by: Joey Alarilla
Sorry if I haven't been able to blog here in a while, but the past few weeks have seen the launch of several new services from INQUIRER.net, most of which I'm involved with in some capacity.
This is due to the new duties I've assumed at INQUIRER.net, the leading Philippine news site, as its gaming and multimedia editor. Our goal is to make our content accessible to more readers on more platforms, and to take advantage of different tools such as blogs, podcasts and online video.
As we all know, it's all about you now, and we want to tailor our content to address the needs of different niches, while reaching out to Internet users who have enthusiastically made YouTube, blogging and social networking sites an integral part of their daily lives, but who are currently not interested in reading or watching the news because, well, they're bored to death by the way it's presented by Old Media or even some New Media companies.
One of our new offerings that has garnered the most attention is the INQUIRER.net Podcasts service, with the help of our podcast partner Creativoices Productions, file-hosting partner Bitstop via its eRadioPortal.com service, and interactive media consultant Jayvee Fernandez, who is the technology channel editor of global blog network b5media.com.
We have two podcast offerings right now, hackenslash: the podcast, the official podcast of the gaming site I edit, hackenslash.net, (which means, of course, that I'm also one of the hosts, heh) and the Eleksyon 2007 podcast, where candidates in the upcoming Philippine elections in May answer a barrage of questions from INQUIRER.net editors and reporters. Sometimes it's hard to believe that it's been only three weeks since we launched our podcasts, yet we already have three episodes online for the weekly hackenslash podcast, and eight episodes for the Eleksyon 2007 podcast, with several more episodes already recorded. And, yup, more podcasts on different topics are coming.
One of our guests, senatorial candidate Loren Legarda of the Genuine Opposition who, incidentally, is a former broadcast journalist, pointed out that podcasts level the playing field for candidates. As the behind-the-scenes footage below from our podcast recording shows, I asked Legarda whether she believes absentee voters will have a greater impact on the Philippine elections now that technology allows Filipinos from all over the world to listen to the stands of candidates in a 1-hour podcast, as opposed to the usual sound bites on TV.
eRadioPortal is also our partner for Radio on INQUIRER.net, which allows listeners from all over the world to tune in to their favorite Philippine radio stations, while also allowing these stations to offer our Breaking News content as a value-added service.
In late December, we also soft-launched our online video offering on YouTube via hackenslash TV, and since then we have also started offering video for our different channels such as Breaking News, Technology and Showbiz & Style via INQUIRER.net Videos.
As I mentioned in this blog entry, mobile video is becoming a killer app for us, as we use mobile phones to take photos and videos for our site.
Here's a clip I took using my Nokia N90 of actress Alicia Mayer wearing a lettuce bikini to help People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals promote vegetarianism in the Philippines.
And I'm proud to report that while I'm blogging this, I checked and saw that our YouTube channel is number 29 among today's most viewed Director accounts. Yay! The ranking, of course, fluctuates throughout the day, but this is the highest we've reached so far. And we'll be offering even more video content once our new service is fully unveiled.
As you may have also gleaned from the blog post on mobile video as a killer app, we have also launched the INQUIRER.net Blogs service, with me as the guinea pig when I transformed my @play Infotech column into a blog and blogged about Media Nation in Clark, Pampanga, where journalists from the country's top media outlets, US Embassy officials and executives of non-government organizations saw our blog in action as the event was ongoing.
And, just a few hours ago, Blog Addicts went live. This is the second offering from the INQUIRER.net Blogs network I'm overseeing as multimedia editor and our first INQUIRER.net team blog, with me, Fernandez and Erwin Oliva as the first team members, with possibly more joining our ranks soon. And yes, we have more blogs coming.
We've also launched our Tag Clouds content analysis tool, and, without spoiling the surprise, you'll soon see even more synergy among our different multimedia offerings, as we unveil new services and announce new partnerships.
It's an exciting new era for INQUIRER.net reborn, and we hope you'll all join us in this multimedia adventure.
No comments:
Post a Comment