Blog on the run

BLOGGING: With moblogs, your mobile phone can be your blogging device of choice.

Blogging in India is getting a facelift with moblogs "" or mobile blogging "" finding a place at Rediff iLand (in its final beta stages), to be launched shortly by Rediff.com.

Rediff iLand will enable a blogger to message (SMS) text via a mobile phone and update the blog space on the trot, literally. The phenomenon "" called mobile blogging or moblog "" is very popular abroad but yet to catch up in India.

Despite the 85 million mobiles that India boasts, the small width of the display screen (of the majority of mobiles) and the difficulty in typing the desired text (since not every mobile comes with a stylus) discourages most mobile bloggers from moblogging.

There are those however who are willing to brave small screens and keypads and blog away. In fact, about one lakh bloggers are already populating this beta site and offering comments on how to improve it further before formal launch.

At Rediff iLand, a blogger can type and SMS the desired text "" from just about any mobile "" and the blog is updated in a matter of seconds (of course, depending on the bandwidth, speed and network congestion).

With moblogging gaining momentum, it would be easy to take pictures using your camera mobile phone and upload directly to your blog. And you can surely do that at Rediff iLand too, irrespective of the mobile service provider.

Moblogging services are projected to generate $440 million in revenue by 2008. While there are an estimated 10-11 million blogs that have been indexed worldwide (and more than 31 million hosted blogs) there are said to be as many as 60 million blogs floating online. The point: blogging is spreading like wildfire.

One of the most popular blog sites is Google's Blogger (blogger.com). Typepad.com, Flickr (flickr.com), and Yahoo's photo exchange site, are other blogging treats to savour. Closer home, indiatimes also uses the strength of its portal to promote blogging on its site, and so does sify.com.

However, Rediff iLand has a more colourful and ease-of-use approach.Besides the usual blogging features, Rediff iLand has incorporated unique features like avatars (akin to gaming), Dreamspaces and Skins which "will help bloggers express their individual tastes and preferences", according to Sandeep Ozarde, creative director,Rediff.com.

"We are offering the next evolution of blogging in India," asserts Jasmeet Singh, vice president-product marketing, Rediff.com.

He emphasises that bloggers on Rediff iLand will get an opportunity to "reach the huge audience of Rediff.com (assuming the blogger has chosen to make his posts public) which gets about 4-5 million page views a month". Rediff.com has around 40 million registered users.

While Rediff.com hopes to benefit from direct advertising revenue (it's online revenue as of December 31, 2005 was $3.16 million) and from the revenue sharing of moblogs (20-25 per cent) with mobile service providers, it also plans to share revenue with bloggers who drive traffic to its site in the near future. Now that's some incentive to start, or intensify, blogging.