I thought long and hard if I should even mention this “little intrigue” that seems to be indirectly percolating between this blog and our friends at Pinoy Tech Blog. By doing so I was afraid I might give it more undeserved attention and misplaced importance. But I figured the air should be cleared before it takes a turn for the worse. These things have a way of getting out of hand and taking a life of their own in spite of what the original participants actually think and feel about the matter.
When I saw that first post instigating the potentially harmful and incendiary issue out of a sense of “fun”, I wanted to nip it in the bud. But I bit my tongue, hoping and trusting that folk would be more sensible than they usually get credit for. For a while it looked ok, but later I received some comments from other people in the negative, some of them actually angry about the original post and why it even had to be posted because it was totally counterproductive.
Much later Miguel Paraz from Pinoy Tech Blog posted something on PTB that worried me a bit. Then the comments on PTB and the original post that started it began to skate nervously on the edge of trouble. A quick look at PWiT’s blog stats show that a lot of traffic coming into our site have been referred by the PWiT-PTB posts on PTB and A Bugged Life. PWiTs Howard Paw and Gary Mercado, apparently disturbed, were already getting into the act, so I figured I should say something and defuse any possible problems before the readers of either blog take it out of our hands.
For the record, PWiT and PTB are on the same side, and should be complementary sites and offers views from different perspectives. Us being mostly mainstream media people has no bearing on anything, and neither should being niche bloggers be a problem. PWiT is a new blog just feeling its way along and making mistakes our esteemed PTB colleagues have gone through and overcome years before. While as mainstream print media we have many readers already through our respective publications, as a blog we’re wet behind the ears. PTB has been around since 2005, composed of experts in their respective fields and with its own loyal and sizeable online readership. We overlap and cross paths in many areas, both online and in print, and this is just another venue were we can contribute and help each other out, and ultimately be good for our country and the industry.
PWiT has the utmost respect for our colleagues at Pinoy Tech Blog, and any intimation that there should somehow be some competition, friendly or otherwise, is outright silly. It’s ridiculous that I even have to write this post, but I have to just be clear, and I feel that our friends at PTB would agree with me. Both blogs have but the best intentions for Filipinos and technology, but we hope we don’t bring into it our notorious Pinoy penchant for crab mentality. Just blogging is hard enough already. People with nothing better to do will always think of mentioning something along those lines and cause more harm than good. Let’s leave that stuff out.
We’re all in this together after all.
February 5, 2007 at 1:17 am
Hi reverseengineer,
Thanks for the clarification. I updated the Pinoy Tech Blog post to link here. Cheers.
February 5, 2007 at 1:22 am
Hi Migs. I saw it already, even before you posted. Thanks for understanding. Cheers too, and more power to both our blogs!
February 5, 2007 at 1:40 am
[…] Update: The official response of PWiT: All in this together. […]
February 5, 2007 at 11:20 am
Now PTB is down.
Can I post here?
JK 🙂
February 5, 2007 at 1:19 pm
By all means! Hehehehe
February 5, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Pinoy bloggers/writers FTW! hehe
February 5, 2007 at 2:29 pm
well, maybe i should say–at least on my behalf if not of some others–that i’m writing here for no one else’s sake but by own, purely for fun, and not for any kind of money. i write lots of other things for money (thank god, because i’d be chased out of my rented house otherwise), but here i don’t feel responsible to an editor (except for typos and such) or even to a platform. in other words, this is as amateur as things get for me, in the old sense of the word–as a “lover” rather than a pro. (and my being strictly amateur will show in all the silly things i’m bound to say.)
no harm in having all kinds of tech or quasi-tech blogs–there’s a lot to cover out there, and surely more than one way of looking at a blinking piece of plastic 🙂
February 5, 2007 at 11:21 pm
[…] Stop right there. So what if they’re from mainstream media? So what if “they’re not writing for The Man”? What’s wrong with mainstream? (Did I just say that?) Mainstream is the primary target market in any business, right? Now, even target markets aside, is it so hard to believe that these bunch of PWiTters aren’t writing for the money? […]
February 5, 2007 at 11:33 pm
some people seem to put malice where there really was none intended. my original post had no “reading in between the lines” at all. both blogs cover the same content with a different spin and this is always appreciated.
February 6, 2007 at 12:04 am
“some people seem to put malice where there really was none intended.”
True. They do.
That is why it is always a dumb idea to give these kind of people any opening and bait the malicious-minded.
When you say things like “Is this the battle of mainstream media vs. the bloggers?” and things like “Adel Gabot vs. Abraham Olandres”, you’re asking for it.
Don’t be naive. Some people will imagine lines to be read in-between; if no lines exist they will make some up – so don’t give them a chance. As in the Hall & Oates song, some things are better left unsaid.
This is why your post is potentially harmful and counterproductive, and there was no call for it at all. It was ill-advised and ill-considered, and has caused some amount of stress.
You said it yourself – you did start a “small intrigue.” Fairly successfully too, I think.
It’s been fixed. I’d just as soon not talk about it anymore, if that’s all right with everyone.
February 6, 2007 at 3:27 am
one thing this helped me is that I found a new site to get tech news from. It’s always fun and interesting to read tech news of different point of views.
I could have wished it was introduced to me in a different light though.
February 6, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Hmmmm..
The more blogs… the bloggier!
(panget pakingggan… hehehhe)
MiGs H.