Here’s the checklist:

• 3 to 5 years editorial experience (includes blogging)
• Minimum 400 friends on Facebook
• Minimum 300 followers in Twitter
• Minimum 200 connections in LinkedIn

Looks like a reasonable criteria which means you need to be a bit popular among social media sites to qualify (I wonder why they didn’t include Friendster). If you asked me, the hardest number to achieve is LinkedIn.

Contact Ederic if you think you have the numbers.

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The additional Php299 monthly plan is only available to Nokia E75 subscribers but may be extended to other handsets that support Nokia Messaging.

For SMEs and corporate subscribers, the push email will also support POP3/IMAP accounts. There’s a 24-month lockin period for new applicants.

This plan may be a cheap alternative to those using mobile email on a daily basis since the minimum charge for Smart 3G is Php10 for 30 minutes. The Php299 monthly unlimited breaks down to Php10 per day.

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Jack Madrid used to be Managing Director of Ayala Corporation, then MD of MTV Asia before becoming Director for Dell’s Consumer Technical Support.

Madrid replaces former Yahoo! Philippines’s General Manager Jojo Anonuevo, who has taken a regional role within Yahoo!’s Emerging Markets business group.

Pretty solid career record for the new GM although a friend pointed out some chatter over at Pinoy Exchange about Dell Pasay being sold to Teleperformance which mentioned him (hope those allegations aren’t true).

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The motivation is obvious — combined search and advertising forces of both Yahoo! and Microsoft could pose a stronger competition/alternative to Google.

Based on recent comScore numbers, Google owns 65% of U.S. core search while the combined Yahoo! (19.6%) and Microsoft (8.4%) shares add up to 28%.

So, for the next 10 years, Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites.

Yahoo! is expecting to earn about $275 million annually from this exclusive deal. On the other hand, Bing will gain access to a much larger search market.

What does this mean to publishers like us? Well, expect that around 1/3 of your site’s search engine traffic will now be under the hands (read: algo) of Bing. So go check your analytics software and see if you’re getting a good chunk of Bing referrals lately. If you’re site isn’t getting any referrals, your traffic could significantly go down once Bing powers Yahoo!

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Parts of the homepage are now widgetized and users can add 3rd party apps. What I liked the most is the Favorites bar which shows a preview of what’s inside the service (Twitter, Yahoo! Mail, Facebook, etc) just by hovering your mouse on the links. And oh, GMail is in there too! You can even add your own blog to the list.

The reboot is only available for the global version at the moment. The Yahoo! Philippines homepage still uses the old layout.

So what do you think of the new Yahoo! Portal?

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One of their first campaign is the Purple Hunt on the Yahoo! Philippines Homepage. Participants will be asked to solve online clues and find items around Metro Manila. The hunt starts on June 2.

Up for grabs are Purple Krispy Kreme doughnuts, Canon digital cameras, Blackberry Storm, iPod Touch, Macbook Air and Sony PlayStation 3. All prizes are custom-designed by volunteer Pinoy artist in purple theme. The grand prize is a Honda Jazz car with custom paint created by WeWillDoodle.

There’s also a Purple Hunt Tour at Market! Market! on June 5-7, Greenbelt 3 on June 8-10, Glorietta 3 on June 11-15 and Trinoma June 16-18. Purple Krispy kreme Doughnuts and Nestle Ice Cream will be given away at the booths.

Sign up here to get updates on the events and the hunt.

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There will be no more sign-ups starting today and towards the end of this year, all existing accounts will be shut down as well. Active users are advised to download and save their data from their accounts.

Yahoo is offering its professional web hosting services to those who still want to continue and move their sites (its the paid service though). For others, they will still be free hosting service to move to like Blogger or WordPress. I guess Yahoo is just saving up some money in this tough times and it looks like Geocities could be burning some serious cash.

I think I had my very first website back in the 90s on Geocities (or was it Angelfire?). In the days before blogging was known to man, having a Geocities account was the “in thing” then.

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Yahoo! seems to have ditched the Yahoo! Go brand and went with Yahoo! Mobile with their new app for the iPhone. Everything is there — from YM, to Twitter to email, including support 3rd party email providers like GMail and AOL.

On the other hand, the Skype App is something a lot of iPhone owners have been waiting for but was only made available now. It’s unsure whether the delay was due to Skype or Apple (similar services like Fring and Truphone were already available for the iPhone since last year).

