The World Wide Web finally caught the attention of hundreds of Filipinos. Like the phenomenon of cellphone, this sector is expanding exponentially in the country. Unlike in the past years, people are now spending more and more time online. Youtube, online games, and e-mail are now as common as text messaging. Even having a blog is common nowadays since we already have thousands of Pinoy and Pinay bloggers.
The growth of Pinoy netosphere resulted also in the growth of online social networking sites. We have Multiply, Plurk, Twitter, even Pinoyblogger (for all Pinoy and Pinay bloggers) and of course the two most famous social networking sites Friendster and Facebook.
Friendster
Friendster is the first online social networking website that caught the country, or more specifically the Metropolitan areas by storm. Its main feature is the creation of the Friendster member’s profile page wherein one can share everything about him/herself. You can place your picture; share your favorite band, food, books, and many more. You could even create a false person and trick other people online.
However, the true meat of Friendster is it allows you to connect with other Friendster members and add them up as your friend. You could search your elementary or high school buddies, long-lost friends, kamag-anaks here and abroad, acquaintances, and even artistas and add them in your list of “friendsters.”
During the hype of Friendster back in my first year in college, people are bragging about the number of their “friends” in Friendster. Some have more than 500 people in their “friends” list. Many of them even invited people who they didn’t know and just read their profile online. Eventually, this superficial friendship died out. The strength of Friendster is in connecting people who genuinely and personally knew one another. I for one, limit my friends’ list only to those I have met personally.
Friendster is still the largest online social site in the Philippines. Even though people in metropolitan areas were already satiated by Friendster, the site is still expanding in the provinces that are now beginning to enjoy the Internet.
Facebook
I am just few weeks old as a member of Facebook, but I must say that I am hooked. Aside from connecting with my friends (like in Friendster) I enjoy commenting on posts of my friends. I was also hooked because of the various activities like answering many quizzes and posting anything anytime. Some of my friends are enjoying playing games like Mafia Wars and Pet Society.
Facebook is composed mainly of Friendster retirees and other Pinoy and Pinay veteran netizens. It offers the same things in Friendster like connecting with friends, uploading of photos, shouting up your thoughts and creating your own profile page. Facebook’s main advantage is its interactivity and its page layout allows such thing. You could see your friends’ activities and posts in real time and immediately react on them. As I had said, there are so many online quizzes and games that will keep anyone from logging out.
Facebook is also the choice of celebrities and anyone could easily become their fan and get update directly from them. Even politicians use this site to interact with the people of the World Wide Web.
Friendster VS Facebook
The war between Friendster and Facebook is still the battle between connectivity and interactivity. Friendster is still the largest online networking site in the country. However, many of its old users are migrating to Facebook. I, for one, will not delete my Friendster account because I do not want to lose my connection with some of my friends and miss some updates from them.
On the other hand, I do not want to miss the activity in Facebook and I want to catch up with my friends retiring from Friendster. I also found out that Facebook is more blogger friendly since I could easily post a link of newest blog post and it will be broadcasted to all my Facebook friends. This makes Facebook a powerful tool for many bloggers aiming to reach out to as many readers as possible.
For me, Facebook is the emerging winner in this battle. It offers the connectivity as in Friendster plus the interactivity that makes my online stay worthwhile.
The growth of Pinoy netosphere resulted also in the growth of online social networking sites. We have Multiply, Plurk, Twitter, even Pinoyblogger (for all Pinoy and Pinay bloggers) and of course the two most famous social networking sites Friendster and Facebook.
Friendster
Friendster is the first online social networking website that caught the country, or more specifically the Metropolitan areas by storm. Its main feature is the creation of the Friendster member’s profile page wherein one can share everything about him/herself. You can place your picture; share your favorite band, food, books, and many more. You could even create a false person and trick other people online.
However, the true meat of Friendster is it allows you to connect with other Friendster members and add them up as your friend. You could search your elementary or high school buddies, long-lost friends, kamag-anaks here and abroad, acquaintances, and even artistas and add them in your list of “friendsters.”
During the hype of Friendster back in my first year in college, people are bragging about the number of their “friends” in Friendster. Some have more than 500 people in their “friends” list. Many of them even invited people who they didn’t know and just read their profile online. Eventually, this superficial friendship died out. The strength of Friendster is in connecting people who genuinely and personally knew one another. I for one, limit my friends’ list only to those I have met personally.
Friendster is still the largest online social site in the Philippines. Even though people in metropolitan areas were already satiated by Friendster, the site is still expanding in the provinces that are now beginning to enjoy the Internet.
I am just few weeks old as a member of Facebook, but I must say that I am hooked. Aside from connecting with my friends (like in Friendster) I enjoy commenting on posts of my friends. I was also hooked because of the various activities like answering many quizzes and posting anything anytime. Some of my friends are enjoying playing games like Mafia Wars and Pet Society.
