hindi blogging

History and TrendsWith a Technical Perspective

By: Cyril Maithily Guptahttp://cyrilgupta.com

Who is Cyril M Gupta?• Programmer since 1998.• Blogger since 2003.• Doesn’t own a Hindi blog yet. (so what am I doing here?)

• Programmed a popular hindi blog aggregator – blogvani.com

What is blogging?• Having a public space on the Internet where

you talk about things you want.

Basic Qualities

Open Personal Simple

What makes blogs tick?• Accessible to anybody.• Blogs have a personality.• Blogs are usually more frank.• Blogs make interaction possible between the reader

and the writer.• Multimedia• And... Blogs are everywhere!

Why blog in Hindi?• Most of the Internet is in English.

... but ...• It became possible to blog in Hindi with the

introduction of Unicode.• Hindi on the Net will grow even faster with the spread

of Internet deep within India.• It’s easy to blog in Hindi.

Beginning - Hindi Blogs• The first bloggers were techies who had early access to

the technology and know-how of blogging.• With the introduction of Unicode fonts, and typing

tools (CafeHindi, Baraha) it became possible for anyone to type in Hindi.

• Creation of free blogging platforms (wordpress, blogger, etc) brought blogging to everybody.

Trends - Hindi BlogsGood!• There are now literally 100s of websites and tools for Indic languages on

the Internet.• Typing, transliteration, translation is made easy through free tools from

Google and others.• Running a blog costs 0.Bad!• Hindi Internet search hasn’t taken off.• Tools by small companies aren’t maintained well.

To start a Hindi blog you need >• A computer, internet and basic computing skills.• An account with a free service like Blogger, Wordpress,

Typepad.• Hindi typing tools like Baraha, CafeHindi, or online tools

like Google’s Hindi typing tool.• -- Something to say --

Technical Components of Blog• Posts (Articles) • Comments• Tags & Categories• Feeds (RSS/Atom)• It’s all HTML internally, abstracted using tools.

Blogging PlatformsFree Hosting (Write a blog using a service)• Wordpress, Blogger, Livejournal, Vox, Xanga, TumblrPosterous, Typepad, and many more.

Self-Hosting (Your own .com/.net/.me...)• Wordpress, Blogengine, Typo, Movable Type...

What is a blog aggregator?• A website which checks your blog for new articles, and

shows them in a public list.• A place where readers can come for the latest articles

from the blogs in the list.• Aggregators work using RSS/Atom feeds.

Hindi Blog Aggregators• Nobody searches in Hindi, so we need aggregators to

bring readers to Hindi blogs.• Some hindi blog aggregators (Chitthavishwa, Narad,

Hindiblogs, Blogvani, Chitthajagat...)• Blogvani was the most successful blog aggregator yet.• Now they are all dead! • Wait for the new breed... Or for the Net to evolve.

Earning money from blogs• Very hard to get people to pay to read your articles.• Earnings from advertisements is low. Adsense doesn’t work either.• Most Hindi blogs have <1,000 readers a day.

So how can you earn money?• Market your skills through your blog.• Build professional contacts.• Target English search to bring Hindi readers. (nishamadhulika.com)• Create an awesome blog and wait...

Future of Blogging (Dare I predict!)

• Casual bloggers are moving away from blogs due to compact and more interactive platforms.– Facebook, Twitter.

• Professional blogs are evolving into bigger and more complex websites.

• Newer blog platforms for mobile phones will emerge.• Multimedia content (video, audio) will increase.

Q&ACyril Maithily Guptahttp://cyrilgupta.com

cyril@itbix.com

ProgrammerEntrepreneur& A Blogger