Fun, Fear and Facebook Fantasy

MANILA, Philippines - It’s official: Filipinos are lording it over in Facebook.

In its July 12 report, digital market intelligence provider Comscore said Facebook.com is the most-visited online destination in the Philippines, the highest penetration of any global market for the social networking site.

The report, based on data from the Comscore Media Matrix Service, said Facebook had 92.8 percent reach in the Philippines in the month of May. Statistically, that means 92.8 percent of Internet users in the country aged 15 and above are visiting the popular networking site, both at home and work locations.

Comscore said Facebook was visited by 85 million visitors in May 2010, each visitor spending an average of 217.5 minutes on the site, reading about 318 pages and going back to the site around 21.5 times. It did not provide statistics exclusive to the Philippines and one can only surmise how much of those visits and page views were contributed by Facebook-loving Pinoys.

In contrast, Google Sites led as the most-visited property in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam. Yahoo! Sites attracted the most visitors in Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan, while Microsoft Sites led the market in Australia. 

Comscore noted the differing brand preferences across countries as well as the inclusion of local entities in the list of the hottest online properties in the 13 countries of the Asia-Pacific region, such as Baidu.com Inc. and Tencent Inc. in China and NHN Corp. in South Korea.

The most visited online site in the region, however, are Google sites, which has 270 million unique visitors during the month, followed by Microsoft Sites with 218.5 million visitors and Yahoo! Sites with 205 million visitors.  

The data excludes visits from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs, according to Comscore. 

Funny and fake

Facebook, which recently welcomed its 500 millionth registered user, has been hounded by privacy issues lately, and even got a full spread coverage in Time magazine which detailed its most famous security loophole that sparked a public backlash, but it is not probably in the Pinoy to be bothered by the lack of safety protocols. The living, rocking Pinoy is at his best on exhibitionist mode, getting in and out of people’s lives, showcasing his/her baby pictures side by side with poster shots with the office bosses in glum corporate attire.

The book “The Facebook Effect: the Inside story of the Company that is connecting the World” by Fortune contributor David Kirkpatrick, reveals the extraordinary journey of birthing this Web phenomenon, at one time founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly even refused a $1-billion offer because he has a much bigger dream of “changing the world.”

But in this side of the Facebook universe, very few are probably thinking of Zuckerberg, who only turned 26 last May, when they open their Facebook accounts in the dead of night to carry conversations with long lost and newly found friends or to play Farmville and Mafia Wars. The Pinoy is simply enamored with the site and the idea of “connecting”; it has even come up with its own veritable spoof: Facebuko.com.

Buko, which is Tagalog word for coconut, gives it an undoubtedly local touch, and one has to give it to one geek Jonas Roque for coming up with the typically Pinoy creation. Facebuko’s catchphrase tells it all: “It’s like Facebook. Only delicious.” 

Its disclaimer also puts everything in perspective: “Facebuko is not and will not behave as a social networking site where users can have their own profiles and add friends. Facebuko is simply a blog updated with fake, yes fake, no matter how close their statuses and responses are, yet corny and funny statuses of well-known personalities, celebrities and fictional characters,” it said.

In this random buko universe, Hayden Kho and Manny Pacquiao are playing Mafia Wars with Lady Gaga and Lord Voldemort. 

The local spoof obviously followed the heels of the funniest Facebook spoofs created elsewhere in the web such as Slate magazine’s parody Facebook feed marking the key events of US President Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office last year. On Slate’s imaginary Facebook: “Barack Obama joined the Washington D.C. network, he is no longer a fan of Iraq but became a fan of Afghanistan, he added Canada to ‘Places I’ve been’ application and sent Queen Elizabeth an iPod.”

In April 2009, Mashable reported that PC World also made 9 “fake Facebooks” for April’s Fool’s Day 2009. In the article “Facebook Pages We’d Like to See,” PC World said it’s getting to the point where almost everybody has a Facebook page. However, some very important people who have very interesting lives and who would have very interesting Facebook pages don’t.

“So in the interest of posterity and history and stuff, we have carefully approximated what those missing pages might look like,” it said.

Considering the hottest events going on in April 2009, the PC World’s fake Facebooks has this feed: Steve Jobs just finished building chairs for iPhone, Bill Gates just bought Azerbaijan, Hillary Clinton is not bitter, Elvis Presley just stepped on his own blue suede shoes, Andy Warhol is looking for another 15 minutes and Rush Limbaugh is keeping the fear alive.

Funny but fantastic

Seriously now, it is easy for the fun-loving Pinoy to be carried away by the hilarity of it all. But taking our socio-political milieu in stride, wouldn’t it be fun also if we could find in the deepest recesses of our Facebook dreams these feeds:

“Water Water Everywhere – May tubeeeeeeeeg na!!! P-Noy has joined the No Smoking network, 80,000 million Filipinos left the group Jobless Inc., Mar Roxas and Jejomar Binay are now friends, DepEd chief Bro. Armin Luistro sent each public school student a Kindle.”

Now that would be too good to be true, but in the parallel Internet universe and our well-entrenched Facebook culture, there’s always room for wishful thinking.