M-blogging: Sharing your experience that second

ADITYA’S joy knew no bounds when he spotted a difficult-to-spot animal while holidaying at the Corbett National Park. He wanted to share his experience with his friends back home and couldn’t wait. He clicked pictures of the animal with his camera phone, put suitable captions and posted them on his blog site. Soon his friends became part to the whole experience.
Welcome to the world of mobile blogging or m-blogging. It is the latest thing on the list of Gen Y, which swears by social networking sites like MySpace, YouTube, Orkut or even SMS. With mobile phones one can have a blog on the go. All one needs to m-blog is a multimedia phone with a GPRS/internet subscription from a mobile service provider, and one can easily post his photos and videos on his blog sites.
According to Gartner, worldwide sales of camera phones reached over 460 million in 2006, three times that in 2004. So from weddings to vacations, from workplace to fashion shows, bloggers are clicking and uploading all on their web journals.
“Image, blogging is an unique feature of mblogging and gives it an edge over online blogging. You can click pictures or shoot videos wherever you are and post it on your online blog. Everything using your handphone,” says Vineet Taneja, multimedia business director, Nokia. “Mobile blogging has lot of potential. We will soon be launching new products targeted at young m-bloggers,” says an Indiatimes.com spokesperson.
There are over 156 million mobile subscribers in India. According to industry estimates, around 10% of mobile subscribers in metros use GPRS facility and 2-3% in tier II and III cities have hooked on to GPRS facility, which allows fast internet access on mobiles. Approximately 40-45% phones sold in India are GPRS enabled. According to IDC, in India the sale of camera phones is registering around 25% quarter-onquarter growth.
Globally there are 200 million bloggers. Industry estimates put 100,000 as the figure for India. (According to Blog Herald, there are 1.2 million bloggers in India). And the number is growing. “The number of m-bloggers is fast growing though the trend is just an year old,” says Nokia’s Mr Taneja. Nokia N series has m-blogging feature to capture the potential of this segment.
Photo blogging using the mobile phone is quite popular globally. “Photo wise m-blogging is quite convenient. Also, as smart phones with features like handwriting recognition and touch screen gain popularity, the trend of m-blogging will grow further,” says Rahul Saini, product design head, Speakwireless, a mobile content provider.
Blogging portals too see huge potential in mobile blogging, especially from people who don’t want to be stuck to their computers to blog, and are offering them special tips. For instance, My-Space website tells a blogger that to blog from the mobile phone, all one needs to do is to set up a site (MySpace) to receive e-mail postings and then phone in the blog entries and photos. My-Space has around 47 million bloggers.
Meanwhile, mobile majors have geared up to woo the m-bloggers. Sony Ericsson partnered with Google last year to launch a special m-blogging website. “M-blogging is still in it’s nascent stages in India but it definitely has immense potential to grow. We are looking at various contests to catch attention of mobile bloggers such as blog a picture of your valentine and the best picture wins. In international markets, we have already launched many such contests,” says Sudhin Mathur, general manager, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications.
courtesy:economictimes
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