We have been wondering who the first Indian blogger was.
For over a year after we first started reading blogs and then blogging ourself, we didn't really follow any Indian blogs. It was only post the Tsunami that we kinda pegged to the fact that there was a pretty vibrant Indian blogging community, both in the country and in the diaspora. So we're basically clueless. (And let us save you the trouble of thinking up smartarse remarks: yes, that describes us in general too.)
Now. Here's what curious minds want to know.
Let's break this up a bit.
Who are the claimants for the following:
1. Longest running solo blog at the same URL (occasional guest posts permitted, but the blog must be primarily by one person)
1.a. Solo blog with the largest number of entries.
2. Longest running blog with multiple contributors at the same URL
2.a. Collablog with most entries.
3. Longest running solo blog, with one URL change permitted (for instance, when the blogger has moved from a free service to her/his own domain name).
3.a. Solo blog (over a maximum of two URLs) with most entries.
4. Longest running collablog, with one URL change permitted.
4.a. Collablog (over a maximum of two URLs) with most entries.
All claims must be substantiated by some verifiable independent record. (And for the techies among ye, what are the reliable, verifiable ways to check claims? And that goes double for blogs that have shifted locations. Do tell, via the comments or mail -zigzackly at gmail - and we'll add to the post with credit to you.)
Note:
This much we know for sure:
This blog started on the 10th September, 2003, with a post that stayed all by itself till December that year, after which we've never really shut up. We have, to date, 820 posts up (this will be #821). Hurree Babu, who you can blame for pushing us into blogs, has had Kitabkhana rolling since April 2003, and has 1229 posts online. Both HB and I know that we were far from being the pioneers, so we're using that as a cut-off.
Caferati has been around since August 2004, and has 856 entries from its 75+ contributors. So that's the cut-off for Collablogs.
Clear? Questions?
34 comments:
From what we read.
George
Ramanand
Lazygeek Though he to this.
Tilotamma
To answer question 1.a., I just posted my 3141st post on India Uncut. Quantity, not quality, as you'd surely agree!
Errata:
Though he moved to this.
Man from Matunga (www.manfrommatunga.com) had been writing blogs before the word was invented methinsk... He may be a strong candidate.
My nomination to Kiruba at Kiruba.com. Blogging regularly since Jan.2002
http://jace.seacrow.com/ Jace had a blog before 2000, and so did Mahesh Shantaram at www.techrose.org. They werent the first, though...
Well, I started blogging on blogger at supersam blogs on july 28 2002. Then I moved to my own domain at the opti mystic exactly two years back to this day... and i've been there ever since.
Ummm... in addition to that, I also started a blog at Coffee Talk on 22nd Nov 2002... and have been posting there too.
I have website which tracks Indian blogs. If interested please visit http://www.sunsuna.com
Anyone voted for Kiruba @ Kiruba.com? I thought i read somewhere that he'd been into blogging from somewhere around 2000 or earlier even.
Chaoszone has archives going back to June 2000 (though not published at the same URL). And I suspect Ashok Kamat's Weblog has been running for longer than that.
--Prasenjeet
Er, s/Ashok/Vikas/ Kamat. My bad.
--Prasenjeet
Hi Peter,
Coming here thru Amit's blog. The first blogger on Blogspot was someone by the name Dematerialized from New Delhi, since February 2000. Second is Chirag Patnaik from Gurgaon since March 2000. If you wanna know more details, you can read the study. I have scanned around 17 million blogger profiles and published my global study here whereas the Indian subset here.
However, my study was limited to Blogspot domain which exists since August 1999. I dont know of any public blogging domain earlier than that, although there can very well be ppl who have their own sites for blogs (its very difficult to find out such ppl). Since Blogspot has always been free and madly popular world over, we can reasonably assume that the Adam/Eve of Indian blogosphere could well have been born here.
Oh...just read some one above comment about Kiruba. My data shows he is the 8th Indian blogger on blogspot; since Oct. 2000
Patrix,
I introduced Mahesh Shantaram to LiveJournal, where he started the TechRose blog. :)
His earlier blog, Sporadic Thoughts, since defunt, was powered by blogger and hosted on tripod. There was no blogspot those days.
My even earlier blog, Lunateks.com, also defunct (Sep 1999-Oct 2000), was powered by Squishdot and privately hosted.
It appears Man From Matunga is currently leading with his June 1999 start, but he's had several long breaks in between.
S Anand (www.s-anand.net) site/blog has been in existence for sometime now. I think he started off before 2000 (when the word blog was not so popular).
Sanjay M
I've blog entries starting from April 2000 and I haven't even updated a lot of my other articles yet which go way back in time. Those old articles come from mails I've been writing to yahoogroups.
You can have a look at the content to check that they do qualify as blog entries (just that in those days they weren't named as blogs).
Statistics so far...
