Thursday, November 01, 2007 Ng: Is blogging just a fad? By Wilson Ng Wired Desktop
I WAS glad to note that the Business Opportunities and Ideas site has pos-ted a report on top business blogs worldwide. Based on its studies on the Alexa rankings as well as Technorati (two of the more-known web tracking sites), my blog has been placed at number 64 in the ranking.
It’s sad, though, that the site did not make the study earlier. I keep track of my web statistics, and a lot of the authority or rank that these sites confer pertain to traffic in the last six months. I got quite a boost because the blog was chosen as the best Philippine business blog in March. However, this boost can no longer be observed since September. If the ranking had been conducted earlier, I would have landed in the top 51, according to my computations.
But for all that hullabaloo about blogs, how sustainable is it? Is it here to stay?
Do you remember Geocities when it was a fad to create your own homepage or Blue Mountain Arts when we got electronic greeting cards left and right?
Skype, although still widely used, is perceived by its buyer E-bay as falling short of expectations.
In 2004, Friendster was the world’s leading social networking site, but it is slowly losing its popularity because of My Space and Face-book. It is still number one in the Philippines, though.
I have been blogging for three years now, but I know people who blogged for a few weeks and then stopped. Is it just a fad? Famous people like Britney Spears or Jackie Chan, politicians like King Sihanouk and chief executive officers of large companies have blogs and maintain them (although it is widely debated whether they really write their own blogs). It does look like blogs might stay here for a while.
I write my thoughts on my blog several times a week, apart from my regular columns in newspapers and magazines. A lot of people have asked me where I get ideas for my writing. My answer: I read a lot. In fact, I regularly go over four to five papers a day, plus a few hundred articles a week from over one hundred blogs and news sites.
Some people have expressed interest in what I read and in what I find interesting, so I put that into the blog as well.
I classify and tag interesting articles in five categories: general interest and entrepreneurship, technology news and updates, software news and outsour-cing, latest on gadget news, as well as humor/offbeat news. So in my blog, you will not only find the things I write about, but links to dozens of articles that I find interesting.
So much for blogs worldwide, how about blogs in the Philippines? You will think I am biased, but there are many good bloggers in the Philippines, and I have my own selection also. In fact, just a few days ago, I compiled my own selection of Philippine blogs and put them into www. philippinebloggers.com. The site allows people to read the latest news and blog updates from Philippine writers. They can also rate them.
I hope this will engender an interest in blogging, especially in Cebu. And for those who already blog, you might want to get listed there for free.
