An admin on the TTVNOL forum lamented that since blogs have spread in Vietnam, the number of quality posts on the site has significantly decreased. Many people no longer post heartfelt articles on the forum because they first share anything interesting on their personal websites.
According to the search engine Technorati, there are over 44.2 million blogs worldwide, with 75,000 new blogs emerging each day, including religious sites known as Godblogs. In Vietnam, there are currently no statistics on the usage of personal websites, but it can be confirmed that Yahoo 360 is the number one service.
Not particularly feature-rich, and even somewhat limited compared to Google’s Blogger or Six Apart’s Movable Type, Yahoo 360 “scores points” thanks to its simplicity and the ability to automatically notify changes to blogs via Yahoo Messenger in real-time. More importantly, it is compatible with the photo-sharing site using the AJAX technology suite, which is considered to be the best in the world today called Flickr. Additionally, the number 360 clearly reflects the community aspect of blogging. Wandering through various unfamiliar blogs, clicking on a few links, many people have exclaimed, “Indeed, the world is round” when they accidentally meet friends of friends.
Blogs Tilted at 23.5 Degrees
“Dear diary, I am the unluckiest girl in the world. He told his friends that my face looks like a melon“. Fifteen years ago, a 20-year-old girl expressed such feelings in her beautiful notebook. Now, Hoài, 35, finds it very interesting that young people naively share their experiences online with the opening line “hi everybody,” without even greeting their blogs like she used to. She also decided to create a personal website to repost her past musings. “I don’t have trouble revealing my flaws and mistakes from my youth because I’ve already passed that age,” Hoài said.
The majority of the blogging community in Vietnam do not have a clear focus on their content before creating their blogs. Some set up blogs out of curiosity, to imitate friends, or because they have the opportunity to “write anything they like.” Some even create blogs just to comment on engaging articles they read on various sites. After launching their own pages, bloggers begin to form ideas for their blogs. Many maintain it as an online diary in its original sense, while others turn it into a personal news channel, but there are countless blogs that are left “abandoned.”
“Most of my friends build blogs just for fun and to share resources they have like music, movies, e-books, experiences… with each other. However, diary-style posts still receive the most comments because they inherently have a high emotional sharing quality,” said Ngô Vũ Anh Tú, an IT engineer in Hanoi.
Blogs are akin to music; a high-quality album does not necessarily translate to being the best-selling album. A blogger’s attractive website (or handsome) with entertaining content always attracts a large number of visits and receives dozens, sometimes even hundreds of compliments, while philosophical articles might only garner a few comments like “you’ve been thinking… quite macro lately.”
Content about films, music, and books on blogs is so abundant that some have exclaimed, “everyone is reviewing films, every household is reviewing music.” However, most articles are subjective, praising whatever they like in a way that is “beyond description.” One of the relatively objective and deep review blogs belongs to Exorcist – a nickname inspired by the horror film The Exorcist. With a casual tone and both simple and humorous language, he helps readers gradually discover classic works like The Sound of Music, Casablanca, and songs that live on through time by composers Lê Thương, Văn Cao, and others.
There are also blogs created to document memories of places visited, such as Trang Hạ’s blog, a once-famous writer for Hoa Học Trò magazine. Her site includes articles published in the newspaper, travel journeys, and life experiences. Ngọc Binô’s blog, a student from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Languages and International Studies – Vietnam National University, attracts visitors with innocent, clear, and “lengthy” writings about school and friends, humorously explaining, “In real life, I talk in a long-winded manner like a silkworm dad going to find mulberry leaves, meeting a silkworm mom, marrying her, and having silkworms, so it’s quite a stretch before getting to the point of spinning silk, hence when ‘documenting’ it tends to be lengthy… almost the same.”
Virtual Nicknames, Real Confessions
People can create dozens of Yahoo Messenger accounts, participating in various forums under different names. Sometimes in the same forum, in one topic, they play the role of a gentle and vulnerable girl, while in another topic, they use a new nickname to write with a cheeky tone or eagerly register a few nicknames to debate lively. In contrast, whether participating in VietSpace, Blogger, or 360, few think about forming 5 or 6 blogs within the same service.
