In 2010, Filipinos' primary social media still offline

2010 will be remembered as the year that social media became an inextricable part of Philippine culture and government. And yet, for all its perceived influence, social media and its promise to democratize political discussion remains elusive to the majority of Filipinos — at least for now. The following infographic sheds some light on how Filipinos used social media in 2010:

Filipinos' use of social media has grown in leaps and bounds. And yet, our first love is still good old SMS. GMANews.TV

Earlier this year, it came as no surprise that the winner in the Philippine presidential race, former senator Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III, also happened to have the third most-"liked" Facebook fanpage of any politician in the world. The significance of this coincidence was not lost on the new president who, for better and for worse, capitalized on his online popularity by firmly establishing his administration's presence in social media. What did come as a surprise, however, was that the runner-up in the race, former president Joseph "Erap" Estrada, had almost no online social media campaign to speak of. Everyone expected a correlation between the candidates' social media mileage and their performance in the polls. And yet, Estrada bested candidates with much larger social media machinery. How did this happen? The short answer is that, in spite of Filipinos' social media use having grown in leaps and bounds over the past year, there is still a large digital divide that separates social-media-savvy Filipinos from the rest of the populace. To begin with, Filipino users of Facebook and Twitter combined account for just 20 percent of the entire Filipino population —likely even less, if you take into consideration the fact that many people have accounts on several networks. Compare this with SMS, which continues to be the communication medium of choice for more than 80 percent of all Filipinos, and it's clear that there's a lot of conversation taking place outside of online social media. The fact alone that there are ten times as many Filipinos on Facebook than on Twitter is also indicative of this divide. According to Nielsen, even though Internet access from home and via mobile phone is on the rise, the majority of Filipinos still go online from Internet cafes and other public areas where access is restricted to certain times of the day. This limits the appeal of Twitter, the value of which is in the real-time interaction between its users. Early on in his presidential bid, Estrada clearly positioned himself as a champion of the masses: "Erap, tapat sa mahirap" (Erap, faithful to the poor). His lack of a comprehensive social media campaign may have placed him beyond the radar of Facebook and Twitter users, but it did place him squarely in the sights of his target audience: the vast majority of Filipinos to whom SMS was the social network of choice. And therein lies the irony: that the same social medium that took Estrada out of power in 2001 helped to almost put him back in power again. You may get in touch with the author via Twitter at tjdimacali. — HS, GMANews.TV