As we close in on the end of the year, I’d like to go back and review some of the more interesting discussions and debates we had throughout the year. One of them is mobile blogging (moblogging) and its future in the Philippine cybersphere.
Back in April, Jayvee, Marc and I were debating on the viability of mobile blogging in the Philippines (see: Why MoBlogging isn’t hot in the Philippines?).
Different viewpoints were shared — moblogging is expensive, there are usability problems and more. My contention then was that Filipinos aren’t really that hot with personal blogging. Later on, I got a tip that Smart rolled out a mobile blogging platform (via MMS) and it drew over 100,000 users. The bait — it was totally free. Well, until they made it for pay and then the people stopped using it.
Fast forward today, where every other active blogger also has a Twitter account. Add to that the availability of cheap 3G services from Smart. And since Twitter Mobile (http://m.twitter.com) is a click away, you’ve already solve all the earlier issues on usability, cost and accessibility.
Does that mean that Mobile Blogging in the Philippines has started or maybe even reached its peak?
Let’s do a quick survey, shall we? If you are on Twitter, do you:
1) Use your Mobile Phone Regularly to Post and Access Twitter
2) Sometimes Use Mobile Twitter
3) Don’t Use Your Phone to Post on Twitter
4) You seldom use Twitter
I’ve been making some rounds doing spot checks on Twitter and I also found a lot of them are not actually updating for months now. Would also be interesting to do a survey on Filipino Twitters and see how active or inactive we are on the twitterspace.
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when I don’t have my macbook, I use my mobile phone to twitter. At least once a day.
I use my mobile phone regularly to access & post to Twitter using Twitter mobile. Several times a day. Since I have wireless at home, it’s often easier to pick up the N95 than to open up the Mac. It’s essentially how I get my news now.
I want to tweet more often, but work policies forbid me. I post mostly through the command-line (curl), never through m.twitter.com, and sometime ago through text (expensive, though).
When I’m in the Philippines, it’s “Sometimes Use Mobile Twitter.” using the mobile browser, either GPRS or WiFi.
I barely use mobile Twitter now that I’m out of the country and have no cheap GPRS.
This is nice!
First time I heard about mobile blogging.
3G and GPRS is still expensive though.
i dont think twitter will last, i myself dont visit it much, theres probably a better solution, its a step in the right direction but not executed properly. somebody just has to merge what all bloggers are used to with SMS
just another fad i think
I twit but only through IM.
I haven’t tried Twitting through SMS — its just freaking expensive.
I follow a lot of people on twitter. I even subscribed to updates via SMS once until deleting the twits became more of a chore, what with the spam twitter tools subscribers had been sending. I still access m.twitter.com daily, before retiring to bed, with Smart’s 3G. It makes me sleep better. Ok, not, but reading twits has become a nasty habit for me.
twittering thru sms doesn’t need to be expensive anymore.
use our local gateway, costs is the same as a regular sms msg which should be at most P1.00 if i’m not mistaken.
follow
http://twitter.com/phtwitters
for more info.
happy holidays !