Monday, August 16, 2004

Kuwaiti Blogs - Fad or Phenomenon?

The list of blogs based in, or about, Kuwait is growing by the day and that can only be a good thing. This would be the perfect moment for me (and a select few) to brag about being first on the scene back when blogs were... blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda. But I won't because it doesn't really matter who was here first, and I'm guessing none of you are that interested anyway ;-P

The one thing I'm enjoying is the variety of opinions, posts and comments to be found on Kuwaiti blogs. I used to visit some of them and think "damn, I wish I had thought of that!, but I don't anymore because there is so much to talk about that no single blog will be able to cover everything.

However, I sincerely hope this won't be yet another passing Kuwaiti fad or "habba", this season's "must-have"hip accessory... You will find days when you're just not in the mood and may even suffer "blogger burnout". I certainly did at one point, and you can see the missing months in my archives as proof. If you feel you need a break, by all means take it. Do not feel obliged to post something just to maintain your presence, and don't get pressured by your hungry audience if you are fortunate enough to build one.

Just keep on bloggin' at your own comfortable pace and keep up the good work!

17 comments:

  1. from the kuwait blogs list, qhate.com was the first. but only beat zaydoun by around a month. back then things were really cool. but the qhate project ended which makes zaydoun the longest running kuwait blog site.

    qhate was the idea of nibaq, the same person in charge of kuwaitblogs.com at the moment.

    he also made the first phlog/moblog http://www.phlog.net/user/plus965
    then i copied him and did my own http://ursurp.textamerica.com/

    i have to disagree with zaydoun though. when you start a blog you have to keep going. you cant post everyday for a month and then stop for a week, post 2 more times the week after then stop again etc.. I mean you can do that but you wont build a bond with the readers like that. also as a reader you bond with blogs. you check them out daily to see what new thing the writer has to say. if the blogs dont get updated u wont go back .

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  2. QHATE.com was definitely first..

    Mark, we do have lives outside of blogging and if we lose "audience share" during our time off, it's a price we'll have to pay. But a break is good for the soul and mind, so we can come back rested and ready to take on the world!!

    PSS, I'm actually blushing now!

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  3. you can take a vacation ofcourse. the way you did with Kuwait Unplugged. It would be like taking time off work.

    What i meant though was that you cant take random breaks whenever you want and expect your readers to keep coming back. Its just not good blogging etiquette.

    In the states bloggers take sundays and sometimes saturdays off from there blogs. This could apply in kuwait where Friday is the day off for bloggers and Thursday maybe just a quick morning post. Then you have your yearly vacation from work which take and you can choose to either continue posting blogs during your vacation, maybe if you travel outside u decide to share your experiences with your readers, or you can decided to completly not post on the site during that period.. BUT you notify your readers that you wont be posting from this date to this date.

    Maybe KuwaitBLogs.com should have a Blogging etiquette section..

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  4. OH MY GOD!! IT'S A FULL-TIME JOB??!!

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  5. Yes it is a full time job with no benefits or compensation. It is time a blogger fund is established.

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  9. please don't turn it into a full time job...... blogging should be something done out of will and not cause one is obliged to do so....... the bond we have with our readers is not one in which we owe them to publish something....... its a different kind of bond.... your readers, including their comments become a part of our blog...

    this really isnt what i wanted to comment ... i have been trying to comment for half an hour now but kept getting socket error urghhhhhhhh

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  10. Oh shit! I deleted all of Mosan's comments. He had duplicates and I was supposed to delete those only!

    Fucking Blogger!!!

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  11. All in good time

    now now bloggers lets not go into who is 1st routine, just enjoy it and concentrate on the posting quality. I believe mine is sort of diversified So Far with concentration on the corporate world. Some of my postings are personalized. Any way I yet to discover the other blogs. But like zaydoun said we do have an outside lives.

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  12. blogs are Kuwaiti fad or "habba for english speaking people in kuwait for now
    its going to wash out soon ( you will find a lot who will stop updating there blogs ) just like websites in 1995 , then the second wave will start
    the arabic only people will find out how to do it IN ARABIC ( yes there is a lot of people who wouldn't use the net unless its in arabic since they don't read english )

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  13. Yep same here...I switched from Yahoo and MSN Groups to Blogging because of Kuwait Unplugged. But please dont blame me for bringing the so called ((hailag)) of the net to your neighborhood. 5000+ members cant all be Palms members-Boston educated-wine sniffing-sushi eating...Kuwiatis ;)

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  14. Blogging is a great thing for it gives everyone an equal voice to speak about their concerns and lives, and it?s a movement going around the world, and blogs do go inactive. That?s a fact of blogging and the bloggers' own personal reasons, be it burnout or boredom.

    What it is doing for Kuwait is great. It is giving us an identity, be it via a brief glimpse of peoples' lives. By just visiting a couple blogs you can get a feeling of the country in terms of the posts on government, life and culture even the small routine things that occur. That?s why I even list blogs that have inactive because they have content; and that is what is important. It creates a collective and the more people that join it the better it will be.

    Blogging should not be a full time job, ugh that would be tough. I agree with Rampurple that it is something you want to do. I am using mine so my friends that I don?t talk to often can keep track of me. It is also personal to keep track of my thoughts. But everyone has their own personal reason for blogging. It is their exclusive platform to say whatever they want and shouldn't be tied to other peoples rules or agenda.

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  16. I didn't start blogging until a friend of mine introduced me to it, actually he pasted me a link to his blog and i was like "what's that" and he's like check it out.. I'm like naaah i don't feel like it.. hehe then a few days later I was so freakin bored so I decided to check it out.. I liked the concept of like blogging ideas, stuff that happen, and stuff like that you know.. so I started my own.. I seem to have gotten addicted to it, even when I mention that I won't be posting for a while I still post..

    The thing is, with the comments I receieved on my blog, I thought of checking out the profiles of thsoe who commented and therefore started visiting their blogs.. and I have stumbled on all the kuwaiti blogs by accident hehehe

    But, I thank god that there is a service like this well to let us share our opinions, because seriously alot of teenagers or people out there are abusing the other sources used to share ideas and concepts.. for example, mIRC started out as a way to communicate between different countries and share info and ideas and stuff, but now it's more of a way for psychopath serial killers to lie on innocent human beings :r Hence, we need at least one type of communication that will not be abused until a few years later I guess hehe :P

    Just my ramblings :P

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Keep it clean, people!