< Chan:
Whenever we attend an event, there is live tweeting, live blogging,
Facebook updates and we ask questions that our readers pose to us.
DO YOU remember
Doogie Howser, MD, an American television comedy-drama starring Neil Patrick Harris as a teenage doctor?
If
you were a child in the 1980s, you could not have missed it. Howser
kept a diary on his computer and the episodes ended with him making an
entry in the diary. That was possibly our first introduction to what is
now known as web log or blog.
According to Merriam Webster’s
Dictionary a blog is a website that contains an online personal journal
with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.
Blogs
have become tremendously popular among Malaysians as they look for an
alternative source of information to supplement what is being reported
in mainstream media.
By the end of last year, marketing research
company NM Incite tracked over 181 million blogs around the world, up
from 36 million only five years earlier in 2006.
So how big is
blogging? NM Incite says three out of the top 10 social networking sites
in the United States — Blogger, WordPress and Tumblr — are for
consumer-generated blogs.
Blogger is the largest of these sites
with more than 46 million unique US visitors during October 2011, making
it second only to Facebook in the social networking category, and
Tumblr was the fastest-growing social networking or blog site on the top
10, more than doubling its audience since last year from home and work
computers to 14 million unique visitors.
Overall, these three
blogging websites combined for 80 million unique visitors, reaching more
than one in every four active online users in the US during October
2011.
And who are these bloggers and what else do they do online?
A study by NM Incite indicates that women make up the majority of
bloggers, and half of bloggers are aged 18 to 34.
Most bloggers
are well-educated: seven out of 10 bloggers have gone to college, a
majority of whom are graduates and about one in three bloggers are
mothers, and 52% are parents with children under 18 in their household.
Yang: Blogging with passion will eventually allow you to do it full time.
Besides
this, bloggers are active across social media: they’re twice as likely
to post/comment on consumer-generated video sites like YouTube, and
nearly three times more likely to post in message boards/forums within a
month.
According to Nuffnang, Asia-Pacific’s first blog
advertising community, bloggers generate income through ads placed on
blogs by various brands, and become part of a close-knit community
through a vast range of exclusive events and contests.
“In
Malaysia, blogging started growing exponentially in 2007 when Malaysians
started seeing its commercial viability,” said Nuffnang co-founder
Timothy Tiah.
Nuffnang has approximately 250,000 bloggers on its books and Tiah revealed that almost 50% of them are active.
“In
the US, some bloggers have successfully evolved into full-fledged media
companies that employ full-time writers and editors,” said Tiah who
believes blogs and traditional media can co-exist.
“Clients do not view blogs as an alternative to traditional media. We are benchmarked against Twitter and Facebook.
For example, having an editorial piece in the
New York Times supersedes one by an online publication,” Tiah explained.
Local
blogging heroes such as Paul Tan and Vernon Chan, and Singaporean Dawn
Yang agree that blogging with passion will eventually enable one to do
it full time.
Chan said his site (vernonchan.com) was born out of the love for technology.
“I
enjoyed writing but in 2009, I decided to take it more seriously and
focused my writing on gadgets and tech-related news,” said the former
graphic designer.
“The blog now operates as a tech website with four writers on board.
“The tech scene is fragmented with plenty of players, but it’s healthy competition.
“I look up to sites like amanz.my and soyacincau.com as they were pioneers in this field,” he added.
Chan said that to remain competitive, a blogger needs to focus on speed, frequency and being current.
“Whenever
we attend an event, there’s live tweeting, live blogging, Facebook
updates and we ask questions that our readers pose to us,” said Chan.
He
walks around with a tablet, two smartphones, a laptop, a DSLR camera
and is always connected with his readers thanks to U Mobile broadband.
Tan echoed Chan comments and added that an honest blogger serves the reader and not the advertiser.
“We
have gotten ourselves in trouble with a particular company a few times
as they were not happy with some of the comments from the readers that
were published on the website.
“They stopped inviting us for test
drives and events for a while, but we serve our readers, and readership
is currency, ” said Tan, the founder of paultan.org, a leading motoring
website in Malaysia.
Tan also debunked the myth that people will read any content as long as its free online.
“Online readers are looking for something fast so it is important to be quick.
“We
do live updates and we have trained our readership,” said Tan, whose
company now owns popular Malay blog site, Ohbulan.com among others.
Tan did not mince his words when asked to comment about bloggers who only write advertorials.
“There
are bloggers who only attend events if they are paid and will only
write a blog posting if there’s a monetary exchange,” he said.
Across
the causeway, controversial fashion and lifestyle blogger Dawn Yang
(clapbangkiss.xanga.com/) was in Kuala Lumpur recently to attend an
event and the 27-year-old told
MetroBiz that she started blogging to keep in touch with her friends.
“It
started by accident but in 2005, I won an online competition as
Singapore’s hottest blogger. That opened many doors for me,” said Yang
who was sent to Taiwan for a year to be an artist.
She also secured several endorsement deals from international brands to promote their brands on various platforms.
“Blogging has evolved over the years with Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. We can’t just operate on one platform,” said Yang.
Blogging
in Malaysia is seen as an easy way to make a quick buck, but to quote
blogging guru Alister Cameron: “As I have repeatedly written in one form
or other, blogging is not about writing posts. Heck, that’s the least
of your challenges. No, blogging is about cultivating beneficial
relationships with an ever-growing online readership, and that’s hard
work.”
By Nevash Nair
BLOGGER Dr Angelo Nino M. Santos brought his eight-year-old son to
visit three children’s homes so that the little boy would appreciate
what he had in his life.
