Saturday, August 20, 2005

thE bloG nexT dooR

Blogger.com made its inception in August 1999 in San Francisco, US. I was doing my second year engineering that time. A few months later in a website I read about blogging and the site gave reference to one of the blogs in the cyber world. I visited that blog and was amazed by the way that person wrote in her blog. Instantly I created an account at blogger.com, but that blog was somehow lost in the clicks of time. The same day I sent a mail to my class mailing list with some excerpts from that blog and invited my classmates to the blogging world. I don’t know how many of them start a blog due to that; may be none.

In 2003, Blogger was acquired by the great Google, the company which is a wonder in the internet world. The history of Google itself is an interesting read. Thinking in business terms its about raising a business of US$ 3.2 billion (2004 revenue) from nothing but a simple and efficient idea, in just six years! In fact the guide of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, at Stanford, was an Indian professor. He came to our campus a few months back to address us. We were more than thrilled by the story he said about Google. The entrepreneurial spirits in us experienced a high time during those two hours.

Later in 2004 when I was back to a classroom after spending about two years in a cubicle, I happened to own a home page in my institute web server, in which I made a section for blogs.

During my summer internship in May 2005, I started this blog as a way to kill my spare time. And thus unCERTAINty came into existence. There is a lot to say about the word uncertainty which happens to have a strong and explicit influence in my life, which I will definitely write about in one of my posts.

Now that was a long introduction to a small body explaining the title of this post. “Next Blog” is a small button on the top right corner of any blog hosted in blogger. I love that button very much. You know how many times it helped me to kill boredom? I found some of the most interesting blogs through that button. I used to go on and on by clicking that button. It takes me from one blog to another, one personality to another, one culture to another, one writing style to another. Yeah, each blog has its own identity. Some make me laugh while some make me think. Some make me feel empathetic and some sympathetic. I agree with some while disagree with some other.

Apart from the usual blogs, there have been blogs for crosswords, comics, sports-teams, news, events, nations, different subjects, religion, audio blogs; and even blogs for blogs. Blogging has grown a lot over the past six years; bringing people together and keeping them closer. Some times I wonder how the blogs of future are going to be! What all features / extras / innovations can get added to this ever-green mode of expression? Only time can answer right!


28 comments:

Nivedita said...

I found blogger.com via the newspaper..there had been so many articles for several weeks on the 'latest rage' blogging and a new community of 'bloggers'..well, thats how I am here now.
You are right...visiting different blogs is like meeting different people, understanding differnt personalities..its interesting and fun!

silverine said...

I Googled the term Blog after reading about it so much :)) And then landed at some blogs. I was also amazed at the writing of ordinary people like me and the eloquence with which they wrote of ordinary everyday occurences. And the pleasure of watching your penned down thoughts being published before your very eyes is indescribable. I love blogging.

Sujith said...

> nivedita
i think this started happening from the last three years that articles abt blogs appeared in newspapers..

> silverine
thts right, its really nice to see our writings able to get a space in the web world.

> niki
well even though i started in 1999, that blog doesnt exist now.. in that sense, i'm just a novice :-)

Anjalika said...

well,they say...that all livin beings have evolved from a single cell...
bloggin happens to be ur cell of evolution!!!

Jiby said...

towards the end of last year...i was so bored, so unchallenged at my job, so much of free time after work...even all the stuff on the internet seemed inadequate to fill up my free time...thats when i read an article on rediff abt blogging.

infact i wonder if it wuz a timely coincidence that i didnt stumble on it at an earlier age when there wuz hardly anytime for contemplation and that blogging happened at this phase in life. i dunno how much longer i will keep doing it...but having these posts up on the internet and giving expression to all your thoughts for the world to read is a great feeling.

i have urged many of my pals to start blogging...but unless they feel the urge for themselves i dont see them taking it up. sorry for the long comment...good post man...you are seamlessly shuttling between a wide variety of topics...something i need to keep in mind.

nestpa said...

I saw anuragjain.com's website while googling for for my "Sociology of Rock Music" project. It had a link to anuragjain's blogspot. Then I saw my Loyola schoolmate, Vishnu's blog, vysnu.com, which appealed to me as a well designed blog, and which changed my opinion on the guy. I saw a few blogspot.com's. I checked out blogspot.com, expecting to read more blogs. I got to blogger.com and just three steps to Blogworld!
Here I am!

