Well first off, it is fairly appalling I return to my blog after about a year and half however in the interim I have been dabbling in more corporate blogs on Linkedin and give out doses in shorter forms via Twitter ( Damn who thought 140 characters could be so addictive)
Coming to the topic on hand, honestly blogging as a medium has lost its shine but some things do bounce back so quick recap of social media trends and how we desi's responded over the years.
The fun of being a millennial ( born in the 1980s) really gave us a range of technologies to experience. you know VHS tapes, audio tapes (Side A and Side B), Floppy Disk and off-course Yahoo messenger
2000-2003
I guess most Indians got online and experienced hot mail, yahoo messenger on dial up connection ( the speed was nothing to speak about however the telephone bills escalated quite fast)
People still had secret identities so folks had email ids like loverboy_27 or angel16 as user names :) and crumby desktops where you always had 2 fingers on the "Alt-Tab" button to maintain your privacy
2004-2008
I know Facebook and Orkut released around the same time but Brazilians and Indians really took to Orkut like Fish to water, every one who had a net connection was on it and the things which mattered - No of scraps, No of Fans and No of testis --- monials that it :P
Orkut was the first time people let their guard down, engage in private conversations on the scrap-book (wall for Facebook junkies) which really changed how one reacted to electronic medium ( the word social media didn't really catch on)
Yahoo Groups - By 2008, it was no longer cool to have secret identities and social discussions happened via groups. It was a radical thing to share email forwards even at work.
Facebook was catching up but it was still for the cool kids ( NRIs, or MS students) not true blue desis who were seeking Fraanship
2009-2012
As smartphones began to evolve and better internet speeds + Wifi, the internet truly became personal , you didn't need to fight with a sibling to get online
Facebook got better and addictive, Google didnt do much for Orkut so it died. thankfully it was pretty fun having friends on Facebook, folks on Gtalk - ( This was Facebook before hyper fast news feeds and attack of Famville and Candy Crush requests)
This was the time every one had blogs and people who would religiously get and monitor comments :) - I quite liked that phase to be honest.
2012-2014
The attack of "Selfie" - This truly marked the Phase 3 of social media where the focus of interaction moved from one to one to actually one to many .... all emotions conveyed through sappy status messages, pics of self (imagine a giant head with pimples and all with a small effiel tower in the background) and this is where the disconnect actually began.
People had more than "800-1000" friends on the network but would speak to less than 10 on a regular basis. since people keep broadcasting their lives on Twitter and Facebook, there was liite incentive to even catch-up
Blogs also a causality, then you get addicted to social media, you lose the urge to write in the long form, I really believe our future generation kids will be ADD (attention deficit disorder) because we are always online but not really connecting with people in the ways of the past.
Now people are so bored rather than communicate how they feel, i guess they did just post a "sad selfie" on Facebook or Snapchat.
2015 & beyond
With the older folks (Parents, Uncles and neighbors) coming online and invading facebook, the youth are retreating to new technologies like Whatsapp, Viber etc.
Whatsapp groups are the new yahoo messengers and I am also seeing the resurgence of blogs on cooler sites like Medium / Quora and Tumbler.
Video is becoming a strong medium - Vine, Youtube, Meerkat & Periscope ( Video selfies - ugh :P )
The "Dark Social" is pretty much Social Media Phase 1 on the mobile which only reinforces the fact - what goes around comes around.
The only casualty in this evolution is the ability to communicate in long form - from letters, email chains and long chat conversations is becoming short form, statuses and pictures
Coming to the topic on hand, honestly blogging as a medium has lost its shine but some things do bounce back so quick recap of social media trends and how we desi's responded over the years.
