Twitter adds Indo, SG on Trends; skips PH

Twitter just announced it has added over a dozen more countries and cities in the local Trending Topics list. These countries represent their fastest-growing markets around the globe. I quickly browsed over the list expecting Manila or the Philippines to be there.

Two South-East Asian countries were included — Indonesia and Singapore. No Philippines. Now that’s saying something. And I thought were were the social media capital of the world with the fastest growing population on FB and Twitter? And I know local topics and personalities have been constantly on Twitter’s global trending topic as well.

Why Indonesia and Singapore got into the list before us is very telling. Either the Philippine Twitter population is not huge enough for Twitter to be noticed or that we’re not that monetizable (remember that Twitter sells sponsored topics on the trends list) to be given priority. Maybe in the next roll-out.

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

13 Comments

Taz says:

14 years ago

i think its the latter one…
singapore is very very small country yet they got a spot… that is becoz they’re a rich country =)
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Bogcess says:

14 years ago

The philippine twitter population is huge enough to make top trending topics. I’m thinking of something else.
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taztech says:

14 years ago

Twitter is after profit for sure. Though filipinos can certainly get a topic into top trending (e.g few days ago, abs-cbn xmas jingle popped in the top trending topic and im pretty sure the pacquiao tweets most came from Philippines too), twitter ignores Philippines for it finds no profit here.
Singapore, though just 1/20 of size of the philippines in ters of popuation, has a wealthy businesses and citizens.

Indonesia on the other hand is a booming economy with large pool of population, twitter expects profit here in years to come.
Oh well what do you expect from Twitter,a capitalist company from Imperialist Country. (Sigh)
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daniel says:

14 years ago

ha SINGAPORE got a spot? hell wala pa sa tuhod ng pilipinas ang population ng singapore… mas malaki pa nga ang metro manila sa bansa nila bat nauna pa sila sa atin? porket mayaman sila? eww.
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Manix says:

14 years ago

i dont think the report is pointing to population of that particular country. its talking specifically about Trending Topics.

the phils certainly have tons of twitter members, but mostly twit to communicate with friends, but not necessarily heavy traffic on trending topics.
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luiboowee says:

14 years ago

Not to mention, there’s a Filipino in every single island/state/country/international water/corner/sky/underground/underwater in the world. (hehe, exagg)
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Gwapito says:

14 years ago

If Twitter’s reason is monetization, then including Indonesia was a good move. Bahasa language is more widely spoken than Tagalog. Even in Adsense, there is no Adsense for Tagalog content.
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Josh says:

14 years ago

Monetization would be my bet.

Just look at how hard-up Multiply is in getting any form of $$ off the relatively huge Philippine market they have.

I guess that’s why even gadgets usually land in SG first, despite it’s smaller population.
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Aidz says:

14 years ago

money money money, they’ll soon realize they’re losing a hefty chunk of the Asian market by not tapping PH
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jken says:

14 years ago

@Gwapito, well that’s because we speak good English. Why would they spend money and exert effort to include Tagalog content when Filipinos are already well versed in English right? :)
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iCool says:

14 years ago

^tama
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luiboowee says:

14 years ago

Even on BlackBerry, I think you couldn’t add Philippines as your domain. Interesting enough that there’s Vietnam in the list.
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14 years ago

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