SMART Extends its Facebook Mobile App for Java Trial All the Way Till October 31

They said it was going to be free. And they were right. They said the free trial was going to last until October 14. But in that case, they were absolutely wrong. Because in a dramatic turn of events, tantamount to a mobile internet product manager momentarily taking leave of his senses, SMART’s Facebook for Java Mobile App free trial has been extended all the way till the end of the month, to October 31.

That’s right, Facebook nation. If you belong to the smartphone-deprived 95% of the nation’s mobile phone population, why let the upper 5% have all the fun – the fun of using mobile apps for social networking that is.

Facebook’s Mobile App for Java allows the previously lowly feature phone – who just happens to have mobile internet, a web browser, and the ability to run java apps – to run a full featured app from Facebook itself. Thus giving feature phone users a taste of the convenient app-driven mobile lifestyle enjoyed by the upper crust with their iPhones, Androids, Blackberries and other tools of the capitalist class.

Forget those graphics-challenged Facebook Zeroes. The Facebook Mobile app for Java is a full fledged Facebook client. Users can manage status updates, leave comments, reply to comments, check notifications, read and respond to private inbox messages, “Like”, upload photos, view photo albums, and all the accoutrements  of a Facebook app, using the phone you already own – which based on studies is most likely to be the feature phone you already use for texting and calling. Facebook claims 2,500 Java capable handsets are supported. A partial listing of compatible phones compiled by Facebook is posted on SMART’s Facebook app FAQ page here.

And best of all it’s FREE – free to download, free to use by SMART customers, until October 31. Thanks to a close partnership with Facebook, SMART has decided to offer this for free for a limited period. No internet charges to pay, just download, install, and Facebook away. Greet your friends, leave a funny comment, take a photo, spread a meme. You can absolutely go to town with this – right till October 31.

Complete details of the offer are posted here.

In a nutshell, let’s assumed you checked out your phone, established that it has a web browser (and can thus access the internet). Just to be on the safe side you can test it by accessing the Smart mobile portal at m.smart.com.ph – go on try it, that’s free (no internet charges).

Having established that, you can get the Facebook mobile app download link by texting FB to 211. This sends a free SMS to the phone with the link to http://fbapp.smart.com.ph (well the SMS does save you the trouble of typing that).

And here’s a video that explains what its all about if, like me, you happen to like videos.

 

Pedring 2011: Rain, Flood, Power Failure, Mobile Network breakdown, and Social Media

On September 25, 2009, Typhoon Ondoy lashed Metro Manila and plagued it with wind, rain, floods and power failures. Mobile networks (mainly Globe) went down, causing communications breakdown. And social media took center stage as people plugged into the networks, reporting news, finding news, generating Tweets, Facebook updates, sharing media, and creating homespun disaster reporting networks.

On September 27, 2011, in an eerie coincidence almost two years to the date, practically all of the above repeated itself, only this time the typhoon was called Pedring.

Roxas Boulevard covered with water - Twitpic by @itsmechiniego

Once again, I got all of my news through digital social media, through SMS, on mobile internet, and on the social networks. Very early in the morning, the office sent an SMS broadcast to all employees – no need to go to work today, just stay home, and stay safe. What’s going on, I asked, how is everybody? Years ago, I would stay glued to AM radio and the TV news channels. Nowadays, I bring up the Twitter app on my phone and scan the feed. Why wait for commentators and news anchors? Social media is more immediate.

Twitter, Facebook, joined this year by Google+, all served as the primary source of information by the digital generation. Trees knocked down in the neighborhood? Rooftops whizzing by? No mobile phone service in your area? Power down? Is it flooded where you are? People took to reporting the news by themselves with a speed that professional news organizations struggled to match.

Certain incidents stood out as we monitored the people-powered newsfeeds. Roxas Boulevard is flooded! Check the Twitpics and the YouTube clips for confirmation.

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Billboards crushed cars on Buendia! There’s a YouTube clip for that.

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The Sofitel Hotel got flooded! The Sprial restaurant – site of many a memorable buffet dinner – was under water. Proof? There’s a Twitpic or Yfrog photo for that:

Here’s a photo of the flooded Sofitel (posted on Yfrog by Jerick Bautista, hotel employee):

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Here’s another photo by Jerick Bautista of the floodwaters swamping the back of the Sofitel Hotel.

