I’m not a Plastic Bag has hit the Philippines like a storm! Let me correct that: It has hit the whole world like a storm! This creation of anyahindmarch is a canvas shopping bag that was made as a statement against plastic. Tree huggers everywhere love this creation, as well as fashionistas who want to get in on the trend. This isn’t an entirely new fad in other countries, but based on my observations in the Multiply world, this bag is still making its waves here in Manila.

The bag is such a hit that the official site states:

“Due to the unprecedented demand for I’m Not A Plastic Bag in South East Asia and our concerns for our customers safety we will be cancelling the launches at the following stores: Anya Hindmarch Beijing, On Pedder in Shanghai and On Pedder in Jakarta”

People REALLY lined up for this! It sold limited stocks at only £5 and the profits went to an environmental group. However, because of the huge demand, some people were reselling it as high as £225 on EBay! That’s 20,000 pesos people!

There is, however, some controversy shadowing this ethical bag. The bag is actually NOT organic, as the supermarkets claimed it to be, and was made in China, using cheap labor! Not to mention all the resources consumed to have these things shipped all over the world! Kind of hypocrital if you ask me, don’t you think?

My main question and concern is this: Are the people buying this bag really for the fight against plastic or has this become such a fad that people have forgotten the main point? And those who are selling imitation “I’m not a Plastic Bag” bags here in the Philippines -> do you think they were done with the same goal in mind?

To read the whole argument online, visit these URLs:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/anya_hindmarch.php

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/04/i_am_not_an_eth.php

Posted: September 24th, 2007 under Fashion.
Comments: none

Our first and foremost goal in ClassifiedsPH.com is to make our site EASY TO USE. This is why we are launching a series of video tutorials to help you even more in our site. Below is our video tutorial to teach you how to post an ad:

Hope this helps! We’ll be launching some more classifieds site video tutorials soon so stay tuned!

Posted: September 19th, 2007 under ClassifiedsPH Development.
Comments: none

I have observed a sudden boom in the pendant trend in the Philippines lately. You might have noticed it yourself when you walk along the malls or go to a concert and see girls sporting a huge cherry on their shirt, or a swarovski-studded piece. When you look at all the Multiply shopping sites, a lot of them are selling the same thing. Here are some of the top-selling pendants based on my Multiply-hopping:

1. fruit pendants - and lots of them. Strawberry pendants claiming to look like KJL’s (the one that Mischa Barton wears), cherry necklaces, some with swarovski studs, some without, some transparent…

2. puffy hearts - 3d hearts - metallic colors, primary colors, plastic, glittery ones.

3. owl pendants - again popularized by Mischa Barton, the most common owl piece I see on the net is the one with the swaying legs. I think there are at least 6 sites selling the exact same piece.

4. polymer clay pieces - mostly of food - from shortcakes to sushi. The possibilities are endless! At least in this case, there are more variations to this, because creators can just let their creativity run wild.

5. anything that screams bling - studded stuff. anything with swarovskis to make it twinkle.

What then is the only way to get into the Philippine market? Say you already have the supplier, the marketing strategy, and the look and layout of your page? Personally, I feel that it’s all about online presence. You may be selling the best things out there but if no one has heard of you, then it’s no use.

This is one of the reasons why we decided to open up classifiedsPH. Aside from advertising your site in Multiply, it’s always good to post in Philippine online classifieds sites like classifiedsPH. The benefit is that you tap into non-Multipy users, you increase your presence in search engines, and you allow users to get a bird’s eye view of what you’re selling, especially now that we have launched our image upload functionality.

Furthermore, and more importantly, we’ve made our search functionality useful enough so that people who are looking for a sushi necklace can easily go to the Products category, type in sushi on the search bar and see all sushi-related products being sold. In the near future, we will be improving even further our search functionality to make it even easier for you guys.

In Multiply, searching can be difficult because we have other users (and hundreds of thousands of them may I emphasize, coming from all different parts of the world) who post about other non-business-related things with so many varied content. Search for sushi on Multiply, and you get thousands of pages of multiply users going to a sushi restaurant date with her long-time crush or multiply users talking about their dislike towards raw fish.

Sure, you can try typing in sushi necklace but the results won’t purely about people selling sushi necklace - it can be a blog about a girls’ night out, which involved a sushi dinner and shopping for necklaces after. And, you can be sure that some sites with sushi necklaces won’t show up.

Posted: September 16th, 2007 under Fashion.
Comments: none

Past 8:30 am every day, I receive a text from 2350. The text of temptation.

TAWAD NA! FREE ALERT! May makakabili na ng yesterday’s <insert shiny object here like a MotorolaRAZR or WEGA flat screen TV> for only <insert ridiculously small price ranging from a mere 5 pesos to 30 pesos>!

Bid for a <insert another shiny object> today! Send TAWAD <amt> to 2350. You may send an amount w/ centavos!

And my fingers start to itch. Who wouldn’t get tempted at the prospect of getting a shiny object for that price?! Of course, when you rethink the odds of winning, it’s ridiculous! Just imagine this: 5 minutes after I receive that text promo, I immediately text my amounts, and they’re already taken!

Sadly though, I don’t learn. I get another TAWAD NA update and I text again. Bravo Globe for this very clever text promo. This is certainly going to garner Globe a hefty amount of texts.

Posted: September 14th, 2007 under Buzz in the Philippines.
Comments: 3

American Idol finalist Elliott Yamin is scheduled to come to the Philippines for a mall tour. He is scheduled to have a concert in Metro Manila and Cebu in the Ayala malls. The following are his tour schedules:

TriNoma (Conceirge # 901 3000)
-Activity Center
-September 21, 2007 at 7:00pm

Glorietta -Activity Center
-September 22, 2007 at 7:00pm

Market! Market! -Activity Center
-September 23, 2007 at 6:00pm

Ayala Center Cebu -OnStage
-September 26, 2007 at 6:00pm

Alabang Town Center -Activity Center
-September 28, 2007 at 6:30pm

Posted: September 14th, 2007 under Buzz in the Philippines.
Comments: none

Our team has been brainstorming for months now on how to most effectively allow users to place images on their classified ads. We wanted to keep the interface simple and easy. This meant absolutely no annoying window pop-ups and no unnecessary new page directs.

The current functionality is the result of our brainstorm. We wanted the images unobtrusive so that the ad’s layout is not compromised. We decided that an image gallery per ad was the best way to go. Users who are interested in a particular ad should opt to click on that ad to maximize it, then click on a particular image to view the ad’s gallery.

Adding images to the ad was another thing. Again, we wanted to preserve the Web 2.0 interface and yet find a very meaningful and easy way to show the users the images they have been uploading to their ad, just as we show a preview of their ads before they submit.

If, say, a user decided to post a Philippine real estate ad, the user would want to add several images (like the map, the floor plan, and the model), the user can see thumbnails of each image, and can readily remove these images. The user can also see how much more free space is available for images.

Ultimately, we hope that this new functionality will make your experience in our classifieds site that more meaningful.

Speaking of images, we are still offering a limited offer of free banner ad space on the right side of our website. If you are interested, simply send us a gif or swf file of your ad with dimensions of either 120pixels width x 90pixels height or 120pixels width x 240pixels height, and send it to admin @ classifiedsph.com with the site you want the ad to redirect to.

Posted: September 13th, 2007 under ClassifiedsPH Development.
Comments: none