This post is inspired by Rajesh Lalwani’s post “Blogging 2.0.” He basically talks about how many people started blogs but could not sustain them because of lack of content, readership, time and commitment.  I completely agree with him.

In a lot of my prelim research on social netorks in India, I came across several sites that host blogs that have been pretty inactive. We’re talking blogs that haven’t been updated since 2007, or blogs that have one post per month. In particular, I came across bharatstudent.com which boasts 3 million registered users. The site hosts a lot of information on studying abroad and gets 70,000 unique monthly visitors (compete.com). I doubt they check out the blogs, the featured blogs on the site barely have any action.

I then came across Sunsilk’s Gang of Girls website (targetting teenagers interested in beauty). I actually remember seeing TV spots and billboard ads for this site. When I looked at the blog section though,I ran into the same problem. (okay, the site really has more than one problem.. but never mind that.) The blogs hadn’t been updated in forever, and the existing blogs have very few  comments.

I was beginning to lose faith in the Indian blogger but th1en I struck gold! [click to continue…]

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Yes, we have it.

But internet service is terrible and unreliable. I live in Bombay (Mumbai), which you’d think is pretty up there in being the most technologically advanced city in the country and should have awesome internet services. Nopes. During the monsoons, you’re bound to lose service for a few weeks. My personal favorite excuse from Sify (our old internet provider) was that someone had CUT THE WIRES or that the lines were down because they were working on IMPROVING the system for us. At one point my entire family had memorized their hotline number.

ISPs in Bombay also don’t deliver the bandwidth you signed up for. Say you have a 56K connection, you’d actually get a 28K.  So you have to go for plan above yours.  (Found a funny blog post/rant on this, click here). According to internettrafficreport.com, Asia has the worst internet with the longest response time and highest packet loss).

Anyhow! Here are some numbers I found that compare internet in India and Asia to the rest of ze world. [click to continue…]

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One of the hardest things about blogging: knowing where to start.

I guess I should start by saying that this part of my blog will be dedicated to the social media scene in India.

I was introduced to the world of social media through my marketing extra curriculars at Emerson College. I worked on an AIM campaign for the National Student Advertising Competition 2008 (sponsored by the American Advertising Federation). I was part of Emerson’s McMahon & Tate team. (We came 5th in nationals btw!) That whole experience led to me taking up a social media internship at Schneider Associates, a PR agency in Boston. And now I plan to start and maintain a blog for my Honors Thesis (due Dec. 12 at 5pm!).

Back to the topic of this blog, as an Indian studying abroad, I’m always curious as to what’s going on back home.  I know from personal experience that hi5 was huge there a couple of years ago. And now facebook is huge (seriously, everyone sends me a million superpokes and application invites!!).

So that’s me. If you come across this blog, happy reading, and I hope you find my future posts helpful/insightful/entertaining… I hope you like them enough to come back!
Sincerely,

Nidhi Makhija

p.s. googled “Social Media India” and got 9,260,000  results.  this should be fun

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