Even as blogging is yet to gain ground in India, blogsites are experimenting with new tools like ‘mobile blogging’ to get like minded people to connect, share and express their views. While MSN India is beta-testing its mobile blogging tool for MSN Spaces, Rediff.com has launched ‘MoBlog’, on its recently revamped blogging site Rediffiland.com. The best part of moblog is that you do not really need an Internet connection to log onto your blogsite as blogging through SMS is also possible.

According to Jasmet Singh, vice president-product marketing, Rediff.com: “We want to increase the community of bloggers in India. Through this mobile blogging platform we can get as many people connected across the country.” Moblog consists of content posted to the Internet from a cell phone or a portable device such as PDA and involves technology, which allows publishing from a mobile device.

“Blogging in India has moved from niche to mainstream. Nontechy people have also taken to blogging to share their viewpoints, common interests and even photos. We are now ready to move into the next level of blogging—on the mobile phones. It’s one way of integrating and getting people together on a common platform,” explained Krishna Prasad, Head Programming, MSN India. “The idea is also to eventually build communities,” he added.

So what do active bloggers think about this idea? According to Sachin a tech blogger, “The serious blogging community in India is pretty small. So for us, mobile blogging will be a boon. I run a tech blog techmate.blogspot.com. If I see something unique somewhere, I don’t have to wait for an Internet connection to blog.” Agrees Rohan Joshi, also an active blogger who has his own general blog site xanga.com, “Today whenever I come across something interesting while traveling I am keen that I should write a post on it immediately. But, I have to wait till I get to the Internet. In the process you sometimes also tend to forget a lot of details. With mobile blogging I need not wait.” Mobile Blogging in reality is not new to India. ‘Mobylog’, a personal space on the web for camera phone pictures and videos is the first mobile blogging site that was launched by Mumbai-based Midas Events, a below the line communications agency. Users can upload pictures and videos to their mobylogs through e-mail or MMS free of cost. The concept is widely considered as the next big thing in creating socially influential online communities after the quarter billion strong web-blogging concept. Another reason technological experts think mobile blogging will work is that mobile penetration in India is much larger than Internet penetration.

Blogging is an interesting trend that is catching up worldwide. It is understood from active bloggers that worldwide there are approximately seven million bloggers and about 33 million blogs. In India, Singh estimates the number of active bloggers to be around 250,000 of which 100,000 are with Rediff. MSN on the other hand has a user base of 12.8 million of which 25 per cent are active.

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