Earlier today, I had suggested that Global Voices and Desipundit lead the effort to create a ‘State of the Indian Blogosphere 2009‘ collaborative report. Going by the positive reaction to the idea, it seems that the report will happen in one form or another.
To start things off, here is a list of the top five newsworthy events in the Indian blogosphere in 2008 –
1. Citizen journalism played an important role in covering the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack.
Citizen journalism came to age in India during the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack.
Several bloggers posted first hand updates during the three day crisis (Amit Varma, Sonia Faleiro, Rahul Bhatia, Arun Shanbhag), several others live-blogged reactions on legacy media news, and some of us played the role of curators (Global Voices, DesiPundit, Mumbai Help, Dina Mehta, Gauravonomics).
Almost a month after the Mumbai terror attack, Indian bloggers continue to discuss the tragedy and many observers believe that this engagement will continue till the 2009 Indian general elections.
2. Corporate blogging and, even CEO blogging, made a tentative start in India.
In 2008, several Indian companies — like Infosys, Tata Interactive Systems, Wipro, Frito Lay, Mahindra and Tata Motors — embraced corporate blogging. Even software industry body NASSCOM has a blog.
Not only that, several Indian CEOs — like Rajeev Karwal, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Vineet Nayar, B.G. Mahesh and Rajesh Jain — started (or restarted) blogging themselves.
Several Indian web 2.0 startups and ad agencies are also blogging regularly. Finally, several influential Indian business bloggers, who write about topics as diverse as marketing, technology, human resources and finance, have developed significant Indian and international audiences.
For more: See Abhijeet Mukherjee & Moinak Mitra in The Economic Times, Vishal Datta in the Economic Times, Arun Jayan in The Indian Express, Kamla Bhatt, Corporate Blogging in India by Rajeev Karwal, Apu.
3. Celebrity blogging introduced the Indian mainstream to blogging.
Several Indian celebrities started no holds barred personal blogs in 2008. These included actors Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan and Gulshan Grover, actresses Gul Panang, Shilpa Shetty, Bipasha Basu and Revathy, directors Karan Johar and Ram Gopal Varma, cricketer Ravi Shastri and model turned writer Shobha De (directors Shekhar Kapoor and Anurag Kashyap were already blogging). Even actors Salman Khan and Shahrukh Khan started a blog, although their blogs were really campaigns. Social networking site Big Adda, which hosts Amitabh Bachchan’s blog, also designed a microblog for him (Economic Times).
As expected, these blogs attracted a lot of attention and created a lot of controversy. I’m sure that these celebrity blogs were the first introduction to blogging for many Indians and I won’t be surprised to see more celebrity blogs in 2009.
For more, see Rajiv Dingra at WATBlog, Harshil Karia at WATBlog, GreatBong, Shobha De and Shekhar Kapoor in TOI, Soumitra Das in TOI, Shubha J Rao in The Hindu, Shabina Akhtar in The Telegraph.
4. Indian bloggers become book authors.
Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan‘s first novel ‘You Are Here’ was published by Penguin. Amit Varma‘s first novel ‘My Friend, Sancho‘, which will be published by Hachette India in early 2009, made it to the long list of the Man Asian Literary Prize for 2008.
Book publishers also encouraged bloggers to aspire to appear in print by running contests like the Harper Collins/ Oxford Bookstore e-Author contest and the Penguin Books/ Sulekha Blogprint contest.
Finally, excerpts from Indian blogger Mayank Austen Soofi‘s blog on Pakistan are doing to be included in a class XI textbook by The Oxford University Press in Karachi.
For more: See Arcopol Chaudhuri in DNA, Khuswant Singh in The Tribune, Amrit Dhillon in The Telegraph, Shruti Sabharwal & Sushmita Mohapatra in The Economic Times, Indian Express.
5. Group blog Mutiny.in started a print version.
Indian group blog Mutiny.in, which calls itself “India’s thought terminus” started a monthly print version, Mutiny Print, which includes a selection of the best posts from the blog (see announcement post).
For more: See Rishabh at WATBlog.
What do you think? What have I missed? What were the top five most newsworthy events in the Indian blogosphere in 2008 according to you?
Update: There are two ways to make a list like this. You can focus on the newsworthy events that were written about in the Indian blogosphere, like Global Voices does as part of its year end review. Or, you can focus on events in which the Indian blogosphere itself became newsworthy, which I do in this list.
Sometimes, there may be some overlap between the “blogging about news” and “news about blogging” lists, but, often, there isn’t any. For instance, there is only one overlapping topic in the two lists (the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack).
It’s interesting to think about the merits, demerits and appropriateness of these two distinct approaches of thinking about user generated media.
