Catching the blog

By Myrna Rodriguez-Co Inquirer MANILA, Philippines--In this digital age, people donât just exchange mobile pho ne numbers and e-mail addresses. Theyâve also begun swapping web and blog addre sses. Having a blog is a badge of honor among serious Internet users. Itâs like sayin g: "I have an online home, you have yours. You visit me and Iâll visit you.â As they read and comment on each otherâs posts, bloggers form friendships and b uild an online society like no other. This is known as the blogosphere, where m embers converse, share ideas, join forces for some common cause, arrange to mee t face-to-face, and, yes, differ and bicker. Bloggers are arguably the crème de la crème of Internet users. Their demograp hy reveals that they are young (15-35), highly literate, and upwardly mobile. T hey are perceived as an influential group that can persuade people, mold public opinion and even sell products. An indication of how influential bloggers have become is the fact that big busi ness has started paying attention to them. Globe Telecom began the trend of gat hering bloggers in product launches and other events. SM Hypermarket elevated i t a notch higher with blogger parties, a blogging contest, and blogsites of its own. Product development and the marketing staff of food companies are known t o monitor food blogs to feel the consumersâ pulse. Restaurants like Portico and Maxâs Fried Chicken invite bloggers to sample their menu and ambiance. Meanwhi le, the number of businesses placing advertising spots on high-traffic blogs is growing as well. Blogging power was palpably demonstrated recently when a newspaper columnist wh o earned the public ire with her elitist remarks against OFWs, buckled down, ap ologized and offered to resign after bloggers started an online campaign agains t her. Already questions are being asked of blogs as a new medium of âcitizen journali sm.â Will they threaten paper-and-ink newspapers and magazines? Will they edge out the more traditional websites? How much more impact can they make on doing business? Blogging wasnât too respectable in the late 1990s, when the first blogs appeare d. Back then, a blog was little more than an online diary or journal of events. It was at first dismissed as an easy, sleazy way of publicly revealing or prom oting oneself. Today, there are an estimated 200,000 Pinoy bloggers -- from about 40,000 a yea r ago -- and hundreds of different kinds of blogs. Many are still very personal and journal-like. Some are philosophical, political, family-oriented. There ar e blogs for every hobby or interest imaginable: sports, music, entertainment, f ood, home, arts and crafts, fashion and style, health and fitness. There are in dividual and group blogs or networks as well as business, professional, technol ogy and advocacy blogs. Many bloggers are frustrated writers who find instant gratification in blogging . âI am oh-so-familiar with rejection slips,â admits one newbie blogger. âNow I have become an author, editor and publisher.â There are, of course, blogs and blogsâand those that have made it. âMaking itâ means different things to different bloggers, of course. It could mean making b ig bucks out of blogging, winning a prestigious award, or simply being read by thousands of loyal followers. Any âA Listâ of local blogsites will include yugatech.com by Abe âYugaâ Olandres, widely regarded as a pione er and master among Pinoy bloggers. Blogging since 2000, he owns many other sit es and portals that earn income for him. Bloggers and readers log on to his pin oytopblogs.com for an objective ranking of the best blogsites by popularity and category. Another blogging pioneer is J. Angelo Racoma, who talks about making money from blogging at The J Spot. He knows whereof he speaks: he left a comfortable 8 to 5 job to blog fulltime. He now works from home as editor-in-chief of an international blogging network, wh ich enables him to hire his kababayans as bloggers, researchers, and web design ers. The Racomas are a blogging family â from the matriarch, Dine, 49, down to the baby, Alan, Jr., 11. Connie Veneracion, who quit lawyering for mothering, founded pinoymomsnetwork.com this February and parlayed it months later into a widely-read electronic magazine run by about a hundred members who exchange mommy stories. Connie, who began blogging in 2003, is also the author of two food blogs, pinoycook.com and pinoyfoodtalk.net. Noemi Lardizabal-Dado, may be a come-lately, but her months-old aboutmyrecovery.com won last year in the first-ever blogging category of the Philippine Web Awards, which used to re cognize only websites. She writes about bouncing back from the loss of her youn g son and translating grief into positive energy through various advocacies, in cluding support for the bereaved. Olandres, Racoma and Dado are all professional bloggers who have succeeded in m onetizing their blogs on the basis of readership volume. Olandres, however, war ns that âblogging is no get-rich-quick schemeâ and that âblogging is for everyo ne but earning from blogs is for a few.â The launching of the Philippine Blog Awards (PBA) this year was an unmistakable signal that blogging has finally come into its own. According to Jayvee Fernan dez, award co-organizer and another master blogger (abuggedlife.com), blogs are judged by a panel, repres enting both mainstream and the new blogging media, on the basis of the followin g criteria: quality of content, consistency in sticking to niche topics, freque ncy of blogging, popularity, and design. The PBAâs plum âbloggersâ choice awardâ was won by Market Man of marketmanila.com authored by a semi-ret ired management consultant who writes about âoverspending in markets and food s hops,â âchopping vegetables for therapy,â and cooking up a storm in his kitchen with a six-burner Viking stove, three refrigerators, and 200 cookbooks.