Social network users who leave negative feedback are real to themselves (mostly)

Azrael Coladilla will be delivering the User Keynote at the upcoming 2nd Social Networking & eBusiness Conference this April 23 & 24, 2009.

I'm glad that Azrael gave me the opportunity to do this short interview to have a glimpse of his talk and personal experience in social networking.

Janette: What does a social network mean to you?

Azrael: By connecting with people online. Build your own community from a massive network of people.

Janette: As a user, which social networking services do you use the most and for what purpose?

Azrael: I have a lot of social networking sites subscribed to. One of them is Friendster, the first social networking site I got engaged in. Used it to look for old friends. Also connects me to my family since many have an account here.

Then I have Multiply. This is one of the busiest social networking site ever, and where I have my largest number of connections to people. I use this to blog, host my photo album, and marketing space in promoting my events and services.

Facebook is my next largest network and active space for connecting to people; studying the market and people’s behavior; promote and invite people to my events; connect to famous people online and get in touch with them locally or overseas.

Janette: How did social networks empowered you or made a difference on how you conduct your activities or business?

Azrael: Because different people are connected to each other, you will start to learn how to market more your business. By just reading and observing, you will understand what they want and decide if you need to go with the flow of interest based from those people.

The social networking site is a big ground of learning the target market and know their behavior online and offline. I learned a lot from different people especially those I met online and then offline. It makes me pop-up with new creative ideas and concepts that can be applied in my field of work or business.

Janette: Without social networks, what would be the difference for you?

Azrael: BIG. I might be lurking around in some online forums or hanging out in offline community and events.

Janette: In general, how do you assess the way majority of Pinoys use social networks?

Azrael: Filipinos use social networks mostly for making and meeting friends. There is greater potential in using social networks for marketing in the future that includes making a brand stronger and build your own community.

Janette: What should Pinoys do to take advantage of social networks in these times of crisis?

Azrael: If you are going to use the social networks for business, then you’ll be saving a lot of budget in marketing and promotion. It will be cheaper as the target market is already there. No need to search because it has tools to help you filter, connect to people, and even build your own community.

But before you take advantage of it, you must first learn on how to use it and maximize its functionality in the online space.

Janette: What are the biggest issues for you when it comes to the use of social networks? How do you hurdle it?

Azrael: The issue will be the immediate response to negative feedback in public networks. We can’t avoid it because people can express their opinion. We must be ready to answer, explain, and face it just to resolve problems.

The good part is that most people who leave negative feedback are real to themselves. They use their own identity and not afraid to share it in public. The trust will be received easily with this. It can make the social network user bond stronger by talking to them directly.

Janette: What do you want the future of social networks to be?

Azrael: The future will be - people can connect to the social network via mobile. More offline activities will be organized just to make the community alive and active. There will be a time, perhaps sooner rather than later, social networking sites can be monetize by its members.

Online social networks booming in the Philippines

I noticed that there are so many online social networking sites today made by Filipinos. This includes:

• Itzamatch
• Groovenet
• Oyaye
• Great Pinoy
• Katext
• Angeles Jam
• Mabuhay City
• Merkado Community
• Sosyalan
• Kamusta Philippines
• Filipino People
• FlipNation
  

There are also online sites and services today that allows you to create your very own social network such as Ning. Here are some of them: (those with more than 50 members are listed here)

• United Philippines
• Filamerian
• Flipstarz
• MyPinoy
• DigitalFilipino (this is mine)
• OFW Friends Online
  
• Taboan
• Youth Community Service Club
  
• Komsai
• Harry Potter Clan Philippines
• Real Estate Philippines
• Auto Search Philippines
• Human Resource Management in the Philippines
• HivePub
• Buy and Sell Philippines
• GreenWatch Philippines
• Worldwide Filipino Alliance
• LCCians of the World
• ON E-citizen Services Network
• The Bakla Network
  

Another site that allows you to create your own social network is WetPaint. We did not find one that is big enough to be mentioned here at this time.

Will add more to this list. If you know of local social network sites worth adding here, just post a comment. For Ning-based and Wetpaint-based sites, only those with more than 50 members shall be listed.

See you at Search Engine Marketing Conference Legazpi City

This coming February 5 & 6, I'll be one of the speakers at the Search Engine Marketing Conference organized by the Aquinas University of Legazpi. It will be held at the Daragang Mayon Hall of the said educational institution.

I look forward in catching up with Rodion Herrera and Gregory Kittelson, and club member / Busby SEO Test peer Gary Viray who will be there as resource persons as well.

My topic for the said event will be on Marketing Your Products & Services Through Social Networks. I look forward in giving a preview on the various international and local social networking sites and how can companies tap them as a marketing tool.

Local payment gateway providers still strong despite Paypal availability in the Philippines

With the availability of Paypal in the Philippines, that allows receiving money or "cash-out" to a member's bank account, there were speculations that local payment gateway providers will close shop. However, YesPayments claim not to be affected. This according to company CEO Simon Paice. "Paypal has a slightly different focus. It is a great place to start for a small online business. But it is a big market. We have more than enough to keep us very busy. We always focus on providing a quality service but we are not suited to every merchant needs. The level of service we offer comes at a price. Our discount rates are still very competitive and keeping fraud down to a minimum is a great way for a merchant to cut costs instead of looking for the cheapest solution."

2007 was the best year yet for YesPayments. Simon shared that their monthly processing has more than doubled since Jan 2007 repeating the success of the previous year. "2008 looks set to see similar growth and the current interest in YesPayments and online processing generally gives me great optimism that we will see even better results."

A growing number of social networks have partnered with online payment providers to do e-commerce to its customer base. YesPayments had the opportunity to deal with one of them but things do not always work out like you expect as Simon has learned. "Trying to cross market or tap an existing client base is incredibly efficient but you also have to be able to support the product that you market."

"To successfully launch any kind of service online is not just a case of opening and marketing a website. You need the commercial experience and organization behind you to actually operate the business and provide a quality service or product. There are popular and successful social networks but they are not an online retailer."

"Many people think it's easy but e-commerce is anything but easy. We see many applications from entrepreneurs with little or no experience trying to go 'online' and unfortunately we have to disappoint them and advise them to get their business built first before looking to sell on the Internet. An applicant asked me recently how much money he needed to start an online business like Amazon. I wished him every success and spent some time explaining that the 'physical aspects' of any business needs to come first - not necessarily a traditional shop or office but things like the necessary planning and investment, product development, staff, supply and delivery chain. We do not try to discourage start-up business, quite the opposite in fact and I am happy to say that many learn from us and then come back when the time is right."

Simon joined the company late last year, succeeding after Paul Hubbard. He sees tremendous interest and growth in acceptance of e-commerce this year that will make them extremely busy. "We are in talks with some interesting outfits and who knows we may see the government coming to the arena finally."

Chikka open doors to Web. 2.0 and Social Network Developers

I just had a chat with Gio Bacareza who is now the business development director for Chikka.

According to Gio, Chikka has a revolutionary project that would require partnership with web 2.0 and social network developers. "We have a revenue model designed for them. This new development keeps me busy in looking for developers, whether companies or individuals."

Chikka has one of the biggest social network not only in the Philippines but worldwide also. Its social network is based in its community of 40 million buddies using Chikka's messaging application.

Gio believes there's money to be made on the community besides text and advertising. "We're opening up our platform for the developer community to play around similar to Google Open Social and Facebook. The difference we have is that (1) we have other revenue models for developers than just ads: we got messaging, content, subscription services and (2) we provide the bridge to the mobile world."

The Chikka platform is still in the process of completing its APIs and documentation. "The first developers we work with, we will handle closely on a 1-to-1 manner. They will help us shape the platform. When we are ready to open the sandbox, then we unleash it."

Parties interested can contact Gio at gio@chikka.com

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.

Social Networks: More Tools, Younger Market Segment, Altering Advertisement Revenue

For the past two years, we've seen how social networking sites became increasingly popular in the Philippines. It even spurred the creation of localized social networking sites.

For 2007, a lot of social networking endeavors that will be launched online will heavily focused on new niche networks, the pre-teen girls market to be exact.

Digital Media Exchange, Inc., an online game distributor and digital entertainment provider based in the Philippines, has just released its family-oriented website mobiuskids in the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia. The site offers educational games and activities centered on child learning and family interaction. Upon launch, it introduced two popular casual online games -- Disney's massively multiplayer online game Toontown Online and virtual pet game GoPets. The site also has a child-centered social networking feature, arcade game downloads, piggybank, task scheduler, and goal tracker.

Last month, SanrioTown was also launched. New features were added on the existing online community services such as forum and free e-mail as well as download services, new social networking features havebeen launched on Sanriotown, which already has a current user-base of almost 2 million world wide.

Globe Telecom also launched myGlobe IMEVRYWHR integrated communications service. This allows users to share information using a range of integrated voice, messaging, content options, G-Cash services, Share-A-Load service, and AskG search function. Globe Telecom's partner in this service is fastmobile who announced a partnership with Yahoo! early this year to bring its multimedia features to select Yahoo! mobile users. Its Yahoo! Messenger application enables users to send voice instant messages or cameraphone photos within an active conversation.

This is perhaps the way to go in social networking too as it is predicted that there'll be 174 million mobile social communities members worlwide by 2011, according to an ABI Research Brief, and has found that "mobile social communities" currently count nearly 50 million members worldwide. This opens opportunities to monetize for carriers and value-added service providers.

This dynamic growth on the Internet is also affecting advertising spending and revenue impact. Google generates more revenue now compared to traditional TV networks.

Website Feature: FwendZ

Another local community website on the rise is Davao-made FwendZ.com. It is an online social community website that allows its members to properly organize their relationships with each other.

FwendZ members can view each others' profiles, communicate with old friends and meet new friends on the service, share photos, post journals and comments, and describe their interests.

The person behind Fwendz is the first Davao-based Philippine Web Awards winner, Chris Cubos of IDS-Media.

I believe that each community website is unique in a sense that there different active people in each one of them. Social networking has really taken us all on and can easily overwhelm us. However, that is where we have to plan and figure out how we can maximize the use of each one of them.