Models of Collaboration in Indian blogosphere

Blogosphere in the world has become a strong medium in itself. With various corporates encouraging their employees to blog (e.g. Microsoft), the trend has picked up in India.

When it all started around few years ago in India, you could only hear of a handful of bloggers mostly from media industry. These bloggers in India had built their reputation due to their experience in the media industry and then went on to leverage the new media trend. mostly young or at the most middle aged, these individuals had one foot planted in India and the other in international arena. They picked up most reputation and knowledge working with other new media international journalists.

IMHO, IT industry in India picked up the trend early on but was never able to reach the level or visibility the journalists were able to (probably 'cause of natural flair journalists had for writing & closer links with media industry)..

as the fad of blogging matured, various collaboration models emerged. I have tried to captured them below:

1. Collaborative Blogs: These got a panel of bloggers together and each of them contributed to the same blog. e.g. Desipundit.com
2. International Federations: International groups who were already blogging established their Indian arms and recruited people from India or people of Indian origin based internationally. Their Indian arms provide content from India e.g. Global Voices
3. Objective Based: Blogs were setup with specific objective in mind. These objectives were non-blogging related e.g. Tsunami Blog
4. Blog Aggregation sites: Pure blog aggregators came up that offered to aggregate blogs from India e.g. blogadda.com or
5. Corporate Blogs: Some Indian companies encouraged their employees to blog and presented their blogs on their corporate website. Most bloggers came here from their R&D deptt. e.g. Infosys
6. Offline Blog Groups: People like to meet people and this community formation was natural outcome of social instincts. People interested in blogging aggregated together geography wise and formed groups. e.g. delhibloggers.in

So where do i see it go from here:

1. Professional Associations: While most the associations were social groups, the interest in blogging is definitely going to take it when some professional association of sorts is firmed up. This association could be on the lines of Press Club of  India or Nasscom
2. Collaboration with mainstream media: This one's already begun... u would see mainstream media - newspaper, TV & radio talk about voices from the masses in form of blogs.

The journey is still in its early stage in the country. blogs have hardly figured in the reading list of an average Indian. Primary constraints still remain internet penetration but it is clear that this is set to improve. In future, blogs are set to become one of the credible mediums and will derive their value from 3rd party independent opinions.

The challenge is if bloggers from India can leave their personal agendas behind and aggregate together.. can personal egos find peace with collaborations? remaining independent and aggregated together is possible.. agreeing to disagree is possible.. can bigger names in the blogging world help other names come up? would the India bloggers want to take on more responsible roles and do something significant?

Have you seen any more collaboration models? Share with me and leave a comment.

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