Why Blogger isn't that popular in the Philippines? » YugaTech

Why Blogger isn’t that popular in the Philippines?

During a cocktail party held yesterday for several folks from Google Asia-Pacific, the Product Manager from SEA asked me this — while blogging is huge in the Philippines, why isn’t Blogger enjoying the same popularity? I gave him some figures off my head as he wrote it down. And here are some reasons why.

Yes, Blogger is also widely used as a blogging platform by a lot of Filipinos but it did not generate the same level of popularity as YouTube in the country. This is primarily because of other competing platforms:

While Blogger had the first mover advantage, it did not enjoy as much popularity in the early 2000 as LiveJournal (DiaryLand, Pitas, Blogger and LiveJournal were all launched in 1999). The Philippines is on the Top 10 LiveJournal users worldwide, at #8 with 60,961 users. In terms of search volume, Philippines is at #5 for LiveJournal.com
According to Google Trends, Multiply has 200,000 daily unique visitors from the Philippines, twice as many from a year ago. In Alexa, the Philippines ranked #5 for Multiply’s traffic origins contributing to an estimated 13.4% of its total users. With Google Insights, Philippines is #1 for Multiply searches. (Read my related story on ABS-CBN and Multiply deal.)
According to Google Insights, the Philippines is in the Top 5 for Xanga.
Friendster also enjoys the #1 spot for the Philippines worldwide. Google trends estimate 1 Million daily unique visitors to the site. There’s an estimated 10 Million Filipinos having a Friendster account. If just 1% of them opens a Friendster blog, that’s already 100,000 users.

On the other hand, Blogger.com isn’t even on the Top 25 of countries by usage according to Alexa. I can’t get any more traffic details since Google Trends don’t show data from Blogger.com. However, Google Insights rank the Philippines #5 for blogger.com searches.

And almost everybody knows that BlogSpot is the #1 host for spammers. Last year, a study found out that 75% of all blogspot.com accounts are spam blogs. Even antivirus and security company Sophos noted that the number one host for malware on the web is Blogger, with blogspot.com accounts contributing to at least 2% of total malware webpages globally.

There’s also the growth of an alternative (and ad free) platform in i.PH, WordPress.com as well as the self-hosted WordPress.org application. Even offline support is present, credited to the two upcoming WordCamp Philippines. We’re not even counting the local Drupal and Joomla community as well as alternative platforms such as TextPattern, Expression Engine, and MovableType.

Unlike YouTube, Blogger has so many other popular competing platforms being used in the Philippines that it failed to dominate the market despite the surge of blogging in the country.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

34 Comments

Jan Alvin says:

17 years ago

The reason behind it is its service features. Blogger made a wrong impression of its target market here in the Philippines. Ang gusto kasi ng mga Pilipino ay may full-control sa product na meron sila. And I think, yung distribution process o yung online promotions nila ay hindi nag-work out dito.
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scatterhaiku says:

17 years ago

interesting post. :) i’ve only ever tried blogger. makes me wonder if the alternatives offer features i’m currently missing out on.
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ElectronicsLab Philippines says:

17 years ago

hindi kasi maganda ang interface ng blogger.
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blozoom! says:

17 years ago

i still use blogger. and yes blogger interface is bad and hard to customize. wordpress is flexible. for personal blog, blogger is ok.
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Lyle, RN says:

17 years ago

I agree that a great number of blogs in blogger are spam. Casts a bad light to the blogger and blogspot brand if you ask me.

But all of my blogs are hosted by Blogger. Their hosting reliability is unbeatable but all other features specially the COMMENT system is mediocre compared to WordPress.
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jamie says:

17 years ago

I think Blogger.com is not that popular because it doesn’t have a social networking feature. If you have friends over at LiveJournal or if you blog on Friendster and/or Multiply, whenever you blog, your friends are notified without much effort. It’s kind of lonely to blog on Blogger unless you are popular.
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Jomark Osabel says:

17 years ago

I started with blogger before earning millions (just kidding). Yes the interface is not appealing nor the public page. We are already approaching web 3.0 in terms of design but it seems they are stuck with web 1.0.
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wriuz says:

17 years ago

i agree with jamie. A lot of Filipinos want their blog posts being read and commented by their friends. i’m one of those actually. Multiply is a great platform for such. its not that i’m endorsing Multiply but i’ve enjoyed it very much. plus, a large number of users in Multiply actually earns some money as it integrates some kind of an online store. Even though Multiply is a community site, users have total control as to who views their every post in a way making it private, i.e. for personal, for selected people, for contacts only, or for public viewing.

Friendster Blogs is also a great blogging platform but going around the blog section is not that easy. Blogger is way better than Friendster Blogs in terms of interface, functionality, customization, loading speed (i’ve observed that Friendster Blogs loads very slow maybe because it uses Typepad and has lots of advertisements). But the thing is, whenever someone posts a blog entry in Friendster Blogs, their online friends in the Friendster community are notified without much effort.

But there’s still hope for Blogger. If it wants to be in the center of attention, i suggest it redesign everything including the interface, comment system, and remove the Blogger bar. also, it should have a touch of a community system because bloggers need not be alone.
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lito says:

17 years ago

I thought blogger.com is popular here in the philippines.
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pinoy web surfer says:

17 years ago

blogger already has an updated comment system. check out my blog. its just released yet although you can get it activate it from draft.blogger.com

pero still, the interface is not that good and there’s no built in stats page like that of wordpress.com.

lamang lang ng blogger siguro is that most companies have the social networking sites blocked. hehehe.
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