Everything About Airtel Voice Blogging – Subscription, Charges, Advantages, Disadvantages

The concept of Blogging is still new to Indian’s. And with more and more people starting their own blog, the growth is exponential. Keeping this trend in mind, Indian telecom service provider Airtel has come up with a new and innovative service called Voice Blogging. It allows you to start your own blog in a matter of seconds and doesn’t require broadband or computer to blog.

As the name suggests, blogging is based on audio not written matter. In order to start voice blogging, all you need to do is follow the below mentioned steps and in no time your blog will be up and running:

• Dial *7* (Star followed by 7 and then star) from your mobile phone and follow the prompts.
• When you update (record it) your status, your followers will receive free SMS notifications.
• To subscribe to a voice-blogger and follow their updates, simply dial *short-code* from your mobile phone (i.e your friends mobile number starting and ending with a star ‘*’ for example *91xxxxxxxx* ).
• In order to get the updates of person you are following, you will have to dial *2* to listen to the updates in their Airtel Blog inbox.

Voice Blogging Charges

Each time you call *7* or *2*, you will be charged Rs 0.75 i.e 75 paisa for 1 minute. In case you are following a celebrity blogger i.e Amitabh Bachchan, Lara Dutta, or any other (Some of them are given below) with short code like *5XXX*, you will be charged Rs. 0.75 paisa per minute and Rs.10 per month.

Some of the famous celebrities who have started voice blogging are (short code given on right side):

Celebrity blogs can be subscribed to either by dialling *321*22# from your mobile device or by sending a SMS to 52000. And a voice blog can be unsubscribed by sending UNSUB to 52000.

Voice Blogging – Advantages

The reason(s) why i believe voice blogging will be a hit specially in India is:

• The setup cost is nil. All you need to do is call a number and record your voice.
• In India mobile connectivity has more presence than broadband. So, a wider audience will be able to use this service.
• Voice blogging is more convenient than text based blogging. You wont be dependent on your computer.

Voice Blogging – Disadvantages

Although voice blogging has been dubbed as twitter with voice but i believe, it wont be able to make an impact amongst audience as done by Twitter. Reasons being:

• Not everyone is comfortable with recording his/her voice and getting opinionated by others.
• Though the set up cost is nil. However, calling each time and shedding 0.75 paise for every update is expensive (if you compare it with twitter).
• The service is limited to India, which in itself is a big miss in times when people are interested in presenting their views to a global audience.

Everything being said, i still appreciate Airtel’s initiative. But, personally, i would never try it. This concept, i believe, is custom made for Indian users (that too of Airtel) and has least chance of making it global. This article represents my personal point of view and i would appreciate if you share your opinion with me via comments section (below) !