Philippine Blog Awards set

By Izah Morales The Philippine Blog Awards (PBA) is set to recognize more blogs this year, orga nizers said. This yearâs PBA will give away 36 awards under 3 divisions, namely Best Blog, B est Single Blog Post, and Special Awards divisions, and 15 categories, organize rs said. Last year, PBA only gave 15 awards to local bloggers. "This shows that the Filipino blogging community is actually growing," said PBA vice head and chief executive officer Juned Sonido in an interview. For this year, a total of 600 nominees joined the PBA. About 5 to 10 nominees w ill be judged per category. Blogs will be generally judged based on content design and usability, but the B est Blog Post division will be evaluated based solely on content, organizers sa id. Judges were tapped to choose the winning blogs. However, bloggers and readers a re given the chance to vote for their favorite blog under the Bloggersâ Choice Award category. According to a Universal McCann study, the Philippines has the highest growth r ate in âblogging engagementsâ in 3 years. The country has also exceeded the glo bal average for blog readership â 72.8 percent in 2008 âgrowing form 33 percent in September 2006 to 64 percent in June 2007, and 90.3 percent in May 2008. With more blogs becoming more "mainstream," Sonido said bloggers should now be more responsible for what they write. âEach blog is a representation of your id ea on the internet. Itâs like a kaleidoscope of ideas,â he added. The Philippine Blog Awards is scheduled on September 21, 2008 at the One Esplan ade.