The apps are free to download on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

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Take note though that the study was conducted from November to December 2008 and only involved 1,200 respondents from 55 key cities in the Philippines. As such, the numbers represented the best possible figures since it only covered population in urban areas and not rural areas. Nielsen also indicated a +/- 3% margin of error.

Here are some of the results of the study with my own interpretation of the numbers:

1. Only 5% of respondents actively use the internet everyday. About 1 out of 4 (28%) have used the internet in the last 30 days. If we apply the 3% margin of error, the 5% daily users could be as low as 2% or as high as 8%. A single digit result is not an appealing number.
2. The biggest concentration of internet users is Cagayan de Oro with 35% of respondents from that area have used the internet at least once in the last 30 days. Metro Manila was around 32% if I recall correctly.
3. Friendster is still the top social networking site of choice. More than half (51%) of respondents have visited a social networking website in the last 30 days.
4. One in 3 Filipino internet users have a blog. If the study meant that an internet user is a person who has used the internet at least once in the last 30 days, then that 1 in 3 can be applied to the 28% above (#1) which gives us about 9% of 1,200 respondents having a blog.

My concern with the study is that, IMO, the sample size of 1,200 seemed a bit small. That, plus the fact that the number is also sub-divided among the 55 cities where they had face-to-face interview with respondents. So, it’s possible that they only had more or less 20 respondents taken from Cagayan de Oro (35% is 7 out of 20).

These numbers do not represent the Philippines as a whole since only respondents from urban areas were taken. Nielsen doesn’t have figures for rural areas but I think it is safe to assume that numbers from those areas are way below the results from above and drag down the percentages signifcantly.

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What I ended up joining is the Yahoo! Top Chef/Iron Chef cook-off with other friends in the media. The challenge was to create a dish with the secret purple ingredient — eggplant. Our winning dish — chicken salsa rice toppings with eggplant torte.

Anyway, I asked Yahoo! Philippines GM Jojo Anonuevo if it’s true that Yahoo! made $800,000 in ad sales in the Philippines in 2008. Although he declined to confirm this figure, he announced that Yahoo! has formed a team to do direct sales in the Philippines — an indication that online ad spend is growing in the country.

More about their announcements here.

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Yahoo! announced today that Carol Bartz, a technology industry veteran and former Executive Chairman of Autodesk Inc. has been named its CEO.

Secondly, Jerry Yang, who has led the direction of Yahoo!’s current vision and strategy, which was unveiled 12 months ago, will return to his previous role at the company as Chief Yahoo!. He remains a very key senior executive at the company.

Lastly, the company announced that Sue Decker, President of Yahoo!, has resigned from the company and will continue in her role as President during Carol Bartz’s transition into her new role.

Yahoo shares (~$12.00) remained stable after the announcement which could mean investors/shareholders expected this reshuffling and welcomes the change.

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Listed below are the top 10 most searched terms/keywords in 2008 from Yahoo (in alphabetical order).

1. American Idol
2. Boracay
3. Charice Pempengco
4. Friendster
5. High School Musical 3
6. Jobs
7. Mall of Asia
8. Marian Rivera
9. MV Princess of the Stars
10. Olympics 2008

If we compare this list to Google’s own top searches for 2008, it’s totally different:

1. Lyrics
2. Friendster
3. You
4. Games
5. Yahoo
6. Youtube
7. Love
8. Google
9. Mp3
10. Map

What’s curious is that people are searching for the term “Yahoo” on Google search. Does that mean that Yahoo is a more popular destination among regular online Pinoys?

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Featured in the newly redesigned Yahoo homepage are huge ads for Mozilla Firefox:

They’re rotating banner ads and text ads all over the homepage, the biggest push I’ve seen so far.

Of course, Yahoo will also be benefiting by having its toolbar included in every new download of Firefox 3.

Could this also be a sign that we’ll see the Firefox Search bar be pointing to Yahoo search instead of Google search anytime soon?

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Ever since Digg went live it has become the primary source of breaking news and great content for a lot of people. However, the audience is skewed towards the west and male demographics (it started out with tech) — a profile that made it famous but at the same time was its greatest weakness.

So what could Yahoo! Buzz do that Digg couldn’t do? Not much really, but let me draw the line where Yahoo! Buzz could make better progress than Digg.

