Last updated Patrons of an internet cafe browsing a social media site.
Social networking is one of the most active web-based activities in the Philippines, with Filipinos being declared as the most active users on a number of web-based social network sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. The use of social networking website has become so extensive in the Philippines that the country has been tagged as "The Social Networking Capital of the World,"[1] and has also become part of Filipino cyberculture. Social networking is also used in the Philippines as a form of election campaign material, as well as tools to aid criminal investigation.
Friendster is one of the first social networking websites in the World Wide Web when it was introduced in 2002. However, its popularity in the United States plummeted quickly in 2004 due to massive technical problems and server delays.[2] But as it was losing its American audience, Friendster slowly gained users from Southeast Asia starting in the Philippines. Friendster director of engineering Chris Lunt wondered why its web traffic was spiking in the middle of the night, and noticed that the traffic was coming from the Philippines. He then traced the trail to a Filipino-American marketing consultant and hypnotist named Carmen Leilani de Jesus as the first user to have introduced Friendster to the Philippines, where a number of her friends live.[3]
Statistics
Parts of this article (those related to 2007 data) need to be updated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(April 2020)
A study released by Universal McCann entitled "Power To The People - Wave3" declared the Philippines as "the social networking capital of the world," with 83 percent of Filipinos surveyed are members of a social network. They are also regarded as the top photouploaders and web video viewers, while they are second when it comes to the number of blog readers and video uploaders.[4][5]
With over 7.9 million Filipinos using the Internet, 6.9 million of them visit a social networking site at least once a month.[6] At times, Friendster has been the most visited website in the Philippines, as well as in Indonesia, according to web tracking site Alexa.[7] David Jones, vice president for global marketing of Friendster, said that "the biggest percentage of (their site's) users is from the Philippines, clocking in with 39 percent of the site's traffic." He further added that in March 2008 alone, Friendster recorded 39 million unique visitors, with 13.2 million of whom were from the Philippines.[8] Meanwhile, Multiply president and founder Peter Pezaris said that the Filipino users of their site comprised the largest and most active group in terms of number of subscribers and of photographs being uploaded daily. About 2.2 million out of more than nine million registered users of Multiply are Filipinos, outnumbering even nationalities with a bigger population base like the United States, Indonesia, and Brazil. Also, one million photographs are uploaded by Filipinos to Multiply every day, which is half of their total number worldwide.[8]
Sixty percent of Filipino users of Multiply are female, while 70 percent are under the age of 25. In comparison, Filipino Friendster users are between the ages 16 to 30, with 55 percent of them female.[8]
Application in Filipino culture and society
The popularity of social networking in the Philippines can be traced in the Filipinos' culture of "friends helping friends." For Filipinos, their friends and who they know can become more valuable than money, especially when what they need can be achieved through nepotism, favoritism, and friendship among others.[3]
Social networking has extensive uses in the Philippines. It was used to promote television programs like Pinoy Big Brother: Teen Edition Plus with its two profiles on Multiply. A call center company posted job openings on its Multiply community site and was able to attract recruits.[9] The power of social networking was tested in the country's 2007 general elections when senatorial candidate Francis Escudero created his own Friendster profile to bolster support from Filipino users.[10] He eventually won a seat in the Senate.[3] Local celebrities and politicians have since created their own profiles on Friendster as their medium to communicate with their fans and constituents.[11]
Friendster was also used as a tool for police investigations. Local police in Cebu City were able to track down the suspects for the robbery and murder of a female nursing student in March 2008. After receiving information and tips from the public and other police operatives, the local police searched through the suspects' profiles in order to get a closer look at their faces. The police printed the pictures of the suspects and launched a series of police operations, which led to their arrest.[12] Meanwhile, Manila Police District arrested a suspect for the murder of two guest relations officers in Tondo in January 2007 after they were able to find the suspect's whereabouts through his Friendster profile.[13]
Social networks also became a source of high-profile cyberwars, notably between actors Ynez Veneracion and Mon Confiado against Juliana Palermo. The two accused Palermo of creating a fake Friendster profile of her ex-boyfriend Confiado, which is uploaded with photos of Confiado and his girlfriend Veneracion but laden with profanities in each caption.[14]
For his bid for the Philippine Presidency in May 2010, then Secretary of National Defense, Gilberto Teodoro launched an aggressive campaign via the social media. He capitalized on networks such as YouTube and Facebook. He reportedly spent nearly a quarter of his campaign budget on the social media in the Philippines; in comparison to the 15th Philippine president's Benigno Simeon Aquino III – 9%.[15]
Criticism
Filipino-American Internet personality Christine Gambito, also known as HappySlip, criticized Friendster for displaying what she described as "inappropriate advertisements" that appear on her profile. She posted a message on the site's bulletin board addressing her fans that she contemplated deleting her account. Gambito had earlier deleted her MySpace account because she objected to the Google-powered online advertisements that she said "were in direct conflict with the HappySlip brand and especially misrepresentative of Filipino women." She particularly criticized the posting of advertisements of international dating websites that supposedly target Filipinas.[16]
Meanwhile, Philippine National Police Director General Avelino Razon ordered the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group to find out who created a fake account on Friendster using his identity. The profile was laden with false information about him, saying that he "wants to meet traitors, corrupts, criminals so he could crush them."[17]
As of December 2008, there have been cases of spam comments in Friendster profiles, most of which are in the form of a JPEG image masquerading as an embedded YouTube video, with a thumbnail of a sexually explicit video clip, such as a girl undressing herself or something similar. Clicking on the image usually results in a redirect to a dubious or disreputable website, or worse, a drive-by download of malware, such as the Koobface worm. Because some of the users, especially teenagers, who usually log on to the site in an Internet cafe, have only limited knowledge about malware and/or computers in general, such social engineering attacks can be a significant risk. The site had received considerable criticism due to this issue.[18][19][20]
New Campaign
In July 2011, GMA Network creates the new campaign Think Before You Click - a campaign by GMA News to promote responsible use of social media. In August 2016, Rappler initiates the campaign "#NoPlaceForHate" - a campaign that encourages civility when engaging online.
