Catching the blog

By Myrna Rodriguez-Co
Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines–In this digital age, people don’t just exchange mobile phone numbers and e-mail addresses. They’ve also begun swapping web and blog addresses.

Having a blog is a badge of honor among serious Internet users. It’s like saying: “I have an online home, you have yours. You visit me and I’ll visit you.”

As they read and comment on each other’s posts, bloggers form friendships and build an online society like no other. This is known as the blogosphere, where members converse, share ideas, join forces for some common cause, arrange to meet face-to-face, and, yes, differ and bicker.

Bloggers are arguably the crème de la crème of Internet users. Their demography reveals that they are young (15-35), highly literate, and upwardly mobile. They 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 business has started paying attention to them. Globe Telecom began the trend of gathering bloggers in product launches and other events. SM Hypermarket elevated it 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 to monitor food blogs to feel the consumers’ pulse. Restaurants like Portico and Max’s Fried Chicken invite bloggers to sample their menu and ambiance. Meanwhile, 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 who earned the public ire with her elitist remarks against OFWs, buckled down, apologized and offered to resign after bloggers started an online campaign against her.

Already questions are being asked of blogs as a new medium of “citizen journalism.” 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 wasn’t too respectable in the late 1990s, when the first blogs appeared. 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 promoting oneself.

Today, there are an estimated 200,000 Pinoy bloggers — from about 40,000 a year ago — and hundreds of different kinds of blogs. Many are still very personal and journal-like. Some are philosophical, political, family-oriented. There are blogs for every hobby or interest imaginable: sports, music, entertainment, food, home, arts and crafts, fashion and style, health and fitness. There are individual and group blogs or networks as well as business, professional, technology and advocacy blogs.

Many bloggers are frustrated writers who find instant gratification in blogging. “I am oh-so-familiar with rejection slips,” admits one newbie blogger. “Now I have become an author, editor and publisher.”

There are, of course, blogs and blogs—and those that have made it. “Making it” means different things to different bloggers, of course. It could mean making big bucks out of blogging, winning a prestigious award, or simply being read by thousands of loyal followers.

Any “A List” of local blogsites will include yugatech.com by Abe “Yuga” Olandres, widely regarded as a pioneer and master among Pinoy bloggers. Blogging since 2000, he owns many other sites and portals that earn income for him. Bloggers and readers log on to his pinoytopblogs.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, which enables him to hire his kababayans as bloggers, researchers, and web designers. The Racomas are a blogging family – 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 recognize only websites. She writes about bouncing back from the loss of her young son and translating grief into positive energy through various advocacies, including support for the bereaved.

Olandres, Racoma and Dado are all professional bloggers who have succeeded in monetizing their blogs on the basis of readership volume. Olandres, however, warns that “blogging is no get-rich-quick scheme” and that “blogging is for everyone but earning from blogs is for a few.”

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 Fernandez, award co-organizer and another master blogger (abuggedlife.com), blogs are judged by a panel, representing both mainstream and the new blogging media, on the basis of the following criteria: quality of content, consistency in sticking to niche topics, frequency of blogging, popularity, and design.

The PBA’s plum “bloggers’ choice award” was won by Market Man of marketmanila.com authored by a semi-retired management consultant who writes about “overspending in markets and food shops,” “chopping vegetables for therapy,” and cooking up a storm in his kitchen with a six-burner Viking stove, three refrigerators, and 200 cookbooks.

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