I feel bad that ABS-CBN invited Retz to do a segment on Pinoy Big Brother blogging, then ended up scrapping it because they felt it wasn’t significant. Some prominent Pinoy bloggers like Yugs, Cat and Jobert, have already weigned in on this unfortunate event. It would have been ok if ABS-CBN ignored Retz completely (just like Pinoy Rickey — who for all intents and purposes is a publicity whore), but they in essence treated him like crap and wasted his time. At least he now has something new to write, but its nothing compared to being acknowledged for your contribution to the Pinoy Big Brother show. Retzwerx became the first destination for PBB updates during the show, something the official website couldn’t achieve because of slow updates.
All I can say is, ABS-CBN should be thankful that they could not show Pinoy Big Brother in North America, or else I would have been all over it. As it is, my first post on Pinoy Big Brother — about not being able to watch it — is the most commented post on all of Pinoy Rickey, now topping 700 comments. Imagine what I could have done if I had more material to work with (another ABS-CBN show, Panday, comes to mind). Next season na lang… kung matuloy si Rosanna Roces, I’m definitely getting the online subscription.
Are bloggers really significant? It depends. Certainly, a blog becomes significant if it has numbers on its side — meaning a lot of people read what you have to say. Whether or not a blog exerts influence on its readers however is another story. Here at Pinoy Rickey, we now average 800-1000 visitors a day, but I don’t know if this is a significant number for a Philippine blog or website. (I’m still trying to consolidate the Danny Laureano niche, hahaha.) But over at my main blog, rickey.org, though my daily average has gone down significantly, I can always brag that I got 35,000 visitors in one day after the American Idol finals.
For the entire PBB season that he blogged, Retz logged 100,000+ unique visitors, and when he broke the news that ABS-CBN scrapped his segment on Pinoy Big Brother Revealed, he immediately received 3000+ e-mails from his readers showing support. If that’s not influence, I don’t know what is.
Pashneya ABS-CBN.