292 Posts Were Posted.
6 Pages Were Created.
2,760 Comments Were Posted.
352 Different Nicks Were Represented In The Comments.
40 Links Were Added.
check out...sameerbhat.blogspot.com....inception circa Dec,99
check out...sameerbhat.blogspot.com....inception circa Dec,99
Just adding a few snips from my inbox, edited slightly.
Kiran Jonnalagadda tells me that his LiveJournal blog has been around since April 6, 2000 and so far has 1664 entries and 7042 comments. It's always been at the same URL: http://jace.livejournal.com/
His older blog at lunateks.com was company sponsored and was a bit of an Indian Slashdot. It died a year later. Sep 1999-Oct 2000.
Amit Varma earlier said:
Gaurav Sabnis, Ravikiran Rao and Yazad Jal have all been around since 2002.
Oh yes. Amit also passed on an email from Piyush Patel that said:
Anil Dash at http://www.dashes.com [is] more than 6 years old.
On this one, I'm not entirely sure it fits. Dash has said on his blog (and I paraphrase) that he doesn't really think of himself as Indian.
On Man from Matunga, I'm not sure if the site in its old avataaar qualifies as a blog (dated entries in reverse chronological order being the generally agreed-upon criteria). MfM has only recently converted the site into a blog.
Likewise with Kamat's Potpourri. The site has been around for yonks, I know. But how long has the actual blog been active?
Corrections welcome!
One more from the inbox:
I think I have the answer to your question about the first indian blogger. The first blog I remember reading - and this was even before the word "blog" became part of the popular lexicon - was called "Man from Matunga."
http://www.manfrommatunga.com/
His first post about the movie biwi no. 1 was made in June 99 and he has been blogging since, though he seemed to take a few years off in between.
I cannot think of another popular indian blogger who existed before that. Even blogger wasn't launched till a couple of months later.
So I think the man from matunga would be the first Indian blogger.
Hope that helps, unless there was someone before that.
- Choyon Manjrekar.
Hi Peter,
I started blogging in August 2003, a solo blog from the same URL till now. I have a total of 322 postings.
Where do I stand?
John
Someone sent in a link to Ars longa, vita brevis, but that's a very obvious back-dated blog, because the blogger profile page listed says that the person has been "On Blogger Since December 2004."
Talking of firsts, if not totally unrelated the first Hindi Blogger is Alok Kumar (http://9211.blogspot.com), the first Marathi blogger is Nirav (http://paulvat.blogspot.com/, now defunct) and the first Assamiya Blogger is Priyankoo (http://priyankoo.bihu.in/).
Thennavan had written on having a homepage from 1995...so he could be in the list too...actually his dad is the oldest indian blogger by age and Amit also wrote a post on that a while back.
http://tilotamma.blogspot.com/2000/11/and-so-blogging-was-born.html
Have been around since December 6, 2001 - a significant enough date for desis I think.
I think a slightly different way and less debated version and possibly more relevant question would be who is the first indian blogger you have seen.
For me it is
Rajesh Jain - emergic.org
Anita Bora
Anurag Jain
And speaking of collablogs, LJ Bangalore has been around since May 1, 2002, with 1163 posts from 621 people with posting access (not all of them have actually posted, and some earlier posters have left and aren't counted), and a total of 13,937 comments.
Mitesh,
LiveJournal has offered public blogs since March 1999. It was completely free until September 2000, when paid accounts first appeared, but free users continue to get the benefits they had before.
Somebody called? :)
I too support Man from Matunga as the first blogger. Although we didn't use that word back then, MfM used both the website as well as an email newsletter as vehicles of delivery.
I would also like to corroborate the fact that Jace introduced me to Live Journal back in 2000. In fact, he was Indian LJ user #1 and Radhika Nair (http://www.radhikanair.com/) was #2. Both are going strong! I was #3. I mention this just for history's sake. Jace is the longest living blogger!
For the record, my first blog post was in Sporadic Thoughts on May 15, 2000, made using blogger.com but hosted on my own website which I deleted recently to flush out all outdated references to me on Google.
I think it has to be someone on LJ or even Manilasites or Editthispage, though the last two having disappeared from the face of the web it would be hard to figure out. That leaves us with LJ and that one's had a good number of Indians blogging on it (and most still there) before blogger starting picking up some steam.
A simple way to check the oldest blogger (dead or alive) on blogger.com is to check the length of the profile number. For example, this is my profile url --
http://www.blogger.com/profile/162600
Jace's & Mahesh's were some of the oldest blogs I have been following. Man from Matunga was not a blog per se. It was more of a newsletter format.
Peter, are you going to be doing a summary of these responses? It'll be an interesting list. :)
Kingsley (www.kingsley2.com) I do think is a veritable octogenarian. By his own admission, the dude's been blogging from 1999 roundabouts. Manila, Blog-city, MT etc.
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