{"id":4467,"date":"2014-09-09T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-09T08:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/media.am\/armenia-experiencing-a-renaissance-in-blogs-and-blogging\/"},"modified":"2014-09-09T08:30:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-09T08:30:00","slug":"armenia-experiencing-a-renaissance-in-blogs-and-blogging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/critique\/2014\/09\/09\/4467\/","title":{"rendered":"Armenia Experiencing a Renaissance in Blogs and Blogging"},"content":{"rendered":"

I heard some good news yesterday: my colleague, ArmNews TV Executive Director Artak Aleksanyan, decided to continue his blog<\/a> [AM].<\/p>\n

This is the second such news about blogs in Armenia I received this week. The first was that Mkhitar Sebastatsi Educomplex Principal Ashot Bleyan maintains a blog<\/a> [AM] and has set a quota for himself to write a blog post once a day. <\/p>\n

I rejoice when prominent, successful people in Armenia who have something to say keep a blog. There are many people on Facebook who are prominent, experienced, and successful, but keeping a blog fell out of fashion in recent years. <\/p>\n

There are fewer people now who maintain a blog than until 2011\u20132012, when the mass exodus to Facebook began.  One of the reasons for bloggers’ growing preference for Facebook that maintaining a blog is more laborious than posting in Facebook.<\/p>\n

To substantiate my claim, let me cite figures from the Caucasus Research Resource Centers<\/a>‘ Caucasus Barometer 2013 survey. Only 1% of internet users<\/a> said they write or read others’ blogs. Compare this with 35% of respondents<\/a> who said they use Facebook at least once a week.<\/p>\n

Based on my personal observations, prior to “Facebook-ization,” the number of those who opted for a blog as a space for their own online presence was greater. But a blog requires care and constant original content, while “living” in Facebook is much easier. <\/p>\n

I’m not opposed to Facebook. I am in favor of using as many online platforms as possible: Facebook for discussion and sharing content; Twitter for spreading information quickly, getting information about emerging news; Tumblr for animated gifs; Instagram for photos; and Flickr for saving and sharing photos. And the list goes on.<\/p>\n

A blog is suitable when the issue is about creating content that is searchable, organized by date, archived, and has a versatile and suitable design.<\/p>\n

And of course an important component of blogs is the community or steady audience that is shaped around the blog’s author \u2014 when a reader reads your blog not by seeing on a link on Facebook but by regularly visiting your blog or subscribing to your blog through email or a RSS feed. <\/p>\n

For this last component \u2014 that is, the community \u2014 influential, experienced, leading people in a sector are very important. I am noticing a renaissance shift in blogs in Armenia this year. Examples at the start of the article are manifestations of this shift.<\/p>\n

And finally, let me include a list of those Armenian blogs that I read (in no particular order and only active blogs are included):<\/p>\n

Tert.am\/blog<\/a> [AM]
Armblog.net<\/a> [AM]
Samvel Martirosyan’s personal space<\/a> [AM]
Mark Grigorian’s blog <\/a>[RU]
<\/a>Mikael Yalanuzyan’s blog<\/a> [AM]<\/p>\n

Gegham Vardanyan<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I heard some good news yesterday: my colleague, ArmNews TV Executive Director Artak Aleksanyan, decided to continue his blog<\/a> [AM].<\/p>\n

This is the second such news about blogs in Armenia I received this week. The first was that Mkhitar Sebastatsi Educomplex Principal Ashot Bleyan maintains a blog<\/a> [AM] and has set a quota for himself to write a blog post once a day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-critique","author_posts-gegham-vardanyan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}