Ordering instant food delivery online

Back in 1996, Filipinos were able to get their first taste of local e-commerce as Magoos started selling pizza online. If I recall correctly, in its earlier days, there was also e-Kain that serves as a middle-man where various food establishments can have their online ordering needs be served through this site, like ordering Wendy's hamburger online. (Migs and Danny, am I referring to the correct site?)

Lately, a group of friends, some of them are even IT professionals such as Fernando Martirez III, formed HCC Delivers that accepts online ordering of food and be delivered at offices. As business boomed, HCC Delivers now focuses on sites with regular food delivery needs and special occassions.

Today, if my research is correct, there are only two food establishments that offers instant food delivery service: McDonalds and Pizza Hut.

How come online food ordering is not as popular in the Philippines? There are several reasons and here are some:

• Number of food establishments are too many, almost anywhere. This makes it impractical for locals to order food online unless such is the only medium to reach an establishment.
  
• Most online food ordering sites focuses more on international ordering for relatives here.

Your thoughts?

Dreamville: biggest Philippine-based social network?

Last December, I wrote a piece as to how social networks are targeting the young segment of the Internet population. This was further confirmed during iBlog3 when Steve Tsao of IP E-Games talked about their growing Dreamville community.

Dreamville is an avatar based portal in the Philippines using the CyWorld engine. Each user that joins has their own avatar where it can be dressed up through purchase of items. The site has more than 400,000 registered members with a big chunk of them active on a daily basis. I wonder if this number of members can already make them the biggest Philippine-based social network.

Effort is also being made to make its hompies (pages of Dreamville members) community exciting by having celebrity bands have their own hompies online.

Feedback is also sought from iBlog3 participants as to how can Dreamville become more attractive and strengthen its growth further in the Philippines. A lot of ideas came to mind that includes:

• Giving point value for recruitment of members. Points can be used to dress up a site or purchase load in other games.
• For the enterprising, create ad spaces where members can upload ads of their own sponsors.

I'm sure that there are more ideas and encourage readers to share some.

Davao Bloggers Made History!

Let me congratulate the Davao blogging community as they made history last night for being able to organize their first gathering of bloggers dubbed as the Davao Bloggers Party!

It is great to see ideas like this coming to reality and hope to see more bloggers in other Philippine cities and towns getting themselves connected on a personal level, more than just virtual links. Mabuhay to all Davao bloggers! I hope a lot of you will be able to join iBlog3 this April 13 and 14.

Congratulations to the winners of the numerous contests conducted that night!

Here are some of the blog coverage we found so far.

• Davao Bloggers Party
  
• Davaoeño Bloggers' First Get-Together
• The Davao Blog Party #1
• Davao Blog Party
• Davao bloggers offline
• Davao Blogger's Party 1
• Davao bloggers party hangover
• Davao blog party
• Party going and Blog Party #1 - the morning after