Will Foursquare replace "Wer r u?" or "San k n?" text messages in the Philippines? (Updated)

Foursquare may not be immediately big, but it's the start of a 

new generation of sites that brings online engagement to the real world.

A conversation over Twitter with good friend @RJMarmol over an article published on ABS-CBN's website "Filipinos no longer text addicts" started me thinking that the current bid of Philippine telcos to push mobile internet usage is really gaining ground.

Here's an excerpt:

Text messaging is no longer the most popular means of conveying holiday greetings.

This holds true among the 71 million combined subscriber base of Smart Communications Inc. and Globe Telecom.

Instead of sending their Christmas and New Year greetings via SMS or short message service during the recent holidays, the cellular subscribers preferred to call and/or post their greetings in various social networking sites.

Data provided by Globe, the country’s second-largest mobile phone operator with about 26 million subscribers, showed that SMS traffic declined year-on-year by 6% on December 24; 12% on December 25; and 9% on December 31 and January 1.

Smart claimed that SMS traffic went up on the same days albeit not as high as it used to be in the past years when handsets then still lack the capability to connect to the Internet.

“Our SMS traffic for Christmas and New Year is up over last year, but the growth is not as strong as prior years. But social media through our mobile network is definitely up,” said Smart spokesman Mon Isberto.

Currently, Globe has been heavily promoting I-Phones and other handheld devices that can make use of mobile internet connections.  Despite problems with the reliability of its mobile internet connection (you can see Filipino tweets ranting about its poor connections), several of my friends have opted in to their post-paid plans because of the phones bundled with the plan.

Smart mobile internet (which is what I use) seems to have no problem connecting anywhere I go, but I am not sure if it bundles I-Phones or I-Pad 3G with its postpaid plans.

In anycase, with the current figures on text messaging use versus mobile internet and mobile broadband, it seems to indicate the success of current marketing efforts of telcos to get its subscribers to use the more costly service (10 pesos for 30 minutes vs 1 peso per text).

However, it can be argued that in 30 minutes (assuming that the mobile internet connection is fast enough), one can view and send more information (not just text, but pictures and short videos).

Now, after Christmas and New Year Greetings, the message that accounts for a lot of text traffic perhaps will be "wer r u?" or "san k n?".  One sure sign that mobile internet will be catching on is if instead of texting, people start logging on the internet using their phones or tablets to see their friend's status on Twitter or Foursquare.

I am aware that Twitter allows you to geo-tag your tweets (with longitude and latitude), but Foursquare brings something more to plain geo-tagging which is actually a "game" element.

Users of Foursquare apart from "checking in" at a venue, or posting a message notifying their friends about where they are, get the added benefit of having their check-in logged and assigned points.  Apart from that, the points allow them to accumulate badges and rank (mayorships) depending on what venues they visit and how many times they visit the venue.

It is this gaming element, perhaps, that will make Foursquare a hit among the younger set of 3G phone users given some more time.

Foursquare was launched on March 11, 2009 and while it hasn't reached the mind-boggling proportions of Facebook in the Philippines, it is showing signs of catching on here.  

It describes itself on its website as:

Foursquare is a mobile application that makes cities easier to use and more interesting to explore. It is a friend-finder, a social city guide and a game that challenges users to experience new things, and rewards them for doing so. Foursquare lets users "check in" to a place when they're there, tell friends where they are and track the history of where they've been and who they've been there with. For more information on how foursquare works, see our searchable

The latest statistic I've found on the number of Foursquare users around the world comes from Techcrunch. One article says that on April 22, 2010, Foursquare registered its One Millionth User -- which is a milestone.

Congratulations QuakeHOLD I. of Escondido, California, you’re Foursquare’s one millionth user. Or, at least, you’re the user with the one millionth ID. Yes, the much talked-about location-based service crossed the milestone today.

And another more recent article published on July 7, 2010 from Techcrunch pits Foursquare with Gowalla (another GPS based social networking site) and it shows more current stats:

As of today, Foursquare has just over 1.9 Million users. Gowalla has around 340,000.

At its current pace, Foursquare will surpass 2 Million users within a week.

Foursquare is adding almost 10x as many new users per day as Gowalla and, despite a significantly larger base, has a daily percentage growth rate that is 75% higher than Gowalla’s.

Currently, Foursquare has about 5.6 Million venues and Gowalla has 1.4 Million venues.

