No one wants to be “Friendstered”

You can tell when a website name has truly become a household word when it has transitioned from being a brand to a verb.

Especially when used in a predominantly Tagalog or Taglish sentence.

To cite the most obvious example “Google” has become a commonly used English verb for “to search on the Internet“.

“I Googled the info,” obviously means that the person searched for the info using the Google search engine. One does not “Google” anything on Bing or Yahoo, that would be just plain weird.

Google can also be a passive verb. You can be “Googled“.

In Tagalog, you may say “Ginoogle kita” meaning “I searched for you on Google.“

If you are presently Googling somebody, you may inform him “Ginoogoogle kita“.

And Google can be a command. Boss: “Dexter, paki-Google mo nga to“. Dexter: “Yes Sir!!“

Facebook is another common verb. “Hoy, ano ang ginagawa mo diyan? Nag-fafacebook ka nanaman no??“

The changing rules of communication also mandate that for a certain group of people,  text messging is passe, replaced with newer forms of messaging.

The common use of the expression “Finacebook ko siya,” meaning “I sent him/her a Facebook message (or wrote on his Facebook wall).” ishows one example of how Facebook is replacing social texting these days.  Or if suitably equipped, you can “BBM” somebody (send a Blackberry Message). “Bini-BBM ko siya.”

Yes, spelling these things out can be a challenge.

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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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.

In the Philippines, it’s Facebook vs. Friendster and Twitter vs. Plurk. Guess who wins?

Conventional wisdom, at least as far as the local Internet is concerned, would have it that the Philippines is something of an oddball oasis where localized tastes have catapulted obscure web players to top status, while global top dogs trail far behind. We inhabit an alternate universe. In DC Comic book terms, we are Earth-23 in the multiverse of realities. Or the bottled city of Kandor in the Fortress of Solitude.

Thus, Friendster and Multiply were considered the top names in social networking, while the Canada-based Plurk.com lorded it over the microblogging category. This was typical for the ASEAN region, particularly in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines – the so-called “SIMP” countries.

In other words, Friendster was widely known to be #1, trumping Facebook. And anecdotally, Plurk was considered more popular than Twitter. This constituted conventional wisdom, and that notion has been challenged by new data.

The latest Alexa rankings for the top websites in the Philippines now show the following results for these specific players:

1. Facebook
3. Friendster
9. Multiply
11. Twitter
39. Plurk

Note that Facebook is not just the #1 social network, it is now listed as the #1 website in the Philippines, period.