• Yahoo! is mainstream so there’s no skew or favored topics. Every single story or news have the same footing in terms of audience preference. Digg had a hard time moving away from tech and the geek crowd. In fact, Digg still has 98+% male demographics.
• Digg is easily gamed because it’s purely democratic voting (though unequal voting powers) and the Digg management maintains there will be no editorial interference or moderation. Yahoo! is open about its moderation policy. They have an editorial team which promotes stories voted upon by the community (this system was originally introduced by Jason Calacanis on Netscape, now Propeller). That means now amount of friends or paid votes can get you featured unless it has been veted by an editor.
• Digg is an SEO magnet. Need backlinks? Submit to Digg. Even if you don’t get any votes, you still get the link value. In Yahoo! Buzz, this is totally eliminated. Now readers are guaranteed that stories have better quality and stories are not just linkbaits or some viral marketing stunt.
• Localization is the more exciting opportunity Yahoo! Buzz can get involve in. Imagine a blogger/publisher story being featured on a local Yahoo! portal (e.g. yahoo.com.ph)? That’s a lot of value added to Yahoo’s localization efforts.

Of course, this would all be up to Yahoo! and if they have enough manpower to implement this on a country-per-country basis. Still, IMO, Yahoo is in a better position to execute this than Digg.

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Now, Yahoo! SEA is looking for a developer to represent the Philippines at a global hack event — the Yahoo! Open Hack Day at Sunnyvale, California from September 12 to 13, 2008.

Interested developers are required to apply using the attached form and will be judged by a panel of internet and technology experts which includes:

1. Donald Lim, President and CEO of Yehey! Corporation
2. Michael Palacios, Managing Director, Havoc Digital
3. Resty Magno, Managing Director, Admax Network,
4. Robert Locke, CTO Digital Media Exchange
5. Jojo Anonuevo, General Manager, Yahoo! Philippines
6. Sau Sheong Chang, Head of Engineering, Yahoo! Southeast Asia

You can download the Application Form here. Deadline for submission is tomorrow, Friday at 5:00PM.

Yahoo! Philippines GM, Jojo Anonuevo, has posted some notes about this on their blog as well.

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Globe entered into a mobile search partnership with Yahoo! only around this month last year but usage is already considered being one of the most active globally. Unfortunately, the actual figures cannot be shared with the public according to a Globe rep.

This is a positive indication that 3G usage is growing strong in the Philippines. I’m still trying to get how much actual traffic does Globe get via their myGlobe portal and Yahoo! oneSearch. Globe will soon add a zeitgeist of sorts for the top keywords searched via Yahoo! oneSearch.

Disclosure: This blog and a couple other blogs I author are featured on myGlobe WAP site.

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The goal of BOSS is simple: to foster innovation in the search industry. Developers, start-ups, and large Internet companies can use BOSS to build and launch web-scale search products that utilize the entire Yahoo! Search index.

BOSS gives you access to Yahoo!’s investments in crawling and indexing, ranking and relevancy algorithms, and powerful infrastructure.

This is like a turbo-charged Google Custom Search. BOSS will give developers the ability to submit queries/parameters thru a BOSS API to retrieve up to 50 web, image, news, or spelling results in XML or JSON format.

With BOSS, you can basically create your own localized Technorati Search or something similar in a jiffy.

Yahoo has some limited search API before at 5,000 queries per day. BOSS is now unlimited, with no restrictions on presentation and white-labeling (no attribution required). Yahoo is also promising revenue sharing on search monetization in the future. Now, that’s a deal-maker!

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All the cool email names are already taken. With over 266 million Yahoo! Mail accounts (@yahoo.com emails are 3 times more than @gmail.com), the 2 new domains (@ymail.com & @rocketmail.com) will surely ease up on the available nicely-named email addresses.

E-mail accounts under the ymail and rocketmail domains will offer all the same features as the original Yahoo domain — unlimited amount of storage capacity, ability to instant message from within the inbox as well as spam and virus protection.

On the other hand, RocketMail has been in existence since mid 90’s and was bought by Yahoo! in 1997 (I have an old account from 1998 I very rarely used) until Yahoo snatched it up. Took them a decade to merge the two, eh?

One big question — will this help keep people to stay with Yahoo Mail? They already got unlimited storage (compared to GMail’s close to 7GB, unless you fork up $500/year to upgrade it to 400GB) — all they need now are a few more nice email names.

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