Sujith said...

> triplesix
as usual, i didnt understand ur wordings :-)) just kidding.. yes, the evolution still continues..

> karthika
thanks yaar.. well there are much more to it.. u can always explore that.. :-)

> rabbit (Rabbi's Arbit Ramblings) ;-)
true! a blogger shud have the perseverance to update his blog.. but how can one not do that either...

> jiby
it seems many of us turned to bloggin mainly to kill time.. :-)) but yeah afterwards its kinda addiction.. btw really appreciate ur long comment man.. and also thanx for that appreciation at the end :-)

> neil
yeah i've been to vishnu's blog. he is in SCT rt? yup u r right, a blog changes the opinion abt a person.. may be becoz it opens up a new avenue of freedom of expression for those lesser mortals who may otherwise remain silent.. from silence to eloquence, i may say :-)

PS: When I wrote this post, I never thought that you guys will share how you happen to venture into blogging.. Well its kinda interesting to know about what made you start blogging.. I hope you all are enjoying this "maiden-experience" of others, like me..

Praveen said...

Nice post, I liked the way you described about "Next Blog". It certainly is a way to kill the time.

Anonymous said...

thats one thing i like about blogger too the next blog button.
well everybody here seems to share their story of how bloggin happened to them......my six steps will be......ndtv.com's books section, tvshari.com, tan's blog link there, rediffblogs page, a few sizzling blogs, my own space on the net.
TC!
:-)!

Riot said...

I am not so sure about the 'next blog' button.

More often it turns out to be explicit material or hate or other weird stuff. No wonder blogger introduced the "Questionable Content" button last week. (a way of notifying the admins)

Sujith said...

> praveen
thnx man! i presume u r also one among the next-button addicts :-)

> divya
thts nice.. :-) u seems to have gone thru a lengthy process to start a blog :-)

> one more reason
agreed that there are some blogs which are arbit.. even certain comments which fall in our blogs these days are also annoying, which gives links to some site or somethin like that.. the number verification is a good step taken by blogger.com and yeah the flag button too..

. : A : . said...

Very interesting snapshot of the past. I also think the next blog button rocks, though have not used it in ages.

Anonymous said...

Interestin'...thanx 4 da knowledge.

Anonymous said...

Interestin'...thanx 4 da knowledge.

Anonymous said...

really good malayalam read some of it, but hard to understand.

MadV said...

Wow.. Cool. A blog about blogs.

Me into blogging- A friend of mine explained to me that you can easily get a blog from blogspot. My idea about blog was vague before that. But blogspot and its next blog button taught me what a blog is. And I am still learning.

Sujith said...

> a
thnx man! btw the button truly rocks!!

> tangy
thnx yaar! oh u've been to my malayalam blog cool.. hey, nice to know that u r a mallu.. :-)

> madv
thnx yaar! one more fan of next-blog button.. let the fellowship grow :-) yup the power of a blog is endless. have seen a person who made his entire home page thru a set of arnd 20 blogs.. some blogs came up during the recent mumbai floods time offering information to the world.. amazing..

nibujohn said...

life would have been never the same without blogs. here you are the creator, the creator of your own world which you can preserve and even destroy, if you feel so. here i really feel like god.

Anjalika said...

hmmmmm....shud i say that i'm flattered to hear that cos i'm hpy that my words can actually put across complications in someones' head...lol

Sujith said...

> manu
u r right man.. to publish ur musings without confronting anyone is the best thing i consider good abt blogs..

> triplesix
so easily? come on yaar! i'm concerned abt newspapers of tomorrow.. hmm.. actually that is wt is expected out of journalists :-))

സു | Su said...

:)

Sujith said...

> su
:-)))) innale aake oru senti moodil aanennu thonneelo!

Pradeep Nair said...

I see blogging as democratisation of journalism (may be because I am a journalist!). Blogs let each citizen to be a reporter or a writer, editor, publisher and even marketing manager.

Slowly blogs are getting talked about here in India, while in the US it has already come of age and definite impact in the socio-political landscape.

To me, blogging is nothing but another form of expression. One up on the email, perhaps. Because, blog lets your work be read by any one in the cyberspace, not just a few individuals.

Sujith said...

> pradeep
nice to see u here man! yup true very recently i have come across a blog which voices against the attack of US on Iraq. in India, as u said, bloggin is on the fast track now...

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