I Am Blogie

Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, Foursquare, not to mention Flickr, Picasa… You’d think there were too many social networking services on the Web already. And yet, you’ll find yourself curiously drawn to the straightforward and refreshingly attractive interface of the newest one on the block: Piclyf. Today, in fact, I was surfing that single site for more than two hours — which is not a usual activity for me when I’m online.

Piclyf is a welcome addition to the Internet’s burgeoning social media space, and it is admirably focused on its main raison d’être: pictures. You can use it as a photo diary, a “blog in picture form.” If you’re not the type who can write long entries, you’ll enjoy this online service because it lets your pictures speak for you. And like a blog, when a picture inspires it, a conversation can ensue via a rich commenting interface.

What I find unique about Piclyf is the way it organizes your online “friends”. On other social networking sites, you have friends or you have followers. With Piclyf you have both. You can follow people without having to make them your friends, and vice-versa. Your Piclyf friends, on the other hand, are those whom you follow and who, in turn, follow you. Neat huh?

As with most other photo-hosting service out there, you can upload your pictures to your Piclyf account and attach various kinds of meta data onto them. You can even specify some EXIF information, as well as geotag your photo via a visual map interface. Speaking of which, I have an item on my wish-list for Piclyf: automatic detection of geotag EXIF values.

Actually, there are several more in my wish-list. The site is still fairly new and some of the features are still in their infancy, so we should expect improvements very soon. In the meantime, go on and create your own account now! Here’s why:

[What is PicLyf? from Eric PicLyf on Vimeo.]

Piclyf is the product of Twidl Inc., a Davao-based technology & design company headed up by Eric Clark Su.

No, that’s not a typo in the title. Pic Your President is a Web service that lets you vote for your chosen presidential candidate through a ‘picture poll’. The service is made available via Piclyf, “a picture-based social platform that lets people share photos and do visual updates, check-ins and polls.” What sets this Web service [...] Covering the elections: some reminders ## The Filipino Netizen in 2010

There’s a new “new media” publication in town — BlogWatch.ph, and I feel very privileged to be a part of it. BlogWatch, which was launched last 24 November in Makati, is a worthy undertaking that aims to provide news and commentary in the proven style of traditional journalism but with the flair of “Web 2.0″. [...]

Have you noticed the growing number of Filipino companies advertising on Facebook lately? This trend points to two things: 1) the population of Filipino users in Facebook has reached critical mass already; and, 2) businesses in the Philippines are finally grasping the reality behind ‘new media’ and the benefits of online advertising and marketing.

Facebook reports that the site now has upwards of 140 million active users, and that 70% of that is outside the U.S. (I would certainly love to find out the numbers from the Philippines!) And an even more significant demographic that will surely attract advertisers: the fastest growing segment of this population are 25 years old and older.

More statistics to whet an advertiser’s appetite:

• the average user has about 100 friends on Facebook
• worldwide, 2.6 billion minutes are spent on the site everyday
• more than 13 million users login at least once a day (and this probably doesn’t count access from mobile devices)
• 700 million+ photos are uploaded each month
• 15 million+ pieces of content are shared each month

What’s more, Facebook has made it tremendously accessible to publish ads on their site. There’s an easy-to-follow Web form that advertisers can use to create an ad, define its behavior (when to publish, duration and so forth), input the landing site address, and most significantly, set the desired target demographics.

This is something that’s not entirely possible — and is in fact quite hit-and-miss — with advertising on newspapers, TV or radio. On Facebook (and Google for that matter), advertisers can specify which age group, for instance, will be the target viewers of their ads with a certain degree of accuracy. Would you like only married women who are between 21 to 35 years old and are living in Metro Manila to see your ad? Consider it done.

As the number of ad placements from the Philippines rises on Facebook, Google properties, the vast number of Filipino blogs and other websites, conversely, advertising in traditional media seems to be experiencing a gradual decline. The pinch isn’t yet as painful as it is in the U.S. (as reported by TechCrunch as early as last year), but the downhill trend will start to become apparent here in the next couple of years.

As the venerable typewriter has largely been supplanted by the PC, so will the old forms of media become a thing of the past — maybe even during our lifetime. The age of electronic media is firmly upon us, and more people will soon be shifting to the Internet as their primary source of information.

Copyright © 2009, Oliver Robillo.
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