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.

Internet Mover & Shaker: Jaime Enrique Y. Gonzalez

In preparation for iBlog3: the 3rd Philippine Blogging Summit, I will do a series of features about some of the speakers who can be considered as one of the local Internet movers and shakers.

Let me start with Jaime Enrique Y. Gonzalez (Enrique) who is the founder, incorporator, and currently Chief Executive Officer of IPVG Corp.

Enrique can be considered as one of the Philippine Internet's successful entrepreneurs as he had a series of start-up internet ventures including match.ph (that is now itzamatch.com) which were acquired by Bigfoot Ventures (NY, USA), and Adobo Interactive which was acquired by Philippine-listed subsidiary of Malaysian conglomerate MBf (now IPVG). Enrique also sat on the board of Edsamail, formerly a leading I.S.P and e-mail provider and previous experience in investment banking having worked on cross border structured finance deals involving investments upwards of $10M USD.

The commercial launch of e-Games last March 31, 2006 challenged the online gaming industry with its free to play (free2play) model under MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) and casual games.

IPVG Corporation (PSE: IPVG) is a major sponsor of iBlog3: the 3rd Philippine Blogging Summit. I'm excited with this development as Enrique will be one of the speakers on this two-day gathering to talk about "Building Communities: One Blog at a Time. The E-Games Experience".

He will speak extensively on how user generated content, blogging and viral marketing techniques formed the foundations of growing their online gaming portal, via its gaming arm, IP E-Game Ventures, Inc. (IP E-Games).

“Word-of-mouth marketing has been taken to a whole new level through the use of blogs, user-generated content and IP communications. With over 3.5M E-Games members, we now manage one of the largest and most cohesive communities in the country. Our company supports the active use of blogs as a community platform.” says Enrique.

IPVG is publicly listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE:IPVG) and engaged in the information technology and communications space. IPVG owns three operating subsidiaries engaged in information technology and telecommunications, on-line gaming, and business process outsourcing.

Call for speakers - iBlog3: The 3rd Philippine Blogging Summit

As already announced, we are now calling for speakers in the forthcoming iBlog3: The 3rd Philippine Blogging Summit. This is scheduled to happen on April 13 and 14, 2007 at U.P. Diliman, Quezon City.

We’d like to invite everyone to suggest themes, topics and speakers for this year’s sessions. You can send your session ideas to: jtoral[at-sign]iblogph.org.

As we are now on the 13th anniversary of the Philippine Internet, there's much reason to celebrate on iBlog3 this year. This is especially so that the Time Man of the Year are the global Internet users.

Help us build awareness on iBlog3. If you have made a post about it, let me know and will add it here.

• I Blog, U Blog, iBlog3 (MagandangBalita)
• 3rd Philippine Blogging Summit (Willy B. Prilles, Jr.)
• iBlog3 (Bo's Bistro)
• iBlog3 (Peter Lavina)
• iBlog3: The 3rd Philippine Blogging Summit