Do you blog? If this was the question asked of over 1000 Indian MSN portal users, an overwhelming majority of 76% male must have replied ‘yes’. This is revealed in the recently released Blogging India: An MSN and Windows Live Report (..more).
The report says that just about 14% of online users are regular bloggers, though 39% of them say they know what blog is. I would know because when I asked 10 of my techie and not-so-techie friends to take a peek at my blog (I wanted to hear some words of praise), only 2 of them cared to do me favor.
In fact, a web designer friend of mine said, “Who would have time to look at blogs dear? Don’t you think it’s a waste of time?” When I said blogs can indeed make you decent sum of money, he looked incredulous. As if he never heard a bigger joke than this!
Coming to MSN report, let me crunch a few stats. Young adults lead the pack of bloggers, with 54% of them between 25 and 34 years. No surprise there, for the concept itself is relatively new. What is also not surprising is that nearly 32% of blog readers prefer technology blogs.
More than half the respondents find blogs by business leaders and politicians to be the most enjoyable to read. I’m inclined to believe their blogs are mostly written by ghost writers instead of they themselves. This is not to cast doubt on their writing abilities. I rather believe – being a writer myself – that if you’re not an ardent writer, it’s pretty difficult to belt out interesting things everyday. It just does not happen – you may take it or leave it.
Lastly, I can’t help making a point. The survey is based on users of MSN portal, which is a conglomerate of virtually everything one does online, though its web-search is now powered by Windows Live. In my knowledge, MSN users in India are a lot fewer than those who prefer Google. Thus, this survey may not be as reflective as the one in which users of other portals are also included. To that extent, take this survey with a pinch of salt.
Blog first! [Picture source, © Dr. Trey Martindale]
Technorati Tags: msn, blog, windows, windows live, google, india
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