Blog Shlog

Shlog is not a word in the english dictionary. Rhyming it with blog just make you look and feel COOL. Who does not want to be cool? There was a time, not so many years back, when people wanted to look hot. How things change!

Not to digress too much, I hear that Indian corporates are taking to blog like fist to water. Good news? No it is not good news to me personally! It feels like a large corporate is taing up the green spaces in Delhi and Mumbai. But then.. in this age of high capitalism, corporate involvement in blogs is a welcome step I guess.

But what is the charm that is bringing corporates to the "underbelly" of internet? I guess desire to connect with consumers. Corporates can not be driven by anything else! Of course, there is the added desire to create loyal communities around their product and services and a realtime feedback mechanism.

But I fear beyond these business motives, there would be OR could be a larger desire to create a knowledge community whose knowledge and IPR would be immediately avaialable to the corporates whose site you are blogging on.

This would be true especially of tech, pharma, design and other companies which suvives on ideas. And more alarmingly it is true in a country where people flout their "knowlegde" without bothering too much about who appropriates it. Also, in a country like India where there is a lot of local knowledge.

This is what looks slight frightful to me. We need to look closely at the blogging platforms that the corporates are building and must read the fine print that is there before we sign up.

But the good news is that internet being a democratic platform, everyone can share everyone's knowledge [without the narrow intention of appropriating and monetising it] AND more importanly, it means that Indian corporates are looking at Internet seriously.

But if they are looking at internet seriously, one of things that they could do to help internet penetration in the country is to open up inernet use in their offices, not put too many firewalls, not put too much restrictions on their staff on "productive surfing only". This would certianly give a boost to the number of people who actively use internet in India.

My take: Leave the green spaces on the internet for common use