A Bugged Life

I learned two things today. First, making use of powerful and controversial headlines such as “Will Gail get sued for blogging?” is a neat way to grab attention.

The second thing I learned today is to never buy that book. No, not this book (this one you buy), but that other one.

Erwin, are you reading this?

So Globe Innove made first contact with twelve bloggers on Thursday. The food was great, the free-flowing alcohol was even better.

There were two sets of interactions going on that night. First was the blogger-to-blogger osmosis effect where:

We did the typical “my PR is bigger than yours” spiel

We talked about what Adsense bought you last month

We pulled out our dSLRs and took photos, once more

The second type of interaction was the Globe-to-bloggers outreach program where they presented some of Globe’s new products, got feedback about some of their services, and analyzed blogger behavior which included their online schedule and other demographics.

Conclusions
As a “meet and greet” for bloggers, it was something we could have organized ourselves, but kudos to Globe Innove for taking the (baby) steps to recognize bloggers as a sizeable and highly influential demographic.

I just wish that the company had taken a more grand vision and actually have bloggers try out the menagerie of services they offered, as mentioned by J.Angelo in his blog.

The evening was basically a mix between a focused group discussion slash free consulting about trends in the blogging scene such as viral marketing, where Filipinos stand in today’s blogging industry, and advocacy.

As a blogger who helped organize this event, I am wondering what phase 2 of the plan will be, if there be any. The last thing I want to happen is to have companies take advantage of bloggers by pulling them into the “dark side of blogging” by buying them out without full disclosure.

Thank you Innove for the mojitos!