The fun of being a millennial ( born in the 1980s) really gave us a range of technologies to experience. you know VHS tapes, audio tapes (Side A and Side B), Floppy Disk and off-course Yahoo messenger
2000-2003
I guess most Indians got online and experienced hot mail, yahoo messenger on dial up connection ( the speed was nothing to speak about however the telephone bills escalated quite fast)
People still had secret identities so folks had email ids like loverboy_27 or angel16 as user names :) and crumby desktops where you always had 2 fingers on the "Alt-Tab" button to maintain your privacy
2004-2008
I know Facebook and Orkut released around the same time but Brazilians and Indians really took to Orkut like Fish to water, every one who had a net connection was on it and the things which mattered - No of scraps, No of Fans and No of testis --- monials that it :P
Orkut was the first time people let their guard down, engage in private conversations on the scrap-book (wall for Facebook junkies) which really changed how one reacted to electronic medium ( the word social media didn't really catch on)
Yahoo Groups - By 2008, it was no longer cool to have secret identities and social discussions happened via groups. It was a radical thing to share email forwards even at work.
Facebook was catching up but it was still for the cool kids ( NRIs, or MS students) not true blue desis who were seeking Fraanship
2009-2012
As smartphones began to evolve and better internet speeds + Wifi, the internet truly became personal , you didn't need to fight with a sibling to get online
Facebook got better and addictive, Google didnt do much for Orkut so it died. thankfully it was pretty fun having friends on Facebook, folks on Gtalk - ( This was Facebook before hyper fast news feeds and attack of Famville and Candy Crush requests)
This was the time every one had blogs and people who would religiously get and monitor comments :) - I quite liked that phase to be honest.
2012-2014
The attack of "Selfie" - This truly marked the Phase 3 of social media where the focus of interaction moved from one to one to actually one to many .... all emotions conveyed through sappy status messages, pics of self (imagine a giant head with pimples and all with a small effiel tower in the background) and this is where the disconnect actually began.
People had more than "800-1000" friends on the network but would speak to less than 10 on a regular basis. since people keep broadcasting their lives on Twitter and Facebook, there was liite incentive to even catch-up
Blogs also a causality, then you get addicted to social media, you lose the urge to write in the long form, I really believe our future generation kids will be ADD (attention deficit disorder) because we are always online but not really connecting with people in the ways of the past.
Now people are so bored rather than communicate how they feel, i guess they did just post a "sad selfie" on Facebook or Snapchat.
2015 & beyond
With the older folks (Parents, Uncles and neighbors) coming online and invading facebook, the youth are retreating to new technologies like Whatsapp, Viber etc.
Whatsapp groups are the new yahoo messengers and I am also seeing the resurgence of blogs on cooler sites like Medium / Quora and Tumbler.
Video is becoming a strong medium - Vine, Youtube, Meerkat & Periscope ( Video selfies - ugh :P )
The "Dark Social" is pretty much Social Media Phase 1 on the mobile which only reinforces the fact - what goes around comes around.
The only casualty in this evolution is the ability to communicate in long form - from letters, email chains and long chat conversations is becoming short form, statuses and pictures
Think of it: In good ol' days, writing was an art... People who could write really long stuff were considered good writers (Content quality is different altogether).
ReplyDeleteOnce blogging started, everybody suddenly took to writing (Virtual though !). Every alternate person you met had some blogpost and not having one was considered uncool (some even considered you dimwit if you didn't write couple of blog posts).
With advent of Facebook and Twitter, writing is once again passe. Today I find school kids struggling with writing (especially more than 200-300 bytes). Not very different with grads fresh from college. Long writing is at premium again!
Thanks dude .
DeleteIf blogging is an endangered species, blog comments is extinct.
I agree technology is stealing life skills in each generation.
I really like the breakdown, kind of going down the memory lane to see how it all began. I have to confess haven't gone back to my blog in at least 2.5 years. Do I miss it....yes thinking aloud and sharing my thoughts in a cohesive manner not just blurting small sentences like 3 year old. Ahh...well mental note to self : send a nice long email to all friends who matter :)
ReplyDeleteI really like the breakdown, kind of going down the memory lane to see how it all began. I have to confess haven't gone back to my blog in at least 2.5 years. Do I miss it....yes thinking aloud and sharing my thoughts in a cohesive manner not just blurting small sentences like 3 year old. Ahh...well mental note to self : send a nice long email to all friends who matter :)
ReplyDeleteThanks a ton. Social media has made communication faster not really better.
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