the tech blogosphere, have written about it from many perspectives.

The story has been framed in several ways — “participatory media vs. legacy media”, “Twitter vs. blogs”, and even “Indian internet users vs. American internet users”. As someone who tracks social media and citizen journalism in India very closely, I thought that it may be worthwhile to write a long article length post and separate the myths from the reality.

I’ll divide the case study into four sections —

- Section 1: What was the role of citizen journalism in covering the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack?

Now that my blog is my work for the next nine months, I thought it will be useful to redefine the focus of my blog(s), both as a guide to my readers and to myself.

During my tenure as the Yahoo! Fellow at Georgetown University, my official fellowship blog — How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies — will be my main blog. In my daily posts on the blog, I’ll mostly focus on how social media will be used differently in BRIC countries as compared to US/ EU, but also riff frequently on the broader theme of how international values apply to the development and use of new communications technologies in BRIC countries. From mid-September, I will start hosting a weekly podcast with thinkers and practitioners from the social media and social entrepreneurship fields, and from mid-December, I will become involved in inviting and editing contributions for a crowd-sourced paper (or e-book) on how global values shape communications technologies. So, my fellowship blog will demand most of my time and energy and I would urge you to subscribe to it in a feed reader or by e-mail.

Quick Summary: Gauravonomics Blog is featured on the Social Media dashboard at Guy Kawasaki’s “digital magazine rack” of the Internet Alltop.

Maverick investor Guy Kawasaki has been involved in several interesting startups of late (Truemors), but Alltop is the one I really like.

Basically, Alltop has a number of sub-sites, or dashboards, focused on a narrow vertical. Each dashboard features the headlines of five most recent stories from 30-50 top blogs and websites for that topic. When you place the cursor over a headline, it displays part of the story so that you can decide if you’d like to read it.

You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points — they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. (link)

Quick Summary: Attend the first Mumbai Bloggers Meet-up for 2008, and discuss the state of Latin American blogosphere or the nuances of video-blogging with Global Voices editor Juliana Rincon Parra, over pizza & wine.

Invite designed by Melody

When: Saturday, February 16, 2008 at 8:00pm
Where: A/65, Sea Lord, Opp Taj President, Cuffe Parade, Bombay, India

Peruvian-Colombian blogger Juliana Rincon Parra is the Latin America and Video-Blogging editor on Global Voices. She is also great fun to spend an evening with (based on first hand recent experience).

Here’s an opportunity for you to meet up with her and discuss the state of Latina American blogosphere, the nuances of video-blogging, or just hang out.

You can find out more about Juliana at her Global Voices profile or her Facebook profile.

What’s more, here’s a bonus for the regulars at my parties. Unlike the usual party at my place, where I spend most of the time cooking dishes or mixing drinks, I’ll not enter the kitchen at all. So, not only can you spend time with Juliana, you can also (finally) spend time with me.

Patrix is an urban planning doctoral student at Texas A&M, the founder of DesiPundit and a self-confessed Shyamali Malakar fan. Patrix blogs at Nerve Endings Firing Away.

I have already written about why I love Patrix’s blog -

- Patrix has an intuitive understanding of how conversations are created on blogs, and, as I try to understand the nature of online conversations myself, I find myself looking up to him as something of a guru.
- Patrix has an innate curiosity about technology and popular culture and the ability to write from an enthusiast’s perspective, something any blogger would do well to emulate.
- Patrix is one of the most generous people I have known, online or offline, and, via DesiPundit and his own blog, he has probably done more to promote desi blogging than anybody else.

Patrix belongs to the second most widely seen species of desi bloggers, the doctoral-student-blogger (the first, of course, is the journalist-blogger) and I’m sure that you’ll meet many more bloggers from this species in the ‘Desi Blogging Cafe’ interview series.

Jamshed Velayuda Rajan, or Jammy Rajan, is based in Chennai, works for an Internet major, blogs at Ouch My Toe and is one of India’s funniest bloggers.

I have already written about why I love Jammy’s blog -

- Jammy manages to do that rare thing - being personal and funny at the same time - and every post on this blog is laugh out loud funny.
- Jammy has one of the best 404 error page I have seen on a desi blog. Reminds me that I have to work on mine.
- Jammy does innovative little things to engage his readers, like offering a Best of Ouch My Toe PDF file for download, asking readers to pick a topic for him and putting subscription and archive buttons within his posts.

Jammy, I feel, is the perfect follow-up to Jai, because of the contrasts between them in terms of their backgrounds, their content and their style of writing. It will be my endeavour in ‘Desi Blogging Cafe’ to explore this diversity in desi blogging.

Q. When and why did you start blogging? Has the reason why you blog changed over time?

Jai Arjun Singh is a New Delhi-based freelance writer/ journalist/ blogger. Jai works part-time with the Business Standard newspaper, blogs at Jabberwock and is mainly known for his erudite reviews of books and movies.

I have already written about why I love Jai’s blog -

- Nobody else writes as prolifically or as beautifully about books and movies as him.
- His interviews are more personal and insightful than any other I have read on desi blogs.
- He manages to make even his rants read like literature.

Jai, I felt, was the perfect person to start off the ‘Desi Blogging Cafe’ interview series because he is the perfect example of the desi A-list blogger/ journalist, a species you’ll often come across at ‘Desi Blogging Cafe’.

Q. When and why did you start blogging? Has the reason why you blog changed over time?

A. I started in September 2004. Initially I thought I would use it mainly as an online “storehouse” for some of my published articles and reviews, for easy access and reference. But over time that function changed: I found myself increasingly writing fresh things purely for the blog, whether in the form of personal posts, general observations or notes about books, films etc.

Yesterday, I announced that ‘Desi Blogging Cafe’ was open for business -

‘Desi Blogging Cafe’ is open now! Do walk in tomorrow for (virtual) coffee and (real) conversation with your favorite bloggers!

- and mentioned my ‘eleven Desi Blogging Cafe questions’ -

Sometimes, I’ll ask them my ‘eleven Desi Blogging Cafe questions’. Sometimes, I’ll put aside these questions and ask them other questions. Sometimes, I’ll let you ask them questions. Sometimes, I’ll let them ask me questions.

If you are wondering what those ‘eleven Desi Blogging Cafe questions’ are, here we go -

- When and why did you start blogging? Has the reason why you blog changed over time?

- What do you blog about? Has the focus of your blog changed over time?

- How do you think people describe your blog to others who don’t read it? How would you like them to describe it?

- How do you think people describe you to others who don’t know you? How would you like them to describe you?

- Is your online persona different from your real self?

- How important is your blog to you? In what ways? Why?

Yesterday, I played a trick on you that TV channels all over the world have perfected -

I’m pleased to announce that I have finally found a format for the ‘Desi Blog of the Day’ series I am fully satisfied with. It’s intimate, it’s interesting, it’s insightful, and it has never been done in desi blogging before.

And now that I have your full attention, I’ll leave you precariously balanced at the edge of your chairs, until tomorrow.

Watch out for Desi Blogging Cafe!

Today, instead of teasing you more, I’ll give you - (music building up into a crescendo) Desi Blogging Cafe (loud applause)!

Have you ever wanted to know more about your favorite desi bloggers? Have you ever wished that you could ask them how they started blogging, what they have learned from blogging, even how much money they make from blogging(!)? Have you ever wondered if they are as interesting in real life as they are on their blogs?

If the answers to those three questions is ‘yes’, you would love ‘Desi Blogging Cafe’! Because, at ‘Desi Blogging Cafe’!, you’ll get to know your favorite desi bloggers like you have never known them before!