My 3 Plus Years Blogging in Malaysia

The last Weekend Mail (Malay Mail) frontpage article was so inline with the quality trouble of blogs in Malaysia. So what does a blogger with 3 years plus experience in the local blogosphere do, he decides to cry and tell the tale of truth to the media.

I found the time on Monday to write an article to the Malay Mail email provided and voice out my concern, my beliefs and my observation of what’s been happening to our local blogosphere the past few years. It might be read as insulting or it might be read as another blogger trying to be in limelight but my peers and blogging friends would know me best for being the honest person.

This is what I wrote to the Malay Mail on that dark Monday.

I’ve been blogging for more than 3 years and it all started out as a personal journal. However, from blogging for myself on my personal life I’ve moved to a niche and now blog about what I love doing. Ever since I’ve started blogging to this day, I’ve followed and noticed local happenings in a world bloggers refer to as the blogosphere.

When I was blogging about my life, I saw many personal website owners being more interested in starting their own blogs. They all wanted a personal space for them to relieve their buried thoughts when they couldn’t scream openly. Back then, the Project Petaling Street (www.petalingstreet.org) for local bloggers had many quality entries for any blogger to read. Many of the bloggers may have talked about their life but each of them had their own interesting way of telling it.

Not long after a year or two, I found an international blogger who started a blog about blogging professionally. He was the first blogger I knew who experimented generating revenue by blogging and has been rather successful. During that time, back in our local blogosphere more Malaysians wanted to start their own blogs and the emergence of
Blogspot (Blogger) made it even easier to start your own blog.

When his profile for becoming one of the only bloggers earning well through Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising reached our shores, it’s word became the ideal goal of almost all local bloggers. We all started experimenting with it and some did well whilst some are still trying hard to earn their first few cents.

The news of a local blogger who wanted to become a full time blogger was all over the local blogosphere and that encouraged more Malaysians to join blogging but all for the wrong reasons. If that wasn’t enough, media highlight of a group of bloggers made them instant celebrities. I know some of these bloggers personally and though they were in the limelight, they were very matured and humble of their achievements because they were merely writing about what they enjoy.

The two most powerful desires; riches and fame were now the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for every local blogger. And that made even more locals join the foray of blogging and aiming to become the next Internet millionaire or local celebrity. The quality of blogs started plummeting at this point onwards. The emerging content of blogs weren’t the writings of the blog owners but content plagiarized. Some have called this aggregating and true enough, aggregation of content and direct copying or pasting sit on gray areas.

The occurrences of bloggers being questioned against government policy and the line of censorship for their entries of self-expressionism made blogging into not what it was suppose to become. But we can’t blame them as well because they are one of the people of the community in which the country they live in and everyone has their preference. Bloggers don’t need guidelines or restrictions; they need education to handle issues more responsibly if they were to touch on sensitive topics like politics or religion. They need to be more responsible for their blogs.

Readers and higher powers too should learn to accept the belief a blogger and shouldn’t act on a blogger upon just what they wrote. Blogging is a true communication tool and if it doesn’t jive with you, you might have the wrong channel or number. If you can’t help but to reply on an issue you disagree, you should offer constructive criticism and not immature squabble because blogging has grown up and it now requires more maturity to manage it.

The quality of Malaysia blogs has dropped all of a sudden and prominent bloggers have already left Project Petaling Street. Now there are fewer blogging mentors or role models for new bloggers to follow. The quality of blogs is lost because everyone has the wrong perception of it and its becoming worst.

Lastly, I find that the anonymity issue of bloggers should be looked at with a reason. For example; real author photos or names provides extra credibility and assurance to a blog’s content. It lets people know that you’re not reading what a robot typed but what came from someone who wrote.

While international businesses and bloggers are using blogs to reach out to customers and readers, we’re all busy trying to be rich or famous like the others. While blogging in Malaysia is becoming even more of an avenue to speak up for yourself, international companies are using it as a powerful marketing tool to gain and convert more customers.

In conclusion, before we question on the current quality of blogs, we need to ask why do blogs not have any quality anymore and how do we solve this problem in order to catch up with our international neighbors.

What would you do if the government gave bloggers guidelines?