You know something has attained celebrity status when it finds proportional representation in lists of things most loved and most hated doing the rounds on the internet. So, the fact that a word has been voted the “word of the year” and, simultaneously, finds itself on top of the banished words in the English language, says a lot. Celebrities use it to show their other side, budding journalists and amateur photographers find solace and a spot to showcase their rejected masterpieces, amateur cooks have come up with a world of new recipes, software engineers indulge themselves in it to kill boredom and everyone finds an audience and a place to voice their opinion. Welcome to the fastest growing phenomenon on this side of the galaxy, voted the next biggest thing after e-mail and k-soap operas on Indian television, taking up reams of space in the internet’s public library, and by definition an “unstructured work of art that signifies anything that comprises of words and images and is published over the internet”- the ubiquitous BLOG.

 Ever since the internet boom, the virtual world augured an alternative medium of social interaction. Quite a few fads have been doing the rounds since then, including chat rooms, social networks, and, albeit for a brief while, 3D virtual worlds where people could take up roles and project themselves as whole new personalities. Blog – which stands for web log – is the newest kid on the block. As the name suggests, a Web log is a personal journal that is maintained over the internet. It can be about anything from snapshots of your daily life to your exploits in your favorite pastime. It can serve as:

• A social forum where people can voice their opinions on a variety of national and international issues from Bihar elections to Oscar nominations.

• A public bulletin board through emergencies, as during the recent Tsunami, when blogs were used to collect funds, request amenities and most importantly communicate information to volunteers from all over the world about where assistance was required.

• A showcase for pockets of excellence and interest groups. The internet is now full of blogs discussing advances in artificial intelligence, new forms of music and art and many other novel interests.

• Or just a simple personal diary to pen a few sweet nothings so that someone across the globe who chances upon it can have a good laugh or shrink back with horror!

Though nothing can really explain how one fine day an innocuous pastime, reserved for the literarily inclined, exploded to become such a global phenomenon, what amazes one is the audience that even a neophyte blogger can call his/her own. There’s a whole new breed of people who visit news sites and blogs in the same breath. Almost everyone who maintains a blog spends more time reading other people’s blog than writing his/her own. Each one maintains in his blog a list of personal favorites; blogs that he visits often. So once you hit upon a blog of someone you know and continue traversing from one to another (a.k.a blog-hopping in Blogworld terms) you probably will end up in a blog of someone who’s writing under the light of the moon from the rain forests of the Amazon – a classic case of six degrees of separation. The bottom line is – in bloggerworld, “life’s like a boxa’ chocolates, you never know whatch you gonna get”.

BITSian bloggers

As in any social network, if one stays around long enough it’s inevitable that he ends up meeting a fair number of BITSians, a substantial number of recent graduates, from the 95 batch through to those still on campus, maintain and regularly update their own blogs. As with any BITSian bunch, it’s an eclectic mix of people. However, here’re a few broad trends based on 45 blog sites that have been collected in the last couple of months.

54% of the BITSian blogging population is from the United States and 44% from India.

44% of the population comprises of students (from BITS, grad schools and B-schools in India and abroad) and another 40% are software engineers.

The recently graduated class of 2004 heads the batch wise distribution of bloggers and with a strength of 16, account for 32% of the BITSian population. The ’98 batch with 11 bloggers, account for 22%.        Almost all the blogs are daily journals containing humorous anecdotes, books read, movies seen, politics, religion, philosophy, people met or the color of new dresses purchased. Some notable exceptions are:

Death Ends Fun – Dilip D’Souza’s blog talks of his various experiences in the world of Journalism. Recently, he was in the Tsunami affected areas reported on the status at ground zero (see “Community Service” in this issue for more on this)

A Slice of Tuck – maintained by Krishna hedge, the blog is about his experience as a student in Dartmouth’s Tuck school of management.

 AI complete – where Nitish and Deepak maintain resources on current research in artificial intelligence and related areas.

 Dolly doll – which, though again a personal journal, is a photo blog and says it all through shots captured from Srinivasan’s daily life.

Blame it on the undying BITSian zeal or the boredom of everyday life, almost all these blogs are updated regularly – quite a few of them everyday, and more than 70% of them at least once a week.

Apart from the individual blogs that they maintain, BITSians have also started a blog that can be co-authored by any BITSian who’d like to contribute. This blog is intended to serve as a platform for people to relive past experiences, make suggestions, debate, dissect and disseminate new ideas, discuss or announce any BITS related issues, and connect with those on campus and be posted on what’s happening on campus. Though the present crowd is mostly comprised of recent pass outs, it’s just a matter of time before word spreads far and wide and BITSians, who by then would have traveled far and wide in different walks of life, come together. This blog would span decades, serve as an excellent platform to communicate ideas and compliment the existing infrastructure of BITSAA chapters and Sandpaper 2.0.

Get started

Though there are umpteen sites that provide publishing services - like tblog, rediffblogs – the most famous and widely used publishing service is Blogger and is powered by Google. It has a brief sign up procedure, a very easy to use interface to maintain and publish blogs and most importantly, is free. There are over two million users using Blogger services and they probably constitute only half the actual population that is blogging.

You can access Blogger at: http://www.blogger.com and BITSian blogs at: http://camelinthedesert.blogspot.com

A list of BITSian Bloggers: http://wildevogel.blogspot.com/2004_07_01_wildevogel_archive.html