A BLOGGER

Hi friends,

A few days back, I received a letter from a reader of my articles on my FaceBook page which reads as under:

Dear sir,

Pranams. I  am a recent and regular follower of your posts. I share your posts with my daughters. Not only it strengthens their language skills but helps them to communicate a simple message in the most effective way.

Our discussion started when my daughter said while blogging one has to take in to account many things. In my opinion, the blogger should neither be overwhelmed or bewildered. I could not think anything more. As an experienced blogger, I request you to write about this. This would, in turn, benefit many young bloggers in the future. Thanking you in advance.

My reply is as under:

Thank you for your message. I am glad to note that you are a regular reader of my posts. My daughter is in the US and when I went there in 2013. she got me a laptop as a birthday gift. Initially, I did not know how to use it as I was not computer literate. She taught me the fundamentals. This was mainly to spend the time as she was busy. I have a lot of interest in the English language and in writing articles. I went to the US again in 2015. 

To satiate my hunger, she opened a blog for me to write. I did not even know how to open a blog and to handle it. I am not a professional blogger to write a topic on it. I feel that this social media should be used in a useful way for public awareness.  I am 72 and I have a lot of personal experience which I can share with others and also make them learn something useful. Hence I started writing from Jan 2016. So far I have written about 100 articles. 

Professional bloggers use the media to earn money and to eke out their livelihood like other professionals viz. athletes, cricketers, etc. They are paid for their articles and there is also advt. on the blog to earn money. There are also comments and interactions in the blog. It has developed into a great money-spinner and I am not a person involved in such activity. 

Even when the blog asked me to pay a nominal fee or for advt. to boost viewership,  I did not agree and I turned down the offer. I write only for my personal satisfaction and not for making money. I have enough and I have lived my life. I do not need money at this old age. I need only to keep my brain active and to spend the time to fulfill my passion. 

A blog is a discussion published on the World Wide Web.  Posts are displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appears first. The emergence and growth of blogs in the late 1990s coincided with the advent of web publishing tools that facilitated the posting of content by non-technical users who did not have much experience with HTML or computer programming. Until 2009, blogs were usually the work of an individual, or a small group, and covered a single topic. 

In the 2010s, "multi-author blogs" (MABs) have developed, with posts written by large numbers of authors. MABs account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other "microblogging" systems helped integrate MABs. Blogging can be seen as a form of social networking service. Indeed, the blogger does not only produce content to post on their blogs but also build social relations with their readers and another blogger. However, there are high-readership blogs which do not allow comments.

Many blogs provide commentary on a particular topic, ranging from politics to sports. Others function as more personal online diaries, or as online brand advertising of a particular individual or company. The ability of readers to leave publicly viewable comments, and interact with other commenters, is an important contribution to the popularity of many blogs. However, blog owners or authors often moderate and filter online comments to remove hate speech or other offensive content. According to critics and other bloggers, Blogger is the most popular blogging service used today.

A blogger must first think of his audience. What would they love to read? The next thought should be, how to create a captivating content that will lure his  audience to read through the entire post. Finally, the title plays a major role. Apart from all this, he needs to have a spine to call a spade, a spade. He should not fear or scared to write on any topic and  there are guidelines for them. The Blogger's Code of Conduct is a proposal  for blogger to enforce civility on their blogs by being civil themselves and moderating comments on their blog. The code was proposed in 2007 

A list of seven proposed ideas:

1. Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.

2. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments.

3. Consider eliminating anonymous comments.

4. Ignore the trolls.

5. Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.

6. If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.

7. Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say in person.

These ideas were  intensely discussed on the Web and in the media. The proposed Code has drawn widespread attention to the necessity of monitoring blogging activity and social norms being as important online as offline.