In my India Social Media Trends 2009 series, here’s the # 3 thought, in no order of priority.
Blogs become second skin, for mainstream media.
But first, let’s just take a look back to understand the context:
Newsy blogs consisting individuals, or small teams, with no or little editorial hierarchies and baggage; equipped by sites hosted on friendly content management systems that allowed publishing on the go; a will to work long hours, even without monetary considerations; willingness to link freely (many times also adopting to brazen plagiarism from mainstream media) meant that blogs could come-up with/ aggregate meaningful content, very fast.
Given that they were hosted on Web 2.0 platforms, conversations through comments were already built-in, traction and loyalty grew.
On the other hand, some journalist pioneers were beginning to use blogs to connect with stakeholders – validate facts, seed stories, research ideas, publish stories that didn’t meet editorial mandates of respective publications and more…readers were able to relate better with faces that interacted with them rather than faceless bylines.
Some bloggers developed strong communities of their own and were approached/ approached mainstream media to publish columns etc.
It was just a matter of time before the media-houses adopted blogs themselves. What was a random case, or two, until even a year seems to be gathering momentum.
Sample these:
This year…
- Expect most mainstream media to start blogs bringing director’s cut of news, building conversations.
- Expect many of them to create touch points at places other than their own domain names (many, like LiveMint and DNA are already on Twitter
- Expect more-and-more journalists to start blogging.
How long, before blogs start to deliver more eye-balls (and conversations) than the formal news items?
UPDATE 05 February 2009: A couple of weeks ago, Vir Sanghi, arguably the most powerful editor-journalist-columnist in India and certainly amongst the best read writers, launched VirSanghvi.com. I was thrilled to see it, not only because I love to read Vir’s food writings, but also because this is what I have been saying is clearly the sign of things to come.