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There was the inevitable meme. Floods everywhere, hey did anyone inform Christopher Lao? Was he informed? And just like that, Christopher Lao trended once again on Twitter for a brief spell.

Hey how could we help? Check out the Philippine Red Cross Twitter feed for details.

As in Ondoy, DIY crowdsourced disaster reporting mechanisms popped up, allowing people online to report critical areas needing help. The best one I saw was the Typhoon Pedring Crisis Map on Crowdmap.com. It even has a handy list of Emergency Hotlines .

And then there were the commentaries.Two years after Ondoy, did we learn anything new? Are we more prepared for disasters than before?

When the worse of the typhoon was over, I suddenly remembered I had a television set. I turned it on to ANC. The 24-hour news channel was rehashing all the info, reports and video clips I had already seen on social media sites.

The best Typhoon video coverage wasn’t captured by television news crews: it was uploaded on YouTube, shot by ordinary people on phones and small cameras.

At what point did the idea of a 24-Hour TV News Channel get so outdated?

Video: How to install the Facebook Mobile app on SMART

In response to one of the more common Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about using the Facebook Mobile app on the SMART network, the SMART customer care group produced and uploaded this video on their YouTube channel.

This hopefully should be a clear procedure for any but the densest of individuals:

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Another Frequently Asked Question is, is my phone supported? After all, Facebook claims support for 2,500 Java-compatible phones. Facebook has provided a list of for operators of the most commonly supported phones, which you can view here. 

Rise of the Feature Phones: the “Dumb Phone” gets its due

The rollout of new java applications like Facebook for Every Phone has brought the spotlight back on “feature phones” – which in one way are the internet phones that everyone had (or still have) prior to to the coming of age of iPhones and Androids.

Of course defining what a “feature phone” is in 2011 is always a problem. My own quick and dirty definition is – a feature phone is a phone that can connect to the mobile internet (and has some relatively advanced amenities like a camera (or a front facing camera) and the ability of apps. The camera is the dead giveaway – it almost always implies that the screen is color  (after all, who wants to look at monochrome photos?).

The ability to take photos implies the phone can transmit the photos via MMS – which in turn implies that the phone has a mobile internet connection – either via GPRS (2G), EDGE (2.5G) or UMTS (3G). And the phone has a built web browser and can run apps. Usually J2ME or Java apps – after all, that color screen implies gaming, and a way to get new games into the phone – hence Java games.

What a “feature phone” is is not a “smartphone” – which sport more powerful processors (and are often more powerful than the desktop computers of decades past), have multitasking operating systems, and can subsequently run more powerful apps – the iPhone is the most common archetype – and in its wake you can now lump Androids, Blackberries, and minor players like Windows Phone and WebOS in the smartphone camp.

Since they’re not “smart”, feature phones are sometimes called “dumb phones” – but don’t tell that to their faces.

Some previously Smart Phones have become “dumber” over time, because the competition has totally leaped frogged over them.

A case in point was my first “smartphone” – a Nokia E71 running the Symbian Series 60 3rd edition operating system. Back in its day, it was considered a smartphone, but as the years went by, Series 60 phones have become “dumb” in comparison to modern smartphones and are often considered Feature Phones. With Nokia junking Symbian in favor of Windows Phone 7 as its primary smartphone OS, the final nail in the coffin was pounded in.

Now you can kick as much sand as you want at the faces of feature phones, but the reality is that there are just so much more of them around than smartphones.

In countries like the Philippines, mobile penetration is relatively high (93% according to some studies) but smartphone penetration is still down to the single digits. This leaves the vast majority of the population using feature phones or worse, non-internet capable phones who are limited to SMS.

Feature phone population can also be said to be growing, rather than shrinking. Instead of being limited to older model phones being replaced by newer “smarter” models, the market is being inundated with low-cost China-made phones using the “MTK” chipsets from Taiwanese companies like Mediatek.

These phones, carrying local brand names like MyPhone, Cherry Mobile, and Torque have effectively challenged Nokia in the low-end. While the bulk of their MTK models are basic SMS-only models, their “high end” can connect to the internet and can run java apps – hence fit the classic definition of feature phones.

