Alvin Jimenez » Food for thought

We surf the Internet. We swim in magazines.

admin — Tue, 11 May 2010 13:47:51 +0000

This ad was published in the May 2010 issue of Esquire magazine. I just had to scan and post it. Reading through this short piece has convinced me even further that the printed medium and the Internet can co-exist. I’m sure a lot of people feel the same way.

These Esquire people. Leaves me speechless sometimes.

The transformation of Spot.ph | Part I

admin — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 13:23:25 +0000

I’m no fan of city guides. For one, I think social networking sites are more than enough to keep me informed about events that I should be attending or restaurants I should be trying. If you had to assign me to a persona, I would fall into the I-only-visit-the-site-for-movie-schedules category. I’m not saying that city guides are useless, I’m just saying that I do not need them.

About two years ago, I wrote a short piece on Spot.ph, one of Summit Media’s first forays into the city guide landscape. Two things drove me to write about it. One was because I used to work there, and since I left, I’ve always believed that they would never ever release a lackluster product. Second, and even more notable, the site was a collaboration between Summit and the new media division of GMA 7.

The second point is more interesting because content has always been a key driver when launching a media product. And anytime one of the largest TV networks in the country has your back, you know content is something you will never have a shortage of. Because of the tie-up, Summit gained better access to the news worthiest of personalities, events, and of course, multimedia content.

These benefits however, were more apt for Spot’s sister site, PEP. The Spot.ph of 2008 was too reliant on user generated information, that it forgot about the basics of simple usability. You can no longer see the old Spot on Wayback Machine, but believe me, it was a mess.

In the two years since I wrote about the site, a lot of my own perceptions about city guides have changed, along with the dynamics that make a site “sociable”. So too have the people in Spot.ph changed. In my succeeding post, you will see how these people have proven that you don’t have to talk about celebrities in order to engage your audience.

What a transformation it has been.

Is Sandbox.ph the next Yehey.com?

admin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:01:21 +0000

With an staggering amount of advertising spend that has been thrown (or wasted) on it, it’s impossible for you to not have heard about Sandbox.ph. Without including any technical jargon or Internet buzz words and phrases, I think it is what it is — a glorified web portal, or a different version of Yehey.com with a dependency on user generated content. More on these in a later post.

If you aren’t Yahoo or AOL, this is one route no one should ever be taking. If you haven’t noticed, Pinoys are resistant to change, even if that change will make our lives easier. Sandbox.ph in lieu of Inquirer.net, Facebook, et al? “If everyone just learned how to use Sandbox, then this will eventually catch on”?

C’mon guys, who are we kidding here.