Pakistan Blog Awards

Pakistan Blog Awards was successfully held for the second year running in Karachi.

This year (2011), my blog Life ETC by Momekh won the Best Business Blog award. Obviously, I am happy (as I have been working on this blog).

The award night was in Karachi, and I couldn’t attent – but I hear the event itself was well-organized.

There was another event held in Lahore, where the Chief Minister of Punjab, Mian Shahbaz Sharif awarded me – as another award-winning blogger Adnan Rasool puts it – an award for winning an award 😛 …

It is good to see the Pakistani government – provincial or federal – paying more attention to Social Media in Pakistan.

Two quick true scenarios to show the power of Social Media in Pakistan, including blogs and Social Media sites like Facebook:

1. A lot of Pakistani entrepreneurs are earning some serious profits from successfully doing business on Social Media sites like Facebook. They have a blog and then they promote their products via their blog which they promote on Facebook. More examples here.
2. Imran Khan is now a political and electoral force to reckon with in Pakistan. Only a year ago, he was taunted by other parties to be a Facebook leader! The joke now is, that the other political parties just did not understand the power of Social Media; Imran Khan was a Facebook leader no doubt, but if everyone’s on Facebook then that is where the leaders ought to be too!

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We, as a community, must realize that these are very early years and a lot of feedback is actually necessary to help shape the online community of Pakistan.

I have seen some scathing criticism directed at the Pakistan Blog Awards organizers and although many of the actual points carry weight, the way it was said was quite negative.

Yes, there will be problems. Guaranteed. But we can try – at least try – to come up with a better solution than just bad mouth the organizers, sponsors or judges of the competition.

Of course, I won, so my opinion as such is probably coming off as biased. But I implore the online Pakistani to please take a step back, and decide before-hand to help the online community of Pakistan and then approach these and other events.

Having said that, there isn’t much arguing that the event itself was carried out with ample professionalism. I only wish them the best and hope that they keep on improving year after year. God bless and good luck to us all.

If you have a comment or a suggestion, do let me know in the comments below, or you can contact me via the Contact page. Note: I am in no way involved in the organization of the Pakistan Blog Awards.