So it’s a no-brainer, the fastest way to mobile internet growth in the Philippines? Feature phones. There are just so many of them out there, they can’t be ignored.

The challenge is getting users of these phones to turn on their internet capabilities and start using feature phone apps. The new Facebook Mobile apps for java phones is one path – and then of course there is the very capable Operamini browser, which has its roots firmly set in the java featurephone camp.

In the next series of blog posts, I’ll be leaving my smartphone fanboy hat at the door and will be exploring the world of the entry level mobile internet – feature phones, the apps that run on them, and low-budget ways for hooking up to the mobile internet.

Facebook Mobile app for Java: FREE Access on SMART

Update: Thie free trial ended October 31. Service is still available at just P10/day.  Read all the details here. 

In response to some recent Tweets I made, I received a few questions from people curious about SMART’s free offer on Facebook. Yes, it’s true that the Facebook Mobile app for java phones is offered for free on SMART. That means, free to download and free to use – Internet charges are waived. After hearing enough of these questions, I decided to write it down here for a ready reference for anyone curious.

“Facebook for All”

SMART just launched a “Facebook for All” campaign which offers pinoys different ways to access Facebook on Mobile depending on your budget and the mobile technology available to you.

Why Facebook? Like it or not, Facebook represents the Internet to many Filipinos. Based on the latest stats, over 25M Filipinos are on Facebook. Considering there’s an estimated total of 26M online Filipinos,  that’s over a 90% penetration of the PH online population. In fact, Comscore rates the Philippines as#1 worldwide in terms of Facebook penetration.

And now the Facebook communication experience can be made more mobile for more Filipinos.

One of the Facebook services offered in the lineup is the new Facebook Mobile app for java phones. Through SMART’s partnership with Facebook, data access for users of this app on SMART is FREE for a 3-month trial period (ending October).

This brings the “Facebook App” experience of smartphone users (typically on Android, iOS, and Blackberry) available to feature phone users, and at no cost to try it out.

Facebook also refers to this as “Facebook For Every Phone” in its international campaign, and this was rolled out globally on the week of July 12. This app runs only on java handsets for now. Here’s the video that Facebook released for this that explains the vision for this type of app:

So what’s a Feature Phone? 

Feature phones are typically Java-capable (can run Java apps like games) and can access the mobile internet, but don’t have full-fledged smartphone operating systems. Smartphone use is still tiny in the Philippines (single digit market shares), while Feature Phones have been around since the heyday of MMS.

This is a wide range of phones (Facebook claims 2,500 models) that includes old favorites like Nokia Series 40, Nokia Series 60, Sony Ericsson, and those new inexpensive China-made MTK phones from the likes of MyPhone, Cherry Mobile, etc.

Here’s a step-by-step procedure for installing the free app on a java-capable feature phone on SMART:

1. First of all make sure the phone is set up to access the Internet.

2. Text the command “FB” to 211

3. You will receive a free text with the download link (http://fbapp.smart.com.ph)

4. On many phones, you can just click on the URL in the SMS to connect to the download link.

5. Your java phone will download the app (a small file, around 120KB) and install it. On SMART this download is “zero-rated”, aka FREE.

6. Locate and Run the app. (depending on what phone you have this will be installed in a folder like “games”, “Installed” etc.)

7. Here’s what the app looks like running on my antique Nokia 6680:

8. Using the app is FREE during the 3-month trial period. Keep it on as long as you want.

9. As long as you’re using the Facebook features (newsfeed, comments, likes, photos, etc) use of the app is free. If you try to access 3rd party applications available in the program – this will lead you out of the Facebook app and you may be charged for access – there will be a warning shown on your screen if you venture out of the free zone.

As long as you stick to the Facebook features – you should have no worries about charging and you can continue to use the app for Free.

Update: Here’s a video that demonstrates how to install the app on SMART.

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Update: Here is a phone compatibility listing in Google Docs directly maintained by Facebook. You can check this list to see if your phone is compatible with the app.  If not, you can still try it out yourself.  Facebook claims “2,500 phones”.

Reeling in the Years: Raiding the PhilMusic Archives

Our home baked music site PhilMusic.com has gone through several stages of evolution in its 15 or so years of existence.

