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If you think:

• You are adequately computer savvy
• Internet is no longer a mystery, for you
• You have many or few genes or even an iota of a gene of the likes of Shakespeare or Tolstoy…

Blogosphere in the cyber space beckons you.

A Blog is a web-log, your online journal where you can share anything under the sun, anything that takes your fancy, anything you want the world to hear from you.
Random thoughts, personal stories, fiction or poetry, reviews or analysis, images or video clips, anything to everything can be shared on a Blog. It’s your very own space in the big whole cyber world.

It’s different from your personal diary or journal, because here you are interacting with your readers through the comment section. And at the push of a button, you publish your expression with the whole world.

And the act of creating, writing and managing a blog is Blogging and the person who does it is a Blogger. And all the bloggers form the blogosphere, the blogging community.

Blog Types

A Blog can fall into various categories:

• Personal Blogs: Major or mundane events of your daily life, frustrations or scandalous family secrets, or your shopping list, if you want to share with friends and strangers, personal blogs are for you.
• Organizational Blogs: Activities, principles, information, ideas of your organization or group can be shared through this Blog.
• Specific Blogs: Catering to a niche audience, these are the Blogs on some specific genres. Here you can share your tips, experiences, views and reviews on travel, politics, food, legal, advertising, marketing, music, movies, computers, science, education etc and even spam.
• Media Type: A Blog with photos is a photoblog, with videos is a vlog, with links is a linklog, with portfolio of sketches is a sketchblog and the one with varied medias and shorter posts is a tumblelog

The various entries in a blog are posts. Depending on your mood, aptitude, interest or expertise, you can share an array of posts on your Blog. So, you may have various types of Posts on your Blog viz…

Post Types

• Brainy Posts: As the name suggests, the author has used a lot of grey cells in creating this post and you as a reader have to use double the amount of grey cells in deciphering it. These are speculation upon questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis, or experiment, or a brainiac take on a subject. These posts are intellectual in nature and are excessively subtle and have recondite reasoning. Even the language is truly abstruse!! Got the drift??
• Devil-may-care Posts: Oh, these are fun posts. Nothing heavy, just casual care-free banter. A mundane observation of the daily life, a take on an issue in a fun way, an anecdote… Reading them surely brings in a smile or a thought that you are not alone!!
• Thought Provoking Posts: These posts inspire you, touch you, wake that dormant feeling in you, coerce you to ask questions. From telling us to save our tigers, to the grit and determination of a handicapped child to what could change India, these posts leave you with a lingering thought in your mind and a loads of food for thought!
• Crabby Posts: Strong to humorous expressions of whining on things gone wrong, or Brazil losing the game, how life’s unfair, the killing heat & humidity and no rains or when suffering from that writer’s block, the woes of the city …almost everything under the sun is cribbed about in these posts.
• Completely Inspired: These posts are ‘Ctrl X’ed or ‘Ctrl C’ed from the world wide web or even our daily forward mails and then ‘Ctrl V’ed on the blog.  
• LOL Posts: Oh, these are the most needed ones and have universal appeal. Witty, humorous, satirical, funny…these posts can make you smile or laugh or even rolling on the floor laughing!!
• ‘Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…’ Posts: Yeah, you know it…these are the contests, where the birds errrr bloggers of a feather flock together and blog on a subject, like this BPL, or Blog-a-Ton, or contests at Blogadda or Indiblogger and even fellow bloggers rum contests on their blogs too.
• A Tale & a Verse Posts: A story in few words to running in multiple posts, chapter-wise, these posts tell a tale or share a poetic rendition. And the ingredients of these posts are as tantalizing as our spices, ranging from romance, thrills, horror, poignancy, sorrow, mystery, humor, fantasy to contemporary or even crime!
• A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words Posts: Few words to no words at all, but with amazing, unique, mesmerizing shots of ANYTHING! These are the photo posts.
• Yummy Posts: No points for guessing, these are the delicious, food posts. Sharing exotic dishes to recipes of Roj kaa Khana, these posts make your mouth water and leave you with that ‘craving’ feeling.
• Yakety-Yak Posts: Oh, these are the posts which chatter a lot but with little or no substance. They are there to mark their attendance on a blog!
• List Posts : In this category, the blogger shares Lists a la “1…2…3” or “A to Z” types on any subject…thereby making the post simple and easy to comprehend or showing numerous options, views, suggestions, tips on a topic
• Information is Power Posts: That’s the credo these posts believe in. So you have information on EVERYTHING!! Tips and tricks for Farmville on Facebook, forthcoming events, current affairs, Excel shortcuts, how to upload widgets on your blog, FIFA and the teams, Bell Bajao, an initiative against DV…it is all there, of course with a personal touch of the blogger.
• Very Specific Posts: Industry specific views, ideas and information …Music, Sports, Advertising, Sales & Marketing, Films, Politics, Health, IT, Telecommunication, MLM, Insurance, Finance, Travel…the list is endless. The history of a brand, to tips for a successful Multi-Level-Marketing business…these posts cater to a niche audience.
• Sharing is Good Posts: These are the posts that assist in forging new relationships, developing camaraderie, making new friends in the blogosphere… And these are the much loved posts on the Awards and the Tags!!

