Ng: A week of great happenings

IT HAS been a great week.

First, there was the enormous success of the musical “You’ve Been Facebooked,” which attracted an audience of about 600 on March 8. The reviews were overwhelming.

What the producers (Offbeats Production) didn’t count on was the enormous response the next day when over a thousand people turned up.

According to a seasoned director, it was one of the very few plays that became a hit despite lack of advertising, the absence of known actors or singers, and no attendance requirement by schools on their students.

“You’ve Been Facebooked” was also written and composed by local artist Jude Gitamondoc.

People who watched and enjoyed the play were the ones who promoted the show by texting and talking about it in the social media. Apparently, the musical touched on many aspects of fun and fraud in using the social network. Many people, especially Facebook users, identified with the story. Coupled with great choreography and catchy tunes, the local production garnered a lot of favorable response notwithstanding the absence of veteran actors.

The other great news is that the Catholic Church now has a new pope. This was another thing that technical people immediately noticed. According to the news, shortly after Cardinal Bergoglio was chosen as the new Roman Catholic leader, people started registering new domain names.

According to GoDaddy, over 100 domain names were registered within 10 minutes of the announcement. Within the hour, 479 new domains were registered. Of course, people were scrambling for new domain names like Pope, Francis, Bergoglio, Habemus Papam.

Many tried to register PopeFrancis.com, but somebody already did that last April 10.

These people are what we call cybersquatters. Although they have nothing to do with the Catholic church, they register the name and try to sell it to whoever will pay good money to get it.

For instance, according to BBC, the domain name PopeBenedictXVI.com was sold for more than $5,000 in 2005 during the election of the new pope.

(www.twitter.com/wilsonng)