It started as a mailing list (then referred to as a “listserv”) on the local ISP iPhil in 1996 before becoming a full-fledged web domain. It then went through another round of evolution as a website, from an online music magazine (actually more like a music blog in today’s sense, before the word “blog” was even invented) from 1996 to 2004 — to today’s musician-oriented community forum.

As a new media destination site for the band-dominated music scene of the the era, PhilMusic pioneered some things taken for granted today – the music artist chat event, an event calendar known as a “gig guide”, online concert photography galleries, the site podcast, and long articles and reviews that would probably have looked great in print but were dedicated to the online medium.

Since 2005, today’s PhilMusic.com Forum (talk.philmusic.com)  is more familiar to local musicians as the defacto place to find great deals in music gear. Looking to sell your guitar or want to swap stories about the best effects boxes with fellow guitarists? The PhilMusic Forum is the place.

This community identity may not be ideal for people who still miss the old music-journalism persona of the site, but in today’s net scene, every band already has their own site or social media account plugging their own gigs, and publishing their own content and photos. Having a third party join in would just add to the new media clutter. Besides, every local band out there already has its own Facebook page, and probably a Twitter account as well.

Speaking of Facebook, as of Feb 2011, you can now add another stage of evolution: PhilMusic the Facebook Page. Rather belatedly, The PhilMusic Facebook Page went up in Feb 2011 to serve as the official online presence of the site on Facebook. You can find the page through the URL http://facebook.com/philmusic.dotcom .

Facebook Pages  makes perfect sense for all sorts of corporations and media companies nowadays.The amount of people you can reach on it is staggering (22M Filipinos at last count), and the engagement is amazing.

Content posted on Facebook gets more hits than if they were just placed online on a stand alone website. Then there’s that whole social notion of “Liking” and sharing content, which drives eyeballs back to the original content sources better than the old darling of the blogging community – Search Engine Optimization (SEO) –  ever could. And since there’s no cost to hosting on Facebook – the combination is irresistible.

What to put in a Facebook edition of PhilMusic? After stumbling on a couple of old drives filled with old PhilMusic content – made up of photos, videos and features articles from the site’s “online magazine era”, some of which had been previously published online, some of which had never been seen by the public – I decided to sift through these old files and repost some of these on the Facebook page. People can then freely share these with their contacts.

So there’s the page’s reason for existence: A place to highlight material from PhilMusic’s archives.

A visit to the PhilMusic Facebook page today is a bit like a trip through a time machine. You’ll see images from a performance that took place in 2005, or read a review of a “new” artist that was originally published in 1999. But you’ll see this through the eyes of a modern Facebook user, using the online photo and video display and “like”, commenting, and sharing social functions of today.

So come join us and sift through bits and pieces of music history of the recent past. With 15 years of local music-oriented content to go through, you’re sure to bump into some gems.

The new-fangled social media touchpoints… “Like” or “Follow” PhilMusic on these links!

PhilMusic on Facebook: http://facebook.com/philmusic.dotcom

PhilMusic on Twitter: http://twitter.com/philmusic

The Philippines as a Facebook Nation: We passed 20 Million in 2010, We’re #5 in the World.

Determining the Philippine Internet population has traditionally been a tale of chasing the “guesstimates”. The closest we had to a scientific effort to nail the figure were the studies published by the market research company AGB Nielsen. In 2009, they announced a figure of 20 Million online Filipinos that year, with a projected run up to 30 Million by 2012.

How Nielsen arrives at those projection is always a bit of mystery to me (surveys? projections?), but given the state of the Net in the PH, that might be understandable. Internet access isn’t just measured in terms of Internet ISP accounts since home usage is low (the usual scapegoat – low PC ownership is the oft-cited culprit), but Filipinos access the Internet in alternative ways, through cybercafes, school labs, offices, and mobile phones. The recent phenomenon of the USB dongle – inexpensive 3G modems with prepaid accounts that you can purchase on your own – adds another dimension to the equation. The dongles gives people their own unique “Internet key”. Even if they don’t own a personal computer, they can walk over to their friend’s laptop and plug in, and voila – instant netizen.

