A FUNNY thing happened on the way to the Facebook log-in page. Earlier this month, hundreds of users wanting to log into Facebook got “lost” and stumbled into a technology blog instead that had just written about the social networking site. And they couldn’t tell the difference.
HOW do you write about technology and opt out on the latest social networking craze? Simple, just say “no.” Last week, when Gmail popped up a screen announcing Google Buzz, I viewed this as yet another annoying attempt by some company to benefit from a online community I would help create with content that cost them next to nothing. You know, just like Facebook. “Share updates, photos, videos, and more. Start conversations about the things you find interesting,” the announcement said. Not interested, I ignored the large blue button that said “Sweet! Check out the Buzz!” and clicked on the tiny link that said “Nah, go to my inbox” instead.
DO you have a Facebook account? It seems like every dog and his brother is on the world’s biggest social networking site these days. Facebook happily reports that it has more than 350 million active users. Of these, about 8.4 million are from the Philippines, which makes it the ninth biggest country in terms of Facebook users, says Nick Burcher, who has tracked usage statistics since 2008. In Asia, only Indonesia, with 14.7 million users, is bigger than we are, according to the December 2009 figures. The biggest country, by far, is the United States, of course, with 101.3 million users. Surrounded by so many millions of Facebook users, I sometimes feel a bit of a Luddite for steadfastly refusing to hop on the bandwagon.
WHEN Barack Obama used Twitter as a potent campaign tool last year, Filipino politicians took notice. Now, with national elections just a few months away, a number of them, too, have their own accounts with the popular micro-blogging service. “What’s a 52 yr old guy to do the night before his wedding?” posts Senator Mar Roxas, one of the first politicians in the country to sign on to Twitter, on the eve of his marriage to broadcaster Korina Sanchez. “Tying the knot in the age of Twitter is certainly something, haha.”
Digital Life is a blog that features a technology column by the same name that appears every Tuesday in Manila Standard Today, a national daily from the Philippines. This blog gives readers easy access to the column, which started in November 2002. Copyright 2009 Chin Wong.
Made the switch to Linux? Tell me about it here and get your own penguin! Click here for a high-resolution image.
| September 2010 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | ||
