Interview: Gautam Ghosh

 During my last visit to Hyderabad, I caught up with Gautam Ghosh (popularly called GG) – the blogger. His blog has been featured in Business Blogs: A practical Guide written by William Ives and Amanda Watlington. His blog on HR and OD at http://gauteg.blogspot.com has been listed as the fourth among the top 25 blogs in the world by HRworld.com. You get the drift.

He is a networking junkie. At 1:54pm on 18 July 08 his Facebook page lists 992 people as his friends while on Orkut.com his friend count is an inconsistent 995. Clearly some of his friends from Facebook are avoiding him on Orkut. But then the list of his pals is fairly dynamic. By the time I shuttle between the two sites his friend count on Facebook is up by one. He is also on Twitter and  Plaxo (and these refer to networking sites and not medication). We got talking about the future of the world – of blogging.

AB:  You were one of the early adopters of this technology and then also chose to be a consultant in this area. Can people earn a living being bloggers or is it just fame that keeps bloggers going? What do you need to do to earn a living as a blogger?

GG: Heh, I don’t think too many people can earn a living just by blogging. Professional blogging is still in its early days in India, and being dependent only on ad revenues is only for the top bloggers like Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration fame But yes, being a blogger with decent traffic in a niche area has its benefits. I get books to review from US authors (like Pam Skillings, David Maister, Ford Harding) before they are released into the market – and that’s a big enough kick to keep me blogging Yeah, I am quite a nerd that way. Fame is a big component, and the influence you build in your niche.

 AB: Why do more people quit blogging after the first couple of posts? Where does one get ideas to blog about?

GG: I think blogging is like driving. If you start driving without knowing where you want to go – it can seem pointless. And you don’t. But if you start your car just because you love driving – and don’t care too much about where you want to go- then driving is wonderful. I guess most people quit because they start blogging because they have read about people like Amit earning tonnes of money by blogging. That’s the wrong approach. Blogging because you have something to say and with passion and conviction is still the best way. One gets ideas to blog about by reading and listening to what the community is buzzing about. For me that means following other business and HR related blogs, websites, google news, email listserves.
 
AB: Do group blogs survive more often because the burden of writing is not on one person?

GG: Group blogs need to have a consistent theme to survive. Because different people are blogging about a particular issue the reader gets to hear different perspectives and voices.
 
AB. Why haven’t corporate blogs taken off?

GG: Who wants to listen to corporatese masquerading as a conversation? Not me. I guess that’s why most corporate blogs don’t take off. They speak as if they are the only one’s speaking – which soon turns out to be true, as nobody listens to them after that Corporates don’t like losing control and having people disagreeing with them. Ergo, they can’t blog! Would a corporate blog have enough guts to link to the competition’s website and say what is happening in the industry? No. Because their lawyers and stock market friends would ask them to play safe. That’s why bloggers like us have readership. Corporate blogs by small companies who are unlisted companies are also much more interesting to follow.
 
AB. Besides throwing sheep, poking people and writing on their walls (all available on Facebook) – are there activities that people other than giggling teenagers can participate in? Give five things to do on a social networking site?

GG: Hey, even I like throwing sheep And I am a long way from being a giggly teenager.

On Facebook, I try to first define privacy settings well and then give different kinds of friends different privacy settings. So my family and close friends get to see my photo albums and others don’t. Same goes for my phone number and email id.

The other thing I do is update my status every 2-3 days. Let’s people know what’s on my mind and might induce them to connect with me. I could say that I would be in a city and invite people to connect with me offline too.

Use events well. My XLRI batch is planning a reunion next year and a friend has started an event on Facebook around it. All my friends get to know about it – and buzz builds with respect to the event. You ought to do it with your book release functions.

Messages – Using the message feature is ery helpful as it doesn’t clutter your inbox and yet you get to have a one to one conversation with people.

Some apps like Twitter and Friendfeed and Blog Networks on Facebook help you friends to keep updated with what you are upto – what have you blogged about etc.
 
Building pages can be a great way to build a buzz around your company/product etc
 
6. Finally – do you really have 992 friends (as your Facebook count shows)?

GG: Heh. In today’s world the word friend actually spans a gamut of relationships – from close real life friends to close virtual friends (people I have been in virtual touch over 7-8 years and yet never met – at most have had telephonic conversations with and I don’t see different from the first group) to real life acquaintances (ex-colleagues, people in my batch in college and PG with whom I’d hardly have more than an hour’s conversation in my whole life) to virtual acquaintances (people who read my blogs, follow me on twitter, or are on egroups)

Yeah, all these groups put together total about 992. Ooops by now that number is 995

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