But there could be more reliable stats, and that could be in the form of the Facebook numbers coming right out of Facebook’s own advertising API. Facebook calculates the number of unique users for a country based on a combination of IP addresses and registration profile info. The Ad API presents these figures to the user when you select the option to advertise on Facebook. One of the most convenient aspects of this self-service method is that it takes the guesswork out of targeting an ad buy  - you can select a very specific demographic (such as all single males in the Philippines 18-24 years old), or you can select “all” for everybody in the country. The “All” selection returns the number of all users in the country.

The independent Facebook tracking service SocialBakers (formerly known as Facebakers) plugs directly into the Facebook Ad API and uses it as the basis for its country statistics. As far as the Philippines is concerned, we are now clocking in at 21,759,280 users as of today, for a penetration of 21.78% of the total population.

This puts the Philippines among the Top 5 countries on Facebook. And with our high growth rate, (6.2 Million users were added in the last 6 months) we’re #5 on the charts with a bullet!

When you drill deep into the PH stats, Socialbakers turns up all sorts of interesting profile info, like the male/female ratio (48% male, 52% female) and age distribution (44% of users are 18-24 years old).

If we consider Facebook to have a significant market share among Filipino Internet users (It is #1 in the Alexa rankings, and for a lot of people, Facebook *is* the Internet), the Facebook demographics give us an insight into the composition of Filipino netizens as a whole. Socialbakers itself estimates that Facebook is used by 73% of the Philippine online population.

You can argue about the accuracy about the stats coming from the Facebook API, but it does inspire more confidence about accuracy compared to surveys and projections. We can continue to guess that that there are between 20-25 Million Filipinos on the Internet today. But thanks to the Facebook stats, we can say with certainty that there are at least 21,759,280 Philippine users.

Another look at Philippine Facebook Stats

The last time we did an analysis of PH Facebook stats, the results appeared to surprise some who still believed that Friendster occupied the top dog position in the Philippines, as it still did for the first part of 2009. A quick glance at this Google Trends screenshot shows where things went horribly wrong for Friendster:

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Why 2010 is the Year of Mobile Social Media

Some months back, I gave this presentation (the deck is embedded here as a Slideshare link), which encapsulated some ideas I had been thinking of for sometime. It seems that as far as social media is concerned, several factors came into play in late 2009 that have conspired to create a “perfect storm” that have positioned mobile platforms as the main deal for social media starting this year, 2010.

I’d summarize these factors as the following:

1. The emergence of Facebook and Twitter as the most popular (or influential) vehicles for social media in the Philippines. Which means we can finally dispense with Friendster, Multiply, and all the others as irrelevant. The stats presented in this presentation are all out-of-date by now by the way.
2. The emergence of affordable all-you-can-eat mobile internet data plans from Philippine mobile operators. Starting late 2009, mobile internet rates evolved from pay-as-you go to daily, weekly, and monthly denominations.
3. The recognition of mobile as the main platform for growth by the web giants Facebook, Google, and even Microsoft at the Mobile World Congress in Feb 2010.
4. The emergence of the “geo-location” wars as gelocation apps moved to center stage at SXSW 2010.

Some of my stats (particularly that of Facebook) need to be updated, but I think the presentation remains relevant for the most part:

Friendster’s Twitter is Updated from Facebook

We’ve heard of social media mashups before, but this one strikes us as more than just a little odd.

Apparently Friendster maintains an official account on Twitter (which is confirmed through a post on the official Friendster blog). Since Friendster’s operations have been increasingly Philippine-centric, this Twitter account is run out of Manila. The Twitter feed is updated sporadically, as is the official blog.

What does seem strange however, is that three out of the most recent updates were updated from Facebook, as the screen grab above will attest to. It seems that the Friendster tweeter prefers not to open a new browser tab while moseying around the web, so he tweets right from where he is (which unfortunately for him, is an account on Facebook, not Friendster).

Clicking on the Facebook link on the tweets shows the originating application is the Facebook-Twitter connection found at facebook.com/twitter .

Our helpful suggestion: If the official Friendster Twitter-master can’t be bothered to post from the web or a third-party Twitter client, Friendster can at least try to connect to Twitter’s open API so that users can also tweet directly from their Friendster profiles.

That way, a Friendster tweet will be seen as coming from Friendster  -  and not from Facebook.