Yahoo! has tried their hand at including bloggers through their ‘Our City‘ initiative. It’s really a mashup. Successful or not, it a matter of speculation. Rediff has iLand that offers a platform for bloggers in-house and outside. And the newest entrant AOL.in has now launched their blogging initiative. Not really launched, it’s still in the works but it sounds interesting.
News, Cricket and Bollywood are the initial forays and from what I know, there are more coming up. Good start, but there is a lot of work if you ask me on the usability front. An initial look told me that the images are way too heavy and take a lot of time to load and the look and feel is hardly up to blogging standards (reference: Endadget; owned by AOL).
On the content front, there is a good mix and I am not yet sure if AOL is paying the bloggers, but one would hope so. It was in an original proposal I had worked on during my time at AOL. Whether they are paying or not, this is a good avenue for Indian bloggers to get noticed in the mainstream. Whether this moves blogging into the foreground remains to be seen, but what it does prove is that blogging is here to stay and mainstream media is looking to join hands with bloggers.
You could visit the blogs, but remember that they are not yet launched and are still being fine-tuned. And no, AOL did not pay me to write this!
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