Comments on a blog are very important to a blogger. The action in the comments section acts as a blogger’s mood barometer. But, the number of comments on a blog is no measure of its success. However, comments have their own character.

Comments Types

• Awesome Comments: These comments really boost your ego. “Oh, this is a fantastic post…Amazing article…I am following you now…I agree with you completely….” sure make you swell with pride! Sometimes even a silly post from you will receive ‘Oscar award winning’ comments.
• ‘I’m not dead, very much here!’ Comments: These comments have nothing significant to say, but are there to make their presence felt on the blogs. So they say something like… “Nice post…interesting…keep blogging….”
• Reflective Comments: These comments exhibit a careful thought on your thought (post). Some time they can add a profound meaning to your thought or can steer your thought into a new dimension. They are intellectual types, actually.
• Protester Comments: These comments refuse to accept your thoughts (despite the appropriate disclaimers). The comment section gets lengthy and lengthier with their arguments and counter arguments. And sometimes, these comments are made to either represent the commentor as somebody superior or to project you as dim-wit!
• Healthy Discussion Comments: These comments contribute to the conversation or to add a point which you missed and these comments are made coz they believe that a nice, friendly debate makes everybody come out smarter at the end!!
• #*%@ Comments: They are not very common, but one does come across such types too, which are out right rude, offensive and have coarse language.
• ‘Mr. India’ Comments: These comments are not physically present on the blog, but you get them in your email!! From a simple ‘nice post’ to lengthy thoughts… these comments prefer to stay away from the public eye!
• Teacher’s Comment : Oh, these comments are not from your teachers from school or college, but your very own bloggers from the friendly neighborhood. They’d correct you, advice you, guide you, compliment you… “Your writings have improved; You should not use multi-colored fonts; Well done, Keep it up; Take care of the tenses… “. 
• Spam Comments: These comments are to promote their own blogs/products/services etc or to increase their search engine rankings or to build links to their blogs.
• I-Commented-On-Your-Blog=You-Comment-On-Mine Comments: Self explanatory!
• No Comments: These are actually No Comments!! I mean, people read your blog, but would refrain from commenting. Reasons are many…some find commenting to be too much of a task and a stress on grey cells, …some would not comment ‘just like that’…

Trends in Blogosphere

• MLM: It’s the age of Multi-level marketing. And bloggers have been bitten by this bug too. So, bloggers leave no stone unturned in marketing their blog posts. A new post on the blog and soon you will see its link on Facebook and Twitter and various blogging forums, urging you to have a look and of course, comment. Sometimes, the same link will be posted and re-posted some 5 times in a day.
• Powerful Blogging: Blogging is not just a harmless time pass, but it wields a lot of power and influence. In Singapore, two ethnic Chinese were imprisoned for posting anti-Muslim remarks in their blogs. An Egyptian blogger was charged with insulting the Egyptian president and an Islamic institution through his blog. And even an Indian Blogger was sent a legal notice by NDTV.
• Blog Fulltime: Many bloggers have left their jobs and turned into full time bloggers and earning money through it. Techcrunch is said to be making $200,000 per month!!
• Name and Fame via Blogging: Julie Powell started with a blog, and then wrote a book and which is a movie now! Inspired?? And there is a similar case of Preeti Shenoy too (minus the movie, though!).

Blogs are here to stay in this era of educated, active and alert netizens. The reasons are simple; they provide a wonderful platform for self expression and personal development. Also, blogging is not rocket science; it’s about being yourself, and putting what you have into it. It’s a continuous conversation. It is about cultivating mutually beneficial relationships with an ever-growing online readership. It is tough too, because you need to relevant and interesting all the time!!

In a nutshell, Blogosphere is all about 3 Cs…Communicate, Connect, Comment!
So, if you are a newbie in this blogosphere…let’s connect.
And if you are already here, you know what you need to do!!

To read posts by other members of The Wordsworth Legion in the Super 3 Round, click here: Hitesh, Kshitij, Lazy Pineapple, Parth, Pujitha, Smitha and Tavish. 

http://blog.blogadda.com/2010/07/20/indian-blogs-community-best-blog-picks
http://blog.blogadda.com/2010/12/28/top-25-blog-posts-indian-bloggers-2010