By Izah Morales

The Philippine Blog Awards (PBA) is set to recognize more blogs this year, organizers said.

This year’s PBA will give away 36 awards under 3 divisions, namely Best Blog, Best Single Blog Post, and Special Awards divisions, and 15 categories, organizers 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 will be judged per category.

Blogs will be generally judged based on content design and usability, but the Best Blog Post division will be evaluated based solely on content, organizers said.

Judges were tapped to choose the winning blogs. However, bloggers and readers are given the chance to vote for their favorite blog under the Bloggers’ Choice Award category.

According to a Universal McCann study, the Philippines has the highest growth rate in “blogging engagements” in 3 years. The country has also exceeded the global average for blog readership – 72.8 percent in 2008 –growing 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. “Each blog is a representation of your idea on the internet. It’s like a kaleidoscope of ideas,” he added.

The Philippine Blog Awards is scheduled on September 21, 2008 at the One Esplanade.