That is not to say that forums are not “real” like blogs. Nearly 54% of readers participating in a survey by VnExpress still choose to share information and express their feelings on forums.
A member of the WTT (Web trẻ thơ) forum shared: “Through WTT, I feel like I can sense the loving gaze of a mother caring for her beloved child and empathize with the pain of unhappy wives. Whenever there are family issues, I log into WTT to seek warm encouragement and also console myself that I’m still luckier than many others.” Members in WTT call each other by names like “Mom Tũn,” “Mom Bống,” “Mom Nhím,” with posts revolving around family matters attracting even those who are not yet married. “The topic ‘it’s that simple… but that’s happiness’ recounts treasured moments in the family, yet when reading I can’t help but tear up. Thanks to WTT, I’ve learned many things from delicious cooking tips to how to behave correctly with both sides of the family,” said Khánh, a recent graduate from the National Economics University.
Not everyone is brave enough to admit they are homosexual on their personal websites like a Vietnamese student studying in the US or to despairingly recount their parents’ divorce process on Yahoo 360 like a girl who calls herself “I me mine.” When people need to share but cannot confide directly to friends, and dare not post on blogs, they turn to forums. “Blogs are personal, expressing the self more than forums, as they reveal the personality and character of the owner. Forums are places where you integrate that self into a community,” Tú remarked.
For some, forums are also a vast information treasure trove, such as Trái tim Việt Nam, with knowledge covering almost every field from culture, history, astronomy, music to business and tourism… “I once thought participating in forums would waste time with meaningless spam, but that was truly a mistake. There are many beautiful things to share and empathize with here. I’ve grown up more after reading members’ reflections on QuynhonCity – a meeting place for the youth of the land of martial arts,” said Nguyễn Thùy Trinh, an administrative staff member at an event organization company. “For me, writing a blog is to give and share what I know, while participating in a forum is to receive and learn from others.”
Sharing ‘Luxury’ Information
Unlike free forms like ‘chatting’, participating in forums, opening blogs, or sharing in the Reader’s Corner on many electronic newspapers, many Internet enthusiasts are willing to spend money to buy their own domain names and invest time and effort to create a space of their own. A survey by VnExpress shows that this group constitutes up to 14.2%, not far behind the number of bloggers (19.4%).
Having nurtured the idea of a dedicated website for those who love technology, journalist Lê Duy, who specializes in writing about technology and mobile phones, did not hesitate to invest in ledmobile.net. The operator of this website stated: “LeD Mobile was created simply to serve our interests, and it is also a way to share, update information, and learn from each other in the online world.”
Meanwhile, Lê Thị Kim Châu, an electronics and telecommunications engineer, who has a special fondness for chocolate and beautiful living stories, decided to purchase the domain socola.com.vn. “I plan to learn web design to personally build a common home for friends and those with similar interests. The initial cost is daunting, but still, being able to create and share what I love is happiness,” Châu shared.
Typically, users with independent domains often choose international domain names like .com, .net, .info, .org because they only cost $10 compared to $60 for Vietnamese domains. Currently, the cost of building a personal information page, including domain and host, is about $300. Therefore, if someone is willing to invest in creating a website, that site usually has to take on additional functions, such as product introductions, advertising, and more.
According to Lương Văn Trí, a graduate student in Business Administration at Open University – Ho Chi Minh City, who originated the idea of creating a dedicated website for his class, the website will be the bonding glue connecting everyone regardless of where they are. Each member just needs to contribute 100,000 VND to build a home online with complete personal information like a yearbook, while also managing learning materials, mailboxes, and related news. “Most students in the class support this idea and voluntarily assist the management board. Initially, the site will only serve class members, while the next phase is to create an open educational resource for MBA courses, serving all audiences,” Trí stated.
Hải Nguyên – Ngọc Hằng
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