Philippines, Technology News & Reviews
During a cocktail party held yesterday for several folks from Google Asia-Pacific, the Product Manager from SEA asked me this — while blogging is huge in the Philippines, why isn’t Blogger enjoying the same popularity? I gave him some figures off my head as he wrote it down. And here are some reasons why.
Continue reading ‘Why Blogger isn’t that popular in the Philippines?’
A story from the Business Week reveals that IBM has been encouraging social networking among its employees with in-house versions of Web 2.0 hits such as Facebook and Twitter. A lot of companies are into corporate blogging already but social networking is another story.
Continue reading ‘Does your company encourage Social Networking?’
I was sent this PDF file containing Universal McCann’s Social Media Research for March 2008. The research surveyed 17,000 internet users in 29 countries. It’s an 80-page report that covers topics on blogging, online videos and social networking sites in general.
Friendster ain’t dead yet. They’re actually looking for a Senior Product Manager in their Philippine office here in Makati. That’s according to a recent job listing on Jobstreet.com.ph.
Continue reading ‘Friendster Philippines is looking for Senior Product Manager’
A reader emails in and points to a new site he accidentally stumbled while mis-typing Freindster instead of Friendster (a popular social networking site in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia).
Friendster has really followed in the foot steps of MySpace and snag a crucial partnership with Google. My post on PTB has the details.
Google is turning out to be the great savior for dirt-cheap but massive traffic destinations. See, if it weren’t for Google Adsense, social networking sites like MySpace and Friendster would have vanished a long time ago.
Looks like, I’ll be getting more Friendster invitations for a little while longer. 
That’s what senatorial candidate Chiz Escudero is trying to find out. Check out my short entry on PTB: Friendster, an unlikely internet election campaign arena.
It made me more curious what Regnard said in his talk about “Winning the 2007 Elections in Cyberspace” last month in Ateneo.
I’m in a blogging binge.
Just read the latest two entries I wrote over at PinoyTechBlog:
I just can’t get it over with that Friendster split-up and even our sources can’t squeeze much out of the parties involve. Still, it’s a shame that despite 5 Million Friendster users in the Philippines, they can’t make a profitable business out of it.
Does this not spell doom to the rest of sites running on the same eyeball model? Will PEx finally be the next victim? I hear they’re struggling to even buy a new server for the website.
Om noticed that Friendster is gaining some momemtum recently. I checked Friendster’s AdBrite stats and it indicates an average 11 Million pageviews per day from 510,000 uniques with majority of the traffic still coming from the US then followed by the Philippines and Malaysia. He thinks this growth/popularity still cannot be monetized and asks “What if Friendster could work with a local mobile company in Phillipines, and did a Friendster MVNO?”
A Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) is a mobile operator that does not own its own spectrum and usually does not have its own network infrastructure. Instead, MVNO’s have business arrangements with traditional mobile operators to buy minutes of use (MOU) for sale to their own customers.
As far as I can remember, there’s Friendster Mobile which has been available about a year ago thru Globe Telecoms and Smart Communications. Users are
charged Php 2.00 to Php5.00 per message (~$USD0.04 - $0.10). The revenue sharing between the telco and Friendster would still be in the area of 60% and 40%, respectively.
But does it work (read: earn)? I don’t think so. Even at that rate, it’s pretty damn expensive to use Friendster Mobile than just going to the net cafe and spend Php25.00 an hour to surf. Besides, I suppose these Friendster users would rather use the load credits to directly text chat their Friendster buddies.
Meanwhile, Friendster Classifieds is still looking for a good business model.
From hoop’s blog, is the popular social networking site which every online (well almost) Filipino love, looking for a buyer?
Friendster spokesman Jeff Roberto declined to comment for this story. A spokeswoman from Montgomery said the company could not confirm nor deny whether Friendster is a client.
Earlier this year, Friendster was shopping for a buyer, and according to one source, it was looking for a sale price in the ballpark of $200 million. Now its price has been lowered to the range of $50 million to $100 million, the source said…
… Friendster recently reconfigured itself as more of a dating or personals site, and it has added features like blogs and photo sharing. According to its Web page, the site has roughly 21 million members.
Just like pancakes — sell it while it’s hot! With all that uncontrollable porn pictures and dating/escort requests, they’re better off selling it.
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