Wednesday, May 28, 2008

2.3 Million Active Filipino Internet Users Have Started a Blog

This according to the Universal McCann Report Wave 3 report (March 2008) that tracks social media growth. The following are the snapshots it gave in so far as blogging, social networking, and social media growth in the Philippines is concern:
  • There are 3.7 million active Internet users

  • 90.3% or 3.3 million read blogs
    • 64% in 2007 (June)
    • 33% in 2006 (September)

  • 45.2% or 1.6 million subscribed to an RSS feed.

  • 64.9% or 2.3 million have started their own blogs
    • 41% in 2007 (June)
    • 14.1% in 2006 (September)

  • 83.1% or 3 million created a profile on a new social network.

  • 86.4% or 3.14 million uploaded photos in a photo sharing website.

  • 60.5% or 2.2 million have uploaded videos on a video sharing website.

  • 98.7% or 3.6 million watch video clips online.
    • 60.7% in 2007 (June)
    • 39.% in 2006 (September)

  • 61.8% or 2.3 million have downloaded a podcast
    • 26.4 in 2007 (June)
    • 8.3% in 2006 (September)

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Philippine Internet Pioneers: Dong Secuya and Jan Ced

Dong Secuya is considered as one of the Internet pioneers in Cebu creating some of the first local website in 1995 the Cebu Art Gallery. It was also the first art gallery site in the Philippines. He also created the site Make it Cebu! promoting the region as a tourist destination.I met Dong last week during the E-Commerce / E-Business Owners Meet-up in Cebu.

Today, this pioneer is more known for his PhilBoxing and Pacland website promoting Philippine boxing and prominent boxer Manny Pacquiao.

On a related story, Bariles Republic has an interesting feature on Jan Ced, the person who brought the Internet in General Santos City.

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Share your first website

This post from Gadgetopia and CMS Report inspired me to take the opportunity of asking you to share your first website.

I'd like to encourage those who has designed a web page to find the oldest site in the Wayback Machine archive that you authored and post the link in the comment portion of this post. It will be great if you can share any background story about the website.

The first site I created was Infotech back in June 1997 (or was it 1996, I can't exactly remember now). I created this site using Microsoft Word then. Infotech was the title of my first bulletin board forum, majordomo mailing list, and Yahoo Groups. I decided to let it go after a few years since my site always gets confused with traditional publications. To the point it reached the question, who copied who?

My first online bookstore (ITCC) went online last December 1998. I remember scanning the books one by one and typing their description. I was using a 386 PC that has a paper white monitor. Still using Microsoft Word at that time to create the website. I decided to stop the site when I can't solve my payment gateway concerns then and most orders came from abroad. One good thing that came out from it was - I met Jessica Zafra and got featured in the TV program Usapang Business. I was president of the Philippine Internet Commerce Society also at that time and saw the need to be an online / e-commerce entrepreneur myself.

The first time I used a Content Management System (CMS) was for DigitalFilipino.com (year 2000 version) that went live back in 1999. This was done with the help of Integrated Technologies who was building a CMS then and needed a site that can be used to test the design. It took 9 months to fully develop it. What I missed about it are features like glossary, keywords tracking in search engine, among others.

I hope you'll share your first website story too. Here are some who have:
Looking back Internet history, The E-Mail Company, Chuck Gardner's Cyberbayan, and Portal Inc. were the first in creating websites online and provided content.