wayblima.com vs cebucentral.com

[guilliam]

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^^.. seconded.. if you are open to suggestions @oon.. please do state.. so that we can post suggestion without a hinder.

thanks.

guilliam

[oon]

portals are built to promote cebu, information, tourism, business, etc. the challenge to all those portals put good content and organize subjects.

well, our stance is that portals aren't supposed to promote anything. promoting cebu is the job of the cebu tourism board and so on. web portals are supposed to be useful. for instance, the mother of all portals is yahoo.com, and they don't promote anything; yahoo.com is solely focused on being useful to as many users as possible.

now, in the case of content such as a visitors guide, being useful includes talking about the sublime, the good, as well as the bad and the mundane and the idiotic. glossing over problems and overemphasizing the positive just annoys visitors because they can see the reality for themselves when they get here. most people are smart enough to tell the difference between propaganda and real content. i believe that is one reason our feedback is overwhelmingly positive.

[oon]

btw.. i dont exactly understand whats the purpose of your site.. just browsed a while.. and read bit and pieces.. i cant exactly relate that youre a cebu portal while youre making harsh comments/statements for cebu? thats wierd.. and perhaps absurd.. are you trying to to become lonelyplanet dot com(local version)?

i wasn't aware of any harsh comments about cebu. most of what we say in our visitors guide is overwhelmingly positive. we get a lot of email from cebuanos abroad who say they are made to feel proud when surfing our site. (see our testimonials page.) however, we do try to tell it like it is. that means, no bola2x.

as to what