Facebook is composed mainly of Friendster retirees and other Pinoy and Pinay veteran netizens. It offers the same things in Friendster like connecting with friends, uploading of photos, shouting up your thoughts and creating your own profile page. Facebook’s main advantage is its interactivity and its page layout allows such thing. You could see your friends’ activities and posts in real time and immediately react on them. As I had said, there are so many online quizzes and games that will keep anyone from logging out.
Facebook is also the choice of celebrities and anyone could easily become their fan and get update directly from them. Even politicians use this site to interact with the people of the World Wide Web.
Friendster VS Facebook
The war between Friendster and Facebook is still the battle between connectivity and interactivity. Friendster is still the largest online networking site in the country. However, many of its old users are migrating to Facebook. I, for one, will not delete my Friendster account because I do not want to lose my connection with some of my friends and miss some updates from them.
On the other hand, I do not want to miss the activity in Facebook and I want to catch up with my friends retiring from Friendster. I also found out that Facebook is more blogger friendly since I could easily post a link of newest blog post and it will be broadcasted to all my Facebook friends. This makes Facebook a powerful tool for many bloggers aiming to reach out to as many readers as possible.
For me, Facebook is the emerging winner in this battle. It offers the connectivity as in Friendster plus the interactivity that makes my online stay worthwhile.
I'm one of those "Fiendster retirees" but I'm still debating if I should delete my account or not. Sayang kasi. It has been up since the moment I officially became a high school student. It has good memories. And another reason why I'm still holding onto that account is that some of my friends haven't migrated to Facebook yet. I don't want to lose our connection.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit I'm hooked with Pet Society and Farm Town. And all the quizzes are fun to take.
Ako rin. Yun yung first networking site na binuksan ko after opening up my first e-mail address in Yahoo. At ayoko ring isara yun. Di bale, free naman yung pagpapanatili ng account dun kaya di ko muna ide delete. :-)
DeleteNice critic. I do agree with you, facebook makes our online stay worthwhile. You can do a lot more in facebook than in friendster. Or it is friendster's layout that we don't like at all.
ReplyDeleteI heard that friendster is under an advertising agency (or a PR agency, im not sure). The agency's goal is to restore friendster's fun aura to the users.
By the way, I also posted a blog with the somehow same topic as yours. You might want to check this out http://purpleinaction.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/from-friendster-to-facebook/
=)
Yep! Many are addicted to farmville. I even heard it from two saleslady at SM talking about it.
DeleteThat's how popular Facebook is.
I agree with you that the lay-out of Friendster is ugly. It is not blogger friendly.
Thanks for the visit. I will look up your post about Friendster and Facebook
Facebook is better.. A lot better. See how Friendster started copying some of Facebook's features? Also, there's nothing much left to do on Friendster.
ReplyDeleteI was one of the first to move to Facebook among my friends and within a month and a half, Filipinos have started to show dominance once again.
I rarely check my Friedster account now but if I do, I onlh check to see updates and comments from my friends who haven't moved the Facebook yet. Everyone who is viewing me is usually a spammer with cheap names and one photo.. It's starting to become irritating and shows how Friendster doesn't seem to be watching over us and let's anyone just go ahead and make an account.
For the 2 years I became a member in Friendster, I never found my classmates from my childhood international school. Only Filipinos and Asians. I was happy to see them on Facebook and came to the conclusion that Facebook is more International.
Let's just hope the Filipinos don't get too dominant over Facebook like we were on Friendster (yellow ribbon for Cory Aquino's anniversary on the Friendster logo??? Other non-Filipinos would feeluncomfortable with us.. that's probably the reason there aren't much whites on Friendster). The other nationalities need space to and I don't want to come to a point when other nationalities would start to leave FB because of too many Filipinos. As of now.. I've seen more Indonesians but the Filipinos are growing.
Yeah Mr/Ms Anon,
DeleteFriendster bowed down and copied some of the features of Facebook. That is the cost of not being creative and just by focusing on profiting on the business.
However, I do not believe that it is a problem on having too many Filipinos and Asians in a networking site. Should the Filipinos stop joining Facebook so as to make the other nationalities feel comfortable? Should we limit the number of Filipino members to 1 million?
There are people, some of them are my friends, that are complaining that Facebook is becoming jologs because the so-called "jologs crowd" discovered the joy of this networking site. Is your comment of uncomfortableness (sorry for the wrong word but I hope you got my point) applies to this crowd, which is mainly composed of the lower middle class and the poor people of the country?
Friendster decision to allow the dominance of Filipinos in their site is based on its being popular in the country. This is becuase of the diaspora that we are experiencing and the our culture of close knit families. Friendster became a venue for families with relatives that are scattered all over the world to have some sort of connection.
The Filipino dominance in Friendster is a company decision, and that is not a problem.