Monthly Archives: September 2007

5 Reasons to Attend SEMCON 2007

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SEMCON 2007, the country’s major first conference on Search Engine Marketing (SEM), will be on October 9 and 10, 2007 at the Grand Ballroom of the Hotel Intercontinental, Makati City. The event focuses on how to increase web site traffic, link popularity, visibility, and site conversion opportunities. Aside from the learnings and insights you’ll get from the event, here are five good reasons on why attending the event is a good idea:

  1. One of the underlying themes is how to make money online, a tall order for any big  or small company these days. Tips and techniques on how to leverage on the web (PPC, converting site visitors, marketing campaigns, etc.) for commercial purposes will be detailed by numerous speakers.
  2. You get a chance to interact with global web movers like Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com, Todd Malicoat of Stuntdubl.com and Prashant Mehta of Yahoo!
  3. On the local side, you’ll meet experts like Marc Macalua of SEO Philippines, Problogger Abe Olandres, Elymar Apao of Jozzua.com, Andrian Lee of AsiaPay, and Jayvee Fernandez of b5media.
  4. Network with fellow internet and new media professionals. The event targets interactive & digital marketers, brand marketers, web masters and bloggers. I’ve heard that a majority of pre-registered attendees are upper management folks.
  5. Finally, I’ll be speaking at SEMCON 2007 (*cough*shameless plug*cough*). I’ll be talking about “Mission Redesign: When, What and How?” and “Super Site Clinic – Give Your Site an Instant Makeover” with Marc Macalua and Andrian Lee. For the latter, think Ambush Makeover, Web 2.0 style.

This may be the biggest Search Engine Marketing event in the country so don’t miss it!

Myspace, Facebook Top Social Networking List

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Top social networking sites in August 2007
Unique audience, 000 Growth
Vendor August 2006 August 2007 YTY
Myspace.com 49,178 60,327 23%
Facebook 8,852 19,173 117%
Classmates Online 14,137 15,364 9%
Windows Live Spaces 8,203 8,816 7%
AOL Hometown 9,077 6,956 -23%
Reunion.com 4,292 4,469 4%
LinkedIn 1,678 4,410 163%
Club Penguin 1,125 3,934 250%
Buzznet.com 766 3,872 405%
AOL People Connection 6,025 3,858 -36%
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings

Not a surprising list, but the data from Nielsen/NetRatings tell us a few insights:

  • The big gainers are Facebook, LinkedIn, Club Penguin and Buzznet.com. I use both Facebook and LinkedIn, with LinkedIn being my Social Network of choice as of late.
  • Despite it’s massive lead over the rest, MySpace countinues to grow, although not as high. We could probably be seeing a plateau here soon.
  • I never was enamored with Microsoft’s Live Spaces (although I have an account there), but I am surprised it got that much users. Their small annual growth is a sign Microsoft isn’t getting new users into their fold.
  • The biggest loser is definitely AOL. Losing users? That’s never a good thing in any level or type of website.
  • Obviously, this data is for US market. I can’t seem to find Friendster or Orkut in the list.

My speaking experience at the Y4IT 2007

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I had the privilege of being a speaker at this year’s Y4IT, the annual IT conference for the youth sector organized by the UP Information Technology Training Center.

I was given 45 minutes to speak and my topic was Web 2.0. To be honest, I felt this topic was a bit old, considering that the phenomenon exploded into the IT scene a couple of years ago. But I knew the topic by heart and it was easy to find sources of info from the web, considering the fact that I got the confirmation to talk two days ago.

I started my talk and surveyed the audience about their knowledge of Web 2.0.  I asked “On a show of hands, who has heard of Web 2.0?”Apparently, the topic of Web 2.0 is very new to the audience, with about less than 20 out of 1,500 raising their hands. What I thought was a stale topic turned out to be a fresh subject to them. It’s good for my talk, but bad for the state of IT here in the country.

Thanks to what I’ve been learning at AIM regarding knowing the market/audience, I tailor-fit my talk to be more casual– using pop culture references and using the boyfriend/girlfriend metaphor to illustrate the concept of tagging– to the audience composed of IT college students aged 17-21.

The feedback was good over-all. When I asked the audience at the end of my talk “Did I bore you?” and a chorus of “Nooooo!” came about, I knew I was able to reach out to them. I just hope they now have a better appreciation of emerging technology and when somebody asks them if they have heard of Web 2.0, they will say “Yes” proudly.

Hiatus?

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It’s hard to believe it has been almost a month since my last post here in Standard Web Standards. Is this one of those blogger hiatus episodes we have read about? Well, not quite. I’ve been busy both on the blogosphere and the real world:

  • Real World: I’ve finished my Master’s degree in Information Management at the Ateneo De Manila University. I’d like to take this chance to thank all those who helped and supported me especially during my thesis.
  • Real World: As if I wanted to avoid going back into the industry, I have started my MBA at the Asian Institute of Management.
  • Blogosphere: In relation to the previous entry, I’ve started a blog on my MBA studies. The blog called The AIM Blogger.
  • Real World: I’ve received my Google cheque! Thanks to…
  • Blogosphere: Screensucked. My blog on movie and TV reviews have generated a good portion of my online earnings. It proof that people are more interested in entertainment-related content on the web.
  • Real World: I’m judging again at the Philippine Web Awards.
  • Real World: I’ll also start preparing for the Manila events of the World Usability Day 2007.

As you can see, that’s a whole lot. While I have de-prioritized blogging here at Standard Web Standards, it doesn’t mean I’m dropping my advocacy for finely-crafted sites. Heck, I’m sure there’s still a long way to go.