Urdu Blogosphere of Pakistan

In fact when blogging became prominent in the world, it took some time to reach Pakistan but didn’t much time. It is very difficult to say something about the first blogger of Pakistan but English Blogger Tariq Mustafa and the Urdu Blogger Umair Salam are considered as foremost bloggers of Pakistan. It is said that Tariq Mustafa has started blogging since 2001 or earlier while Umair Salam has started blogging since August 2002 properly. Perhaps people might express their opinion on the internet by presenting Urdu in the form of images in those days. But Umair Salam was the first Urdu blogger who used genuine Urdu (unicode) instead of image Urdu for proper Urdu blogging.

Actually it was very difficult to write Urdu blog rather than today. But Urdu bloggers continued doing their effort for Urdu blogging and some volunteers happened to join at various forums for Urdu computing; and started to try to solve the problems related to Urdu blogging. With the passage of time people started to create their own blogs.

In January 2004 BBC Urdu started its blog. Eventually some volunteers laid foundation of an online forum “Urdu Mehfil” with mutual consent in July 2005. The main objective of this forum was to solve the problems related to Urdu blogging and for the convenience of lay man in writing Urdu on computer. Thus these volunteers found solutions of many problems by the dint of themselves. The creation of this forum was in fact a revolution in the world of Urdu blogging. New horizon of Urdu blogging opened for many people and a lot of blogs were came into existence. Now there is a vast strength of Urdu bloggers who are writing on various topics. These volunteers of Urdu Mehfil made a platform for bloggers named “Urdu Siyara” (Urdu Planet) and all the bloggers were gathered over there to present their articles on that particular platform. Thus it was very convenient for the reader to have all the fresh blogs on Urdu Siyara on a same place instead of reaching out all the blogs separately, that is called “Blogs Aggregator”. Urdu Siyara exists even today and some other Urdu blogs Aggregators are also available in which “Urdu k Sab Rang” and “Urdu Source” are the most famous.

Some websites also came into existence to solve the problems in creating Urdu Blog. Urdu blog could be created by only several clicks on these sites like “Urdu Tech” and “Wordpress PK”. Famous bloggers of today started Urdu blogging on that sites but alas! These sites could not sustain their existence due to lack of resources. Anyway the majority of the bloggers turned to WordPress and Blogspot after the ceasing of these websites. Some of them shifted to their personal websites and the volunteers kept trying to find the solutions of problems related to Urdu blogging during that period. Now this is the time when anyone can create his own Urdu blog easily and raise his voice in the society.

For more detail about Blogosphere of Pakistan in Urdu follow this link.