Top Social Networking Sites in the Philippines series - Yahoo!

[Janette Toral]

As I mentioned in my column last March 26, there are many tools online where you can create a profile and connect with friends. To make it worthwhile, I avoid, whenever possible, to post the same thing through all my profiles unless I am campaigning something really important for me. To further support that piece, I would like to share with you the top social networking sites that are popular in the Philippines.

Let us start with the site that has been number 1 with Filipinos for the longest time and that is Yahoo! Here are some of the ways you can connect with your friends through Yahoo!

Flickr
Flickr totally changed the way Internet users share photos on the Internet. By just clicking on tags, you will easily find other photos in the site that has the same topic as yours. This also allows you to connect with people, comment on photos, join groups, among others. Users became uniquely close to the point that you'll now find photo exhibits being organized by users. (add me at Flickr)

Yahoo Messenger & Yahoo Chat
Using the latest version of Yahoo Messenger will allow you visit chat rooms and people a lot of people. Use your status to promote updates that you are working on. You can put your friends into groups and this will allow you to right-click on a group name to send a blast whenever needed. (my YM is digitalfilipino)

Yahoo Groups
If live chat is not your cup of tea, you can join groups, contribute to the discussion, and meet people from there. (join digitalfilipino group)

Yahoo 360
A site where you can post status updates and blogs. Share your photos, groups, Launchcast, rss feeds, among others. It can work in conjunction with your Yahoo Messenger account as it also allows you to see your friends online and invite them to be a connection. (add me as a connection here)

MyBlogLog
This service allows bloggers to embed a code in their profile and see registered users who get to visit their site. It is powerful community building tool and have been useful for me in seeking out bloggers who live in a particular location for meet-ups. To share further, here are ten ways I use MyBlogLog. (add me as a contact)

Delicious
A social bookmarking site. Delicious allows users to find out who also bookmarked the urls they like and connect. Monitor what gets bookmarked and further grow your connections there. (monitor my bookmarks here)

Profiles
Allows you to build a Yahoo profile and connect with your friends. This is where you can add feeds as well from other services. As a result, whenever you logged on to your Yahoo Mail, you'll get to see updates from your connection and vice-versa. (let's connect here)

I'm sure there are other ways that users can connect through Yahoo. Being a pioneer player in this scene, it may seem too complex at this point to have a single connection stream consistent all throughout Yahoo's services. But then again, why not?

[Janette Toral]

Hi Meikah. From a search engine marketing point of view, yes. =)

[Meikah Delid]

So, Janette, do you recommend that we create and maintain an account for all of these networking sites? Which is the best one for you?