Friendster was a social networking service based in Mountain View, California, founded by Jonathan Abrams and launched in March 2003. The company was sold in 2015 and became a social gaming site based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Before Friendster was redesigned, the service allowed users to contact other members, maintain those contacts, and share online content and media with those contacts. The website was also used for dating and discovering new events, bands and hobbies. Users could share videos, photos, messages and comments with other members via profiles and networks. It is considered one of the original social networks.
The Philippine National Police is the armed national police force in the Philippines. Its national headquarters is at Camp Crame in Quezon City, Metro Manila. Currently, it has 205,000 personnel.
SixDegrees.com is a social network service website that initially lasted from 1997 to 2001 and was based on the Web of Contacts model of social networking. It was named after the six degrees of separation concept and allowed users to list friends, family members and acquaintances both on the site and externally; external contacts were invited to join the site. People who confirmed a relationship with an existing user but did not go on to register with the site continued to receive occasional email updates and solicitations. Users could send messages and post bulletin board items to people in their first, second, and third degrees, and see their connection to any other user on the site.
ABS-CBN Digital Media, commonly known as Digital Media Division, formerly known as ABS-CBN Interactive, is the digital media and internet division of ABS-CBN. It was formerly a separate company operating as a wholly owned subsidiary of ABS-CBN Corporation until 2013, when ABS-CBN Interactive, Inc. was merged to its parent. ABS-CBN Digital Media is responsible for overseeing all of ABS-CBN's internet and digital properties which include websites, mobile and web applications, social media accounts, and the distribution of ABS-CBN's contents to digital and online space. ABS-CBN Digital Media has made many first in Philippine media, such as the first ever TV network website, the first ever Filipino news website, and the first Filipino video streaming website. in 2017, the company was the largest in digital media platforms in the Philippines.
The Manila Bulletin, is the Philippines' largest English language broadsheet newspaper by circulation. Founded in 1900, it is the second oldest newspaper published in the Philippines and the second oldest English newspaper in the Far East. It bills itself as "The Nation's Leading Newspaper", which is its official slogan.
Internet in the Philippines first became available on March 29, 1994, with the Philippine Network Foundation (PHNet) connecting the country and its people to Sprint in the United States via a 64 kbit/s link. As of January 2020, there are 73,000,000 people using the internet in the country, penetrating 67% of the total population.
WikiPilipinas was an online, free content website which bills itself as a combination "non-academic encyclopedia", web portal, directory and almanac for Philippine-based knowledge. Like Wikipedia, it contains various articles on Philippine-related topics. Unlike Wikipedia, many of the articles cover topics that would otherwise be deemed unencyclopedic by the stricter Wikipedia. The service for example, promotes the concept of original research and eschews the larger encyclopedia's neutral point-of-view principle.
The Manila Hotel is a 550-room, historic five-star hotel located along Manila Bay in Manila, Philippines. The hotel is the oldest premiere hotel in the Philippines built in 1909 to rival Malacañang Palace, the official residence of the President of the Philippines and was opened on the commemoration of American Independence on July 4, 1912. The hotel complex was built on a reclaimed area of 35,000 square metres (380,000 sq ft) at the northwestern end of Rizal Park along Bonifacio Drive in Ermita. Its penthouse served as the residence of General Douglas MacArthur during his tenure as the Military Advisor of the Philippine Commonwealth from 1935 to 1941.
HIV/AIDS infection in the Philippines might be low but growing fast. The estimated incidence of HIV/AIDS in the country remains at 0.1% of the total population in 2019. The Philippines has one of the lowest rates of infection, yet has one of the fastest growing number of cases worldwide. The Philippines is one of seven countries with growth in number of cases of over 25%, from 2001 to 2009.
The Philippine presidential and vice presidential elections of 2010 were held on Monday, May 10, 2010. The ruling President of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, was ineligible to seek re-election as per the 1987 Constitution, thus necessitating an election to select the 15th President.
The University of the City of Manila commonly known as (PLM) is a city government funded and tuition-free local university situated inside the historic walled area of Intramuros, Manila, Philippines. It was established on June 19, 1965 and opened on July 17, 1967 to 556 scholars, all coming from the top ten percent of graduates of Manila's public high schools.
Gwennaëlle Ramos Ruais is a fashion model and beauty queen. She competed in the tenth edition of the national Miss Philippines Earth beauty pageant and was crowned Miss Philippines Fire 2010. As a beauty titleholder, she fulfills her duty as one of the spokespersons of the Miss Earth Foundation, an environmental-social-humanitarian outreach arm of Miss Earth beauty pageant.
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Multiply was a social networking service with an emphasis on allowing users to share media – such as photos, videos and blog entries – with their "real-world" network. The website was launched in March 2004 and was privately held with backing by VantagePoint Venture Partners, Point Judith Capital, Transcosmos, and private investors. Multiply had over 11 million registered users. The company was headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida but moved to Jakarta, Indonesia early in 2012 and recently announced intentions to switch to e-commerce, dropping the social networking aspect entirely. Quantcast estimates Multiply had 2.47 million monthly U.S. unique visitors at their peak on July 30, 2012.
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