Gauravonomics Blog

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Two years back, Dell faced serious negative word of mouth from bloggers, but responded by solving their problems, starting its own Direct2Dell blog, asking for customer feedback at Dell IdeaStorm, seriously realigning its customer service processes and metrics, and finding new ways of engaging customers in a collaborative relationship (Jeff Jarvis in BusinessWeek via Rajesh) .

The Dell example is the exception rather than the rule - most companies still haven’t understood the concept of leveraging social media and engaging the customer in two-way conversations - but it serves as a powerful case study of what is possible if they did.

Also see: Mack Collier and Paul van Veenendaal.

This one is for people like me who have 500+ feeds on our feed readers.

A recent award winning Carnegie Mellon study used mathematical analysis to find the top 100 blogs to read if you want to be informed about what the entire blogosphere is talking about (via Bloggers Blog). Instapundit is predictably at #1 and Indian Writing is the only Indian blog at #68 (although the study links to Uma’s old blog).

By the way, I read only 13 out of the top 100 blogs. So much for my super-conceited “I know everything that’s happening in the blogosphere” self image!

Update: A quick look at the blogs on the list redeems my self-image! The researchers’ definition of the blogosphere seems to be limited to blogs about American politics and Uma’s blog is not the only dead blog on the list. Yippee!

Michael Banks is a brilliant man! He interviews thirty top bloggers, packages the interviews into a book called Blogging Heroes with a few paragraphs of his own, then offers the bloggers the opportunity to give away the chapter they’re in as a free pdfs on their site! So far, Chris Anderson at The Long Tail, Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing, David Rothman at TeleBlog and Steve Garfield have bitten the bait, but I’m sure more bloggers will follow suit.

By the way, I had the same idea as Michael when I started my Desi Blogging Cafe series (and yes, the series will be back soon with the dozens of interviews I haven’t published yet).

Most bloggers find themselves falling into a blogging downward spiral at some time or the other -

- You are growing through significant changes at work/ in life and you don’t have any time or energy for blogging.
- You have taken on too many blogging commitments (multiple personal/ group blogs, collaborative blogging projects, or over-ambitious blogging series), and you feel that you aren’t doing justice to any of them.
- You feel that you are spending too much time ‘managing’ your blog and not enough time writing on your blog.
- The number of feeds in your feed-reader have proliferated and you are so intimidated by your 1000+ unread items that you don’t even try reading them anymore.
- Since you aren’t reading any feeds anymore, you have fewer ideas to blog about and, even when you have a little free time, you don’t really know what to blog about.
- Your page views, ad revenues and feed subscriptions go down, further decreasing your motivation to blog.

Between my Athens trip that refused to stick to script, my mysterious illness that almost got me admitted to the hospital, my totally pointless shift to Kolkata for three months, my on-yet-again-off-yet-again love-life, and the absence of a broadband connection, I’m way into the downward spiral myself.

In the post-Sanjaya Malakar world, my Shyamali Malakar search traffic has dried up and my page views have dropped to half of what they were a month ago. As a result, my Google Adsense revenue now approximates to zero every day.

I have said before that it doesn’t make sense to use Adsense if your blog gets less than a thousand pageviews per day. I have also said before that most non-tech bloggers should focus on making money because of their blog rather than from it.

I have decided to take my own advice now and remove all advertising from my blog until I find a way to increase my pageviews to more than thousand per day.

This is also a cautionary tale for bloggers who want to make quick money off blogging. My blog is ranked within the top 17,000 on Technorati (in terms of linkbacks in the last 6 months) and about 3,00,000 on Alexa (in terms of average pageviews in the last 3 months), and still I’m not making enough money to make it worthwhile for me to use Adsense. It’s not likely to be any easier for you either.

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!