2009: Blogging and On-line Media

The year was exciting to blogging and online media. Despite the economic downturn – livelihood and activity on the Internet does not seem to have been negatively affected:

The number of on-line media sites have increased.

Friends who earn on-line report dividends from their enterprise whether by advertising or other methods of earning cash.

The number of blogger events – likw the Philippine Blog Awards, Iblog and the Mindanao Blogger Summit, PEBA – have increased, diversified and continue. And the number of parties (coming from business and politics) interested in on-line media – cms, blogs and social media – have tripled in number but unfortunately a number of whom are still stumbling and fumbling across the Internet forest.

We have also seen the increase in how Netizens – for good or bad – used the power of on-line and social media to influence things off-line. The great Book Blockade episode and the Golf CLub incident proves this. The use of on-line media during the disaster brough about by the typhoon was phenomenal – information dissemination during those time was instrumental in easing the effects of the disaster.

On-line media though is still the double-edged sword that has to be used carefully lest one does damage to oneself and others.

Such encounters also led to the realization ,personally, that there is a need to provide education and legal support for bloggers and on-line media practitioners. To prepare them for the legal, political and business problems that may arise from the practice of on-line media. And critically important to also provide assistance of organizations or individuals tapping or encountering on-line media. A number of whom still have limited understanding of how on-line media practitioners work and how online and social media communities behave.

This is also the year that we learned everything was vulnerale. The year 2009 has taught us that off-line and on-line we are vulnerable – nothing is constant in the constant sea of change that is both worlds.