Fourth World blogging.

For my last post, I spent more than one hour finding that Burma link. During the search I found out some Burmese blogs. I could read one blog only but I would read more of them. From that blog I could also find out a list of Burmese bloggers.

I went all down to her Technorati profile. Reaching there I wanted to see her fave blogs and as I clicked the link, I also found out that she wanted me to add her as my fave first. I’m not blaming her for wanting that but that set me off to a thinking jaunt.

Is any opportunity to garner up enough links to blogs published from these parts of the world of ours?

Is it practical for our blogs to expect enough page views to make it feasible to monetize them?

I don’t particularly like to sound divisive but they are metrics of the First World blogs. I really feel good that many bloggers over there can live off by blogging alone. It’s a very welcome news. But here in this part of the world, we should be always on guard not to be bogged down by these metrics.

When I first came to know of blogs, what stuck me most was the possibility of it becoming a tool to bypass the barriers put up by editors, directors, politicians and, above all, by political boundaries and meet an ordinary citizen anywhere in the world. Through blogs we can feel the nuances of the ordinary lifestyles of any citizen of any country provided there is no language barrier. Personally, I find there are language barriers in cases of Iranian and French blogs. If we overlook such minor drawbacks, blogging is a revolutionary tool for ordinary citizens of the whole world to reach out to each other. Never before in the history of mankind have an ordinary citizen in his disposal a working to tool to meet face to face with his/her counterparts anywhere in the world, unhindered by the barriers put up by the power that be.

Today, I’m reminding myself that I should be more focused on this characteristic of blogging. At least for some to come, we should not be unduly worried about links and page views.

That said, I want everyone of my new post to ping on Technorati and Weblogs. That’s still to come because it entails messing around with hypertext and I’ve so little time. Another feature I want to add is the enabling of bookmarking of my post. Still to come!

Now, I’ve several months of blogging experience. On most days, I start writing stories in my head by around 7 pm. By that time, I started asking myself—‘What interesting things happened to me today?’ or ‘Is there anything I can share in my blog?’. In other words, it is personal auditing on a daily basis. It may sound a little too harsh on myself but it is proving to be good for me.

Last but not the least, as I grew up an activist, some parts of me will always have that activist streak. I simply can’t help it. So, on a personal scale, I’m terribly enthused at the idea of , at least, a simple story of a simple citizen living in this place Imphal going up as a digital etch for the whole world to see, that too updated on a day to day basis. It fulfils some parts of my personal yearning. But I’ve also pinched myself to remain as truthful to myself as possible on a daily basis and not to off to a tangent to start promoting an agenda for my place by making up stories. I will never do that. I’ll keep Imphal as it is. With warts and all. With it bandhs (now both 15th and 16th bandhs!). With its erratic internet and power supply. Like last night when it went out at around 7 in the evening. On my fourth telephone call at around 9 at night, I was informed that I had to go without electricity that night because they had just found out that there was a major repair at hand, which they could mend only when their offices open the next day.

Well, that’s re-stating my blogging ethics. I should do this on regular basis from time to time.