Promising Local Site: I Love Chennai

G.R.Krishna ("GRK") has launched I Love Chennai, a very neat looking web site and "campaign" for folks who are passionate about this cool (huh!) city.

The web site has some great photos, including as part of the Chennai Photoblog. A good example (of a couple of "machis" on their bikes):

ILC also has an online discussion forum and plans to soon launch "Its our City", "an online PDF ezine" to which "you can contribute articles, photos, writeups, ideas...etc".

A very promising start indeed! I hope ILC continues to keep up the initial momentum. They are absolutely on the right track by making it a community effort.

Long term, I think such a creative and community focused effort can give mainline papers - like The Hindu, Deccan Chronicle (that silly tabloid passing off as a newspaper with its horrible Sun TV ads ), TOI (if and when they eventually launch) - and even the neighbourhood papers a serious run for their money.

PS: Here's my 2-bit for GRK and co.: get the guys behind Bosey on to this platform.

"How RSS feeds are like magazine subscriptions"

A great post by Kaps comparing RSS feeds and magazine subscrptions:

RSS feed subscriptions are quite similar to magazine subscriptions. A subscription shows a commitment to read but there is no guarantee that the subscriber will read it. Both are delivered to you once the stuff is published.

A higher subscription base provides some comfort level to the writer / blogger as he/she knows that there is a committed readership.

Blog comments are like ‘Letters to the Editor’. Accolades are hard to come by.

People who visit the blog directly are similar to people who buy the magazine from the newsstand. This kind of readership is normally seasonal (usually Mon – Fri).