18 Jan, 2008
Philippines: The Blog Capital of the World
Posted by: Singapore Entrepreneur In: Business in the Philippines|Ideas|Investments
We have always found Filipinos to be friendly and gregarious. If you were to hire service staff in Singapore, you really want to get Filipinos for their seemingly natural disposition towards friendliness and even charm. They seem to have enormous amounts of patience and do not get rattled (at least in front of the customer) when faced with unwarranted animosity. Even when you check out your groceries at the store, they will greet you warmly and sincerely even though they must have been doing that for the whole day already. So you can always tell in Singapore when you’re being serviced by a Filipino.
Surprisingly, it has never occurred to us until now that this same hospitality and friendliness would extend into cyberspace. Only after joining entrecard and seeing the sheer number of Filipino blogs as a result, did we realize just how vast the Filipino reach really is around the world. Truly, the Philippine diaspora has come home on the web. Thousands upon thousands of Filipinos log on from every corner of the globe each day to upload entries about their work, their hobbies, but mainly about themselves. And even if the blog is about making money on the web like Rhyan, the odd Filipino trait to share everything is there.
Many talk about very personal matters, from their families to their search for love, to the friends they’ve made and broken up with, the fights, the follies, the shopping they’ve done, their futile attempt to be interesting, or just the everyday. Whatever it may be, this love for gab and “bearing it all” manifests itself very plainly on the web. Joan Joyce, top entrecard user, has a list of 192 Filipino entrecard users and I am sure this list is outdated. It almost identifies or even defines the “Filipino” & his/her culture in amazing fashion. This is perhaps not so apparent with many other countries/nationalities. Although, we must say that should the Singapore identity be defined by its bloggers, then the two topmost topics are sex, then food, and getting a good deal/making money. Judging from the daily Top 10 at Singapore’s blog directory, ping.sg, this is readily apparent and to an extent somewhat disturbing/sad. Some may say though that this is exactly what the global directories indicate as well (sex, food, money, not necessarily in that order)- in which case, it makes our point that Filipinos have been able to singularly define their culture in contrast to the rest of the world.
So what of this phenomenon? Well, realising this has made us see many opportunities, especially in the online advertising industry. Think about it- Filipinos all over the world, connecting with one another, a very tight-knit, “proud to be pinoy” group, there are enormous business opportunities to tap into. The SMS capital of the World is also the BLOG capital of the World (although its spread out globally so its even better.) And the Filipino bloggers are growing everyday because some think there’s simply not enough Filipinos online yet. Think about that.
We’ll leave you with that business challenge. Can you see the possibilities? We can.
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