DEATH OF BLOGGING COMMUNITIES - AND WHOAH, MY INTUTIONS!

'NandiniSpeaks' i.e this blog, shall complete 10 years next year. But is it my only blog? Not really....I remember having started blogging much earlier, ever since the early 2000's when internet first arrived in India....when they were called 'web journals'. ( Before that of course I had my manual diary/scrab-book where I scribbled a lot ). There were many such web-journals sites where I had accounts and would contribute, including creating pages in geocities/googlepages/wordpress and the like. But most of them are dead now ( except wordpress )! So its been an ongoing re-discovering process.

I came across more communities related to blogging when I started this blog. However, most were international ones, until I stumbled onto a few Indian ones too ( thankfully ) sometime towards the end of 2012, and afterwards. I've always liked communities that had a forum kinda place and where we could promote posts, build networks, chat/discuss etc, rather than those which were merely dull directories.

Blogcatalog ( international ) was one such. Though, at first, they took quite a long time to let me in :o However, once I was in, I was quite involved. It was a totally ad-free space and for a long time I wondered how they earned their revenue, as the owner there gave me their paid VIP membership for free, like I assumed, he must've given it to others too. As I suspected, that model wasn't going to sustain for long, ( there was no monetising option either for the bloggers or the owner himself ); and because of such, it just vanished soon. From what I know, the owner last ( before making some last-minute attempts ) sold it to someone, who tried changing the entire model completely, but it simply collapsed. Sad, because, I had come in touch with so many good bloggers there. Now, the site simply isn't there anymore :-( instead, some russian-alien looking forum pops up :s

Blogmint was a community without any point to interact with others. It was mainly an influencer platform. The bloggers would be invited for various brand campaigns, and once selected ( as per Social Media follower counts/blog niches etc ), they would get paid after completion. It was all good....but things became worrying. I noticed, they started giving preferences to influencers with many followers....and here's where things went crazy. I noticed many bloggers/inflencers trying to boost their followership by buying fake followers in bulk, and the ignorant brands would choose them. I had done many assignments with Blogmint, but this was worrying me no ends. My 6th sense told me end was near, because, such frauds won't sustain for long. Its really despicable that these bloggers/influencers tried these fake-follower-boosting methods, because, who was to gain in the end? Just a bunch of bots? I don't know, why exactly the site stopped operating, but I'm happy those influencers lost their money in buying fake followers :| @DUH!


‘Log IB bhi chorte hai kya’, one blogger exclaimed, when during the sidelines of an event I informed her that I left a particular community -Indiblogger. It was like unthinkable for her. And, I was like, eh, why not? It wasn’t the end of anything. As it was, I was blogging much before I joined that community. Granted, that I benefitted a lot in terms of blogging, and that community helped me grow, but when certain things caught my notice – particularly, their biased nature towards some buddies of theirs ( who were blogger too ), I decided to part ways. They made rules, but didn’t follow their own rules…tweaked n twisted whenever they pleased to accommodate their frenly bloggers; and the attitude they showed... well, well, I wasn’t impressed anymore.
As I left that community ( I had asked them to remove my profile permanently ), I had a niggling feeling that the community would cease to exist soon…and yea, slowly but surely it died. Maybe, there were commercial reasons...and brands were inching more towards other platforms or whatever....the IB as I knew, declared itself, done and dusted with. Some features remain...for how long, I don't know.

Blogadda was another community that I joined just before the above mentioned. Its not dead yet....although, I feel its been dragging itself along the rough path. I gained a lot from it too and I can only hope it fights and wins this battle of existence.

There are other communities too that I've been part of - some alive, most dead, but these four I was quite close, and its really sad, three are already dead and the last struggling to stay alive. Phew!!!! Thats life folks! Everything is temporary in this world, including life itself