You've just 24 hours a day!

You’ve got 24 hours in a day; that’s it!

I was sitting near library and checking my birthday scraps on orkut. One of my friends came to me and said that as part of the evaluation of the paper new media we have to post a blog! I kept on scrapping and checking my mails without giving a single thought to the assignment. The next day I saw our reading room packed with my classmates working on the new media assignment. I started looking for some material to “borrow” ideas from. I tried my best to get some material from net but it was all in vain. Finally I dropped the idea of taking any stuff from net and putting it in my blog. So now I am trying to compose for the first time my own blog!

The power of technology at any point of time is immeasurable. The day we think it has hit the highest point, the next day it has something fresh in its basket! Recent technological advances have made an impeccable impact on society. Until the end of the twentieth century, only a relatively small and wealthy fraction of the human race could publish newspapers, broadcast television programs, create encyclopedias etc. In 2006 more than one billion people are connected to the Internet. A new set of technologies called participatory media has given a new dimension to the production of culture, power, community and wealth by encouraging broad participation from the common masses. Participatory media include blogs, photo-music-video sharing, podcasts, videoblogs etc. It is a spin-off of the changing technology landscape where the problem is not how to extract information from the world but how to limit that flood to just meaningful information. Time is the scarce resource. We’ve got just 24 hours a day; that’s it! Attention is basically time and money directed to purpose. So the role of technology now is focused more on saving time and limiting the information to just that what we and our business needs!!!

Blogging is more driven by interests and desires rather than commercial activity. It is rare to see something take off so widely when commercial prospects are minimal. People blog to share their thoughts, ideas, to promote their work/business, to increase awareness on specific issues, just for time pass. Impact of blogging could be estimated from the fact that more than 13.6 million adults in this world are trying to influence other people via weblogs alone! The influence of blogging on the corporate world can be seen from the growing number of non-tech companies such as Walt Disney, General Motors, McDonalds, Boeing etc embracing the power of blogging. Blogging can also help those people who operate small businesses or are aspiring entrepreneurs for future. Blogging in their case can be a good substitute of a website. It can give them a web presence which is cheap and easy to maintain and also help in creating a personal relationship with their customers.

The opportunities of using participatory media in shaping the society in a better way are galore. But the secret lies in communicating effectively and meaningfully for fun and profit.