Blogcamp, said to be the biggest blog unconference in India on the lines of barcamp, has started at Chennai. The two day event scheduled over this weekend is being attended by many known names. There is an interesting line up of sessions. You may keep a tab on the event through their wiki and Technorati and the live bloggers. What’s more, you can even chat with people there and there is even a live broadcast live here. Best wishes Guys!
Technorati founder David Sifry is back with the “State of The Blogosphere” report. Technorati now tracks a colossal 50 Million blogs; with the blogosphere doubling in size every 200 days, this is not tough to imagine. In consonance with the belief of many of us blogs seems to peacefully coexist with the MSM, infact most influential weblogs are being treated in much the same way as traditional MSM, says the report.
Talking of language, Asian languages seem to be making it big in the blogosphere with Japanese and Chinese leading the pack. There is no data for Indian languages in the report, but given that they must be part of the “Other 5%” I don’t think they mean anything to the west, atleast as of now.
More compelling facts from his report:
The Recently released India online 2006 survey has revealed that of the 21.4 million net users* in Indian a staggering 85% (that’s roughly 18 million people) regularly check blogs. The study conducted by Juxt consult, New Delhi also revealed that there is a 22% rise in number of Indian net users from last year’s figure of 17.7 million. The users are mostly urban and most of the blogs, the report says, are maintained by net savvy people. A recent Economic Times report, published during the blanket ban on blogs initiated by the government, had cited that there are approximately 40000 Indiblogs around (not too far off my own little hunch).
A heartening fact highlighted by the report is that a lot of people who check blogs do not necessarily blog themselves, surely a big respite from the general conception that the blogs mostly thrive on bloggers “scratching each others’ backs”, that only a close group of bloggers generally read each other’s blogs.
Another fact, that only solidifies our faith in the Indicblogs is that 42% of the Indian netizens also read blogs in Indian languages.
* The CIA Factbook thinks there are 50 million internet users in India.
