I’d like to revisit my previous entry about Pinoys being ready for Web 2.0.
A great technology that empowers and enables people is not worth much if the people that comprises the community does not add value to it.
Take for example iBegin which is a local search. Great idea but in order for that great idea to be usable, people must add good/reliable content to it. And I would love to have something like that for Metro Manila!
When Luis launched Oks.ph a few months back, I thought it was just another one of the dozen of Digg clones out there. The line that would have separated it from Digg would have to be the focus – Filipino related and relevant news. In a world of so much noise and information, it is best to build small, focus better and grow from there. Thus, we need more Oks users contributing content related and relevant to Filipinos in order for it to meet its objective and be really usefull.
On the other hand, he has Gibbity which has been getting a lot of exposure lately. The same challenges apply. (Though I don’t think it’s only for Filipinos.) Luis has done tremendous success with HighFiber so i don’t think he’s having trouble with the rest of his babies.
P.S. Anybody tried signing up at Pinoy Web 2.o and try out posting on the blog?
i tried oks.ph… fun actually…. :)
this is the whole point, there are guys out there who has some pretty cool ideas but we need to show them off! present them to the whole world!
Ahmed, when will we see an iBegin version for Manila (and the rest of the world)? ;)
Hope you have something for me too, heheh. ;)
Cheers.
-j
Hurrah for iBegin!
There are a few caveats with what we are doing. FIrst off, we did do some initial db purchasing. Which means we started off with around 33,000 db listings, so it wasn’t all empty. Furthermore, we are in the process of hiring a fulltime manager that will be responsible for both content addition (eg listings, events, etc), and also promotion.
Which brings us to our circle and catch-22 – can’t get users without content, can’t get content with users :) In most cases, the site simply fails to hold and dies. In some cases, such as Digg and Delicious, it catches on with a few users and it starts to grow and grow.
There is also the case of users ranking other content. How can you trust a user? What makes one user trustworthy and the other not? Nasty headaches really :). You can already see Digg is starting to get infested with ‘cool’ links and tech news seems to be just a general idea (instead of the focus).
In our own case (iBegin) the initial signs are *very* promising. We have been dugg 2x times, and are already averaging over 2000 unique visitors a day (and we are exactly one month old today).
And lastly about web 2.0 to Philippines – well Yuga … I have something for you: ;)
[speaking of which, am I the only non-Pinoy who regularly reads and comments?]
Congrats to Luis, looks like he’s broke into the global Web 2.0 scene.