Has blogging hit the tipping point in India?

Dec 1, 2006 12:51

According to "Blogging India: A Windows Live Report", 14 percent of Indian online users are active bloggers. If number of active Internet users in India is 25 million, then as per this report, the number of active bloggers in India ought to be 3.5 million.

The report was created by Windows Live Spaces based on a pan-Asian online survey of over 1,000 MSN portal visitors from India. The research was conducted online on the MSN portal across seven markets in Asia-- India, Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.

Some findings regarding the Indian blogosphere in the report:

- 39 percent of Indian online users are aware of blogs
- 50 percent of blogs receive only 10 visitors or less per week
- 50 percent said that blog content is as reliable as maistream media such as newspapers, radio, TV
- 42 percent of online users read blogs to stay informed

- 49 percent read blogs for entertainment
- 50 percent of readers find blogs by business leaders interesting
- 32 percent of blog readers enjoy reading about technology
- 24 percent enjoy reading about news and education

- Over 75 percent of all bloggers are men
- 54 percent of bloggers are between the ages of 25 and 34, with 32 percent under 25, and 15 percent over 35
- 90 percent of bloggers spend up to 5 hours per week reading blogs or updating their own blogs

India's top blog portal BlogStreet.com (Disclosure: I manage BlogStreet) tracks a little over 6,000 Indian blogs. My rough estimate of active (updating at least once a week) Indian bloggers would be around 100,000. Relaxing the definition of active, I would estimate the number of Indian blogs to be around a million. But that still does not match with the derived figure of 3.5 million above.

Stats like 39 percent of onlines users being aware of blogs and 50 percent treating their content to be as reliable as mainstream media seem a little skewed. Very few Indian blogs do original reporting and writing. Most of them collect and filter stories from other sources, give commentaries on news and current affairs, or are personal diaries. But blogging is increasingly becoming popular as a medium and there are many blogs out there--industry journals, company blogs, media blogs and aggregators with large readership. Blogging is definitely on a upswing in India and the only question is whether it has hit a tipping point yet.

Windows Live Spaces is a blogging site part of the MSN network, and the stats are based on visitors of MSN portal only. Therefore the findings from the report must be seen in that perspective. Nevertheless, the report offers a glimpse into the Indian blogosphere and helps in understanding some of its aspects. Hopefully, it will assist in creating greater awareness of blogging and its acceptance as a medium.

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