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Thursday, March 16, 2006
Ng: Sad facts on blogging
By Wilson Ng
Wired Desktop
Last week, I talked about six entrepreneurs from Cebu being finalists in Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year. There were 20 finalists, so 30 percent of the finalists were from Cebu; that establishes Cebu as an island of entrepreneurs. Of the winners, two are from Cebu — Vice Gov. Greg Sanchez as Entrepreneur for Innovation for Lactopafi and Jay Aldeguer as Entrepreneur for Small Business for Islands Souvenirs. Another finalist, Richie Rivera, has Cebu as his adopted home. Rivera was named Entrepreneur for Social Responsibility for RD Tuna of General Santos. The Entrepreneur of the Year was Lance Gokongwei, whose father actually came from Cebu, and whose winning was for a flagship project for Cebu Pacific Air.
Blog craze. One of the biggest technology craze last year is blogging. Blog is short for web log, which is some sort of an online personal diary. According to some analysts, there are now over 28 million blogs, and the number grows double every 5.5 months. More businesses are also getting into blogging.
However, there is a sad reality. While people are getting into blogging, an analyst noted that less than half of those blogs are being updated after three months. I must say that is true. I know at least over a dozen people whose blogs have not been updated for quite sometime.
The other disappointing fact is that even with the explosive growth of blogs, it is said that only nine percent of Internet users at present regularly read blogs. And two thirds still don’t read any, which means most Internet users continue to focus only on emails and reading news.
I reckon it is safe to say, based on this statistics, that many blogs actually have no more than a handful of readers and I guess that is the biggest challenge -how to get readers.
Other than reading blogs, one of the things you can actually do on the Internet is to read books. That is, if you don’t mind reading bits and pieces of each. Amazon.com started to do that with their Search Inside the Book Program.
If you go into the Amazon website, you can actually search by keywords and see which books correspond to those. Most of the time, you can read a few pages without having to pay for it.
The ability to scan a few pages of a book was an edge that traditional bookstores have over Internet bookstores. But Amazon has eliminated that advantage. I have always preferred bookstores that allow people to scan a few pages of books and dislike those that seal the publication in plastic.
According to a book publisher blog, this search inside the book program was instrumental in increasing sales by up to seven percent. So actually, publishers should not oppose this. It is also reported that bookstores that allow people to lounge around and scan books have higher sales. Lately, Google through their print.google.com has also started to make books available online.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (March 16, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
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