1 in 3 venues on Foursquare have been checked into only once or never. That number is 1 in 4 on Gowalla.\

The most popular venue name is “Home,” followed by national fast food chains like “McDonald’s” and “Burger King”

On Foursquare, men outnumber women almost 2-to-1. Exact gender breakouts are not available for Gowalla, but the most popular first names suggest a similar distribution.

Still, according to PC World, Foursquare has reached 3 million users.

Foursquare hit the three million user mark over the weekend, less than two months after the location-based service passed the two million users mark in July. This success comes despite predictions Foursquare would be crushed by Facebook's recently launched location-sharing feature called Places. But Foursquare's recent user milestone suggests Places may actually be helping Foursquare's growth by popularizing the concept of checking-in and sharing your location. Foursquare's three-million-user milestone was first reported by TechCrunch which derived the number based on its own research. Foursquare has not made any formal announcement of its traffic.

The only thing that indicates that Foursquare will soon gain more users in the Philippines is that Filipino celebrities have begun noticing it.

Recently, Philippine TV celebrity @DaphneOP (Daphne Osena) tweeted "I don't know what's the point of foursquare. Why would you want everyone to know where you are?"

And I just had to respond with several tweets which eventually got a re-tweet from @DaphneOP.

For celebrities, the issue going against Foursquare -- apart from privacy concerns, leaving them open for stalking -- may be that their Foursquare check-ins may be construed as endorsements of the particular places they visited.

But for the average Joe and the small business owner, Foursquare can be a boon.

Just think of it as literally being put on the map and recommended by your own loyal customers.  In the US, establishments have even started giving incentives to Foursquare users who become Mayors of their Venue on Foursquare or who just simply "check in".

Kapihan sa Sulo:ACE talks about plastics pollution and remembering Ondoy Floods

Last Saturday, members of the Alliance for a Cleaner Earth (ACE) and myself were able to get some time at the Kapihan sa Sulo at the newly refurbished Sulo Hotel in Quezon City.

ACE is a group of outdoor sports enthusiasts who live out their environmentalist causes by collecting aluminum cans, practicing Earth Day everyday by shutting down their household's power for two hours everyday, by giving up smoking, using E-10 fuels, lessening their plastic wastes, and once a year, holding a rock concert cum clean up drive in areas endangered by climate change.  We also participate in the projects of other groups whose cause is to fight for climate change adaptation measures.

Members of the group present were Abbie Modino, Jojo Menorca, Chi Martillo, Au Martillo, Salvs Beleo, and myself.

It was a good thing that some of our friends in the media allowed us some time to share our message about remembering Ondoy and stopping plastic pollution.  This despite the fact that the organizers of Kapihan would probably have wanted more time discussing the present brouha-ha over police brutality sparked by the torture video played excessively on television.

I don't know how many people have suffered from police brutality and the worst thing I ever experienced from a policeman was to get a ticket for beating the red light.  The thing is, I think, you only have to be worried about police brutality if you are a chronic street protester, a criminal, or a vagrant.  

Ordinary law abiding citizens don't have to worry much about the police, unless, of course, they are victims of a crime and the perpetrators are relatives or friends of a policeman.

In any case, out of every ten people I talk to about the Ondoy floods last year, about seven have their own stories to tell and of those seven, four or five were actually victims of Ondoy.

And talk about brutality... There's nothing more brutal than mother nature showing up at your front door in the form of a raging flood carrying all sorts of debris.  There's nothing more brutal than losing almost everything your own to a flood.  There nothing more brutal than watching your loved one drown in a flood.

photo credit 

http://livingtogetherblog.com/tag/ondoy/

Almost always, there'll be stories to tell and among those stories will be stories about the fears of another Ondoy flood happening.

It's not the sort of irrational phobia that one ends up having all their lives after, say, getting struck by lightning or some other incident that has more than one-in-a-million odds stacked against it happening again.

The fear of another Ondoy flood is actually grounded on the certain likelihood that it is bound to happen again, if not this year, then next year or the year after that.

Do you think I'm wrong? I've got two words for you.  Typhoon Basyang.

While we were 'lucky' -- YES LUCKY -- that Typhoon Basyang didn't cause the floods that we experienced with Ondoy, but there were still floods and a very major power disruption that lasted for days in some areas of Metro Manila.

In any case, the likelihood of having another Ondoy is premised on the fact that our country experiences an average of 20 typhoons every year and despite this, the national government has not adopted or implemented any long range plans for Climate Change Adaptation.

So far, the only things that have been done by the present administration so far is:

- the President visited a number of esteros near Malacanang

- the DENR, DPWH, and PRRC showed up at another estero to pose for cameras as they ordered a clean up of ONE estero

- the President spoke at the Bayer Young Environmentalists event and said that he'd go after polluters in neckties.

- a flood mapping project is being finished up, but no mention yet of a real flood control system being put into place 

- the President ordered an anti-littering drive on the Pasig river

- the relocation of squatters along the Pasig river is being done

- Pagasa is being beefed up, or so we're told, so that we'll get better warnings of impending destructive typhoons. 

- the MMDA is asking private companies to lend heavy earth moving machinery to the government so that esteros can be declogged.

- a Pasig River marathon organized by the PRRC that doesn't go anywhere around or near the Pasig River! 

All of these steps can do some good, but perhaps, not on the scale of what really needs to happen in order so that a great number of lives and property can be saved when we are faced with another Ondoy.

At the Kapihan sa Sulo, ACE came out to call for measures that would drastically reduce the use of plastic packaging -- sachets, pouches, bags, bottles, etcetera -- and at the same time build up necessary funds that could be used for the retrieval and proper disposal of plastic waste.

Telling companies such as Unilever, Proceter and Gamble, Nestle, SM, Rustans, Puregold, and other large companies that they ought to lessen the plastic pollution they create is just one of the number of things ACE has in mind.

Why is it important to curb the country's production of plastic waste?

It is because plastics are the major cause of flooding in Metro Manila and if you are wondering just how much plastic trash the consumption of goods in plastic containers generate, here are a couple of estimates:

Here's one estimate:

http://pinoybiz.blogspot.com/2010/08/tax-to-curb-plastic-sachets-and-plastic.html 

Giant consumer goods manufacturer Unilever claims that every day, it sells 160 million products.  Assuming that the sales volume of the other manufacturing giants, Procter & Gamble and Nestle is in the vicinity of Unilever’s, that would be some 500 million products sold daily.

Let’s peg a conservative estimate that 10 percent of all products sold are in plastic sachets, then that’s 50 million.  That’s 50 million plastic sachets and pouches that will eventually find its way to our oceans, waterways, landfills and drainage systems ready to clog the free flow of water and trigger floods or kill marine wildlife.

But it is really reasonable to think that of the 500 million products sold daily by the three giants, only 10 percent of are in tiny plastic sachets?

And here's another way of figuring it.

http://pasigriveravenger.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/saw-dingdong-dantes-and-angel-locsin-endorse-a-product-then-picture-this-people/

According to Unilever’s vice president for corporate planning Chito Macapagal, 70% of Unilever Philippines 2007 sales is from the sachet market. That’s 70% of 30 billion pesos, or 21 billion pesos three years ago. That’s nine zeroes following 21. The company was enjoying double digit growth rate from the previous year, so expect that by now those numbers are now not just big, but big big.

Can you picture how many sachets 21 billion pesos’ worth of Unilever products are? Well, let’s see. Which brands of theirs have sachet variants? Sunsilk, Creamsilk, Rexona, Clear, Knorr, Lady’s Choice, Close-Up, Best Foods, and Vaseline come to mind. 

Moving on, 21 billion pesos in sachets, if say, the average price for any given sachet were 20 pesos conservatively (I say conservatively because first, most of those mentioned cost less than 20 pesos, and second, 21 billion pesos in Unilever’s sales is at supplier-to-distributor prices, which are lower than retail), would be equivalent to 1,050 million sachets. If a given sachet has 10mL of product inside, it’s like they’re producing- no, selling at least one Olympic size swimming pool’s worth of product every 3 months. That doesn’t sound like much, but you could shampoo all 90 million Filipinos 20 times over with that much shampoo, if it were all shampoo.

What’s difficult to imagine is the sheer quantity of packaging material that went into the making of all those sachets. If 1,050 million sachets were sold, then the waste would be 1,050 million multiplied twice to include front and back of the sachet, times 3 inches by 4 inches (I took an estimate of a Clear shampoo sachet), which equals 25,200 million square inches. This is the equivalent of about 16.26 square kilometers worth of sachet or wrapper material. Now, before you do take the initiative to shoot me for driving you nuts with numbers, picture this: 16.26 square kilometers of sachet is enough to cover all of Ilog Pasig.

Does Smart, Sun, and Globe really love their subscribers?

Does Smart, Globe, and Sun really love its subscribers?

By heavily advertising and promoting their cellphone services, these giant Philippine telecommunications firms have successfully cast themselves as good guys in the minds of some 72 million loyal post-paid and pre-paid subscribers. They not only have celebrities endorsing their products, they also have their own basketball teams and regularly sponsor other sport events. In short, they have managed to endear themselves to their subscribers to such an extent that some Filipinos will spend money on cellphone credits rather than buy a meal.

The pre-paid SIM cards they sell at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport are among the cheapest and go for around P25 to P45 or less than US $1.00. And do you know why? It is because the amount of money that the user will spend making calls and sending text messages through that SIM card will be much, much greater than the price of the SIM card.

OFWs leaving for work abroad will almost always make sure that their phones are set for roaming and that ample cellphone credits have been loaded into their pre-paid cellphone service accounts. International calls on some cellphone services actually cost just a little less than international calls placed through their landline counterparts but this is enough for Filipinos with relatives working abroad to keep loading their cellphones with credit.

OFWs and Balikbayans will almost always also buy a SIM card and cellphone credits to be able to get in touch with relatives who are fetching him or her at the airport. Of course, as the days wear on, more cellphone credits are loaded into their pre-paid SIM card.

An article published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on November 22, 2008 cites a survey made by US-based Integrated Marketing Solutions (IMS) on how much an average Filipino cellphone user spends in a month. Here's an excerpt.

Survey respondents estimate that they spend an average of P544 on texting every month but computations on actual spending show an average of P1,110 a month, IMS said in a statement.

Seventy-four percent of respondents also said that they would rather send a text message that place a call because texting seemed cheaper, IMS added.

Sixty percent said that they usually failed to understand messages because text phrases were unclear. About 95 percent said it would be easier to understand one another if they were to call rather than send text messages, but they were deterred from making calls because of the cost.

With P 1,110/month as the base figure for computing the annual cellphone service expenditure of those surveyed, one will arrive at P13,320. By dividing this figure by 365 days, you'll arrive at a daily cellphone service expense of about P36.

Multiply 36 by 72 million Filipino cellphone users and you'll have a rough estimate of how much Philippine telcos earn a day -- and that's P 2,592,000,000.

THAT'S TWO BILLION FIVE HUNDRED NINETY TWO MILLION PESOS A DAY or NINE HUNDRED TWELVE BILLION, FIVE HUNDRED MILLION PESOS A YEAR.

This is just a few hundred billion short of the the proposed P1.3 Trillion National Budget of the Philippine government.

And, still with the survey as the basis, it is highly probably that most of this revenue comes from text messages sent through the systems of cellphone service companies.

Now, the question is, how much do cellphone companies really earn every time you send a text message? To do this, you'd have to figure out what it costs to send a text message and subtract this from the standard cost of one text message which is P 1.00 or 1/48 of one US dollar.

Here's some of the research I dug up:

Agham Study

Dr. Giovanni Tapang the lead convenor of AGHAM, explained that SMS or text messaging is an inherent feature of GSM networks and is now carried over in the newer 3G networks.

No additional investment is needed to enable GSM or 3G cellular phone systems to process text messages.

SMS is sent through the airwaves as packets of data similar to the way the packets of data are transmitted through the internet. It uses a small fraction of the capacity needed to carry a voice call.

He pointed out that telcos currently charge of P 10 flat rate for half an hour of data transfer at speeds of 56 to 114 kilobits per second using 3G or GPRS (General Packet Radio Service). Tapang said that it is possible to send the entire text of Dr. Jose Rizal's Noli Me Tangere, consisting of 1.15 million characters, at 56 kilobits per second within 30 minutes at a cost of just P 10.00. Alternatively, this means sending 638 characters a second at a cost of just half a centavo.

A single text message consisting of just 160 characters could zip through a cellular network system in a third of a second at a cost of around a hundredth of a centavo.

From Tapang's analysis, it was inferred that the price of text messages may have been a value arrived at that would compensate telcos for the aggregate system capacity of their used for texting.

If there were no such thing as text messaging and only voice calls were processed, cellular phone companies would have a large excess or unused capacity and this would represent a huge overhead cost for them.

By charging for text messaging, it is possible that they are not only eliminating overhead costs but are also earning huge profits at nearly zero additional cost.

From Slashdot Organization

The pricing for text messaging of 1 peso per text is more of a deterrent measure to keep cellular networks from being overwhelmed by text messages.

It is not the usual pricing which basically is the sum of all costs plus profit.

It is almost an arbitrary price which is set based on the parameters of how much text traffic can be accommodated without impairing the network to send or receive calls.

Put in another way, it is a price set to guarantee that a larger portion of the available capability of cellphone networks are free to accommodate voice calls which is where cellphone companies make most of their money.

Cellular phone networks were inherently capable of sending and receiving text messages for free -- no additional cost for buying equipment. All they really had to do was to charge any fee that they figured people would pay and at the same time, create a demand at a level that would not impair their system.

What is the actual cost of sending one text message? Zero, at least according to the two articles I've cited.

So, for every one peso text message, telcos in the Philippines might be earning as much as one peso. Even at promotional rates of about 25 cents per text message, telcos could be earning the whole 25 cents.

If that is so, what does Smart, Sun, and Globe spend its revenues on?

I don't have the exact information on this but I'd guess that all three telcos spend billions on advertising, billions on the salaries as well as bonuses of its employees (most are given a 17th month pay), billions for maintaining and upgrading its technology (which for some reason, still results in dropped calls or call with very poor voice quality, unsent text messages, and unstable internet connection), and dividends for stakeholders.

In the mean time, you'd wonder about the condition of the average Filipino cellphone subscriber. Better yet, why don't we take a look at the condition of the child of an average Filipino cellphone subscriber.

The child of an average Filipino cellphone subscriber goes to a public school which not only lacks classrooms, but also has only 1 comfort room which they must share with at least 200 other students -- that comfort room has one toilet bowl and one wash basin, indoor plumbing is optional. They learn lessons from a teacher in a class of as many as 100 students and they must try to learn their lessons in a room that is either too hot or damp from floods or leaking roofs. They must try to learn from books that are either outdated, misprinted, or printed with factual errors. They are taught about computers using a well-worn CHART with a picture of a computer. They are taught chemistry and other sciences in the same way.

The child of an average Filipino cellphone subscriber is malnourished and is ridden with diseases as well as dental carries.

Here's an excerpt from an article I posted yesterday:

Department of Education's figures show that 21% of schoolchildren are malnourished; 11.4% of students ages 6-12 are iodine deficient; 37.4% between ages 6-12 suffer iron deficiency anemia (IDA), while 36% suffer from vitamin A deficiency.

Moreover, 67% of schoolchildren suffer intestinal helminthiases (intestinal worms); 97% have dental caries; 6.2% have hearing impairment; and 2.54% have visual impairment.

How much money is needed to solve the education backlogs in the Philippines?

12,418 rooms at the cost of P6.95 billion
1,744,237 school seats at P1.39 billion;
44,200,000 textbooks for all students at P2.78 billion.

12,733 teachers with a cost of P2.48 billion and funds for their training at P25 million
24,709 principals at the cost of P4.43 billion

feed 12,202,297 school children in all grades for 120 days at the cost of P58.5 billion.

This totals to about P74 Billion

Under the present circumstances and for some time now, the government has not been able to supply all that the public education currently lacks.

Although several provisions in the constitution mandate that the government allocate the biggest portion of the budget to public education, the largest portion of the budget still goes to debt servicing.

It would be ideal if we could minimize or de-prioritize debt servicing, however, that would have negative economic repercussions.

What is needed, at this point, is a mid-term program that would raise additional funds and cause these funds to be administered efficiently and effectively in order to fund the inadequacies of Philippine public education.

About two years ago, Senate Bill 2402 was filed and it proposed the levying of 10 Philippine centavos on every text message sent through the system of Smart, Globe, Sun and other telcos. This levy will be on the earnings of telcos and would not be passed on to telco subscribers, it is expected that the levy would raise about P72 Billion a year -- or just P 2 Billion short of what is needed to wipe out the present education backlog.

A government owned and controlled corporation called the Health and Education Acceleration Program would be created to receive and administer the funds using a system that will allow it to show how much it has received and disbursed in real time over the internet. All purchases (from materials for the construction of schools to books, chairs, tables and even salaries of teachers) will be accounted for.

Recently, subscribers as well as telcos have registered their protest over House Bill 6625 which proposes an excise tax of 5 centavos on every text message sent.

While this bill is substantially different from Senate Bill 2402, the resulting uproar over HB 6625 could as well adversely affect the chances of passing SB 2402 since it also proposes taking a specific amount from text messages costs -- with the argument that such fees will be passed on, despite assurances that both bills have a NO PASS ON provision.

Now, there is some indication that telcos are actually funding a huge lobby to protect its earnings and have even gone so far as to fund congressmen as well as senators to oppose the passage of both HB6625 and SB2402.

To answer the question that I posed at the beginning of this entry, "Does Smart, Globe, and Sun really love its subscribers?"

Apparently, they don't love them enough to give their children good education that will eventually lift them out of poverty.

They don't love them AT ALL.