08 May,2010 11:31 PM IST | | Sowmya Rajaram
We hope you have something to say. With voice blogging or vogging moving from your blog to your mobile phone and social networking accounts, your voice is now as important as your face, findsu00a0Sowmya Rajaramu00a0
It was 1979 when British pop group The Buggles crooned their chart-topping debut single Video Killed the Radio Star, in nostalgia about the passing of an era when vocal chords commanded more attention than moving images. They should smile. Technology has come a full circle and done a double loop, with voice blogging or vogging falling smack in the spotlight as it moves to your cell phone and integrates itself seamlessly with your Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Graphic/Sameer Pawar
It's all integrated
Take https://www.ibibo.com/, for instance, which has just launched the 'voice beep' service. If you have an account, you can now voice blog on your profile by hooking up your mobile number to your ibibo account. The next time you want to post a message, you send a text and wait for an incoming call. Take the call, record your message for three minutes, and you are done. Your friends get an SMS notifying them of activity on your profile and can listen to your vogs on their mobiles.
It gets better. If you have a Twitter or Facebook account, notifications are published there too, and your followers hear about it.
Ashish Kashyap, CEO, https://www.ibibo.com/ says the service was introduced to maximise interconnectivity of social networking tools. "We had also introduced long-form blogging but that didn't take off the way this has (the six day-old service already has 10,000 followers). This kind of short-form blogging with the potential to include mixed media like voice, pictures and video, is huge."
Bol Bachchan
How huge, you ask. Huge enough for a name like Amitabh Bachchan to get on. Bachchan now 'vogs' on Bachchan Bol, sharing personal and professional experiences while spouting famous dialogues from his films in the unmistakable baritone. To listen in, all you do is dial 505678910. To comment, dial and leave a voice message. Rishte main toh hum tumhare baap lagte hain, after all. Bachchan says it allows him to reach out to fans and audiences in an even more personal manner.
Vog in the news
It doesn't stop there. The granddaddy of news, BBC has gone mod and launched a vog in association with Bharti Airtel and Bubble Motion's Bubbly. If you are an Airtel subscriber, you can listen to BBC news updates and snippets by dialling a number. You'll get an SMS every time there's an update. Each time a new user signs up for the service, the author gets an update too.
Hitches and glitches
>>Unless a Vog service is operator-independent, it'll be as useless as voice SMS, which is restricted to customers using the same service provider only.
>>How do you search foru00a0 new vogs? You can't discover and follow people the way you do on Twitter via a voice blog, because there is no keyword search option on a service like Bubbly.
>>Neither can you skim, like you can when you log on to Twitter, to quickly scan people's updates.
Will you dig it?
I'd consider it
Ramya Anand, blogger
You know her from: https://www.ideasmithy.com/
I'm a storyteller and pay a lot of attention to grammar and spelling, so it won't replace my traditional blog, but it can definitely add something to it. It might spawn a new movement for people who aren't writers and feel more confident through speech.
I don't think so
Janaki Ghatpande, blogger
You know her from: https://www.bluespriite.com/
It doesn't wow me. I don't like the idea of being connected all the time to everybody, so to receive updates on my phone about other people's vogs and then have to vog using my phone is too much for me. It won't replace my blog. But it may be great for non-writers.
Trend forecast
You could start your own subscription radio station
Ankur Gattani, Wireless application professional
>>If vogging moves to vernacular languages, there's huge potential in news. For instance, if a farmer wants weather updates on his phone before the new crop season, he won't mind paying for this kind of service.
>>With the arrival of 3G and greater bandwidth, we will see more integrated voice and video blogging for the mobile, that'll spill over onto social spaces like the contacts on your social networking sites, says Ashish Kashyap, CEO, https://www.ibibo.com/
The handbook
After Twitter, Wordpress
Squeelr
Want to microblog but keep your identity a secret? Squeelr adds a cool new dimension to online anonymity. It adds your geolocation to posts, which can consist of pictures and status messages.
12seconds
It gives you 12 seconds to upload a video status update. Got more to say? Continue with another short 12 second update. Short bursts of information via videos is what works for this quirky site.
Dailybooth
It only deals in pictures. Having a bad hair day and need some advice on hair gel? Simply take a picture of your bed head and email it to get solutions in a jiffy.
Foursquare
You 'check-in' so that you can share your whereabouts and be found by other people. Based on your location, the site then helps you keep track of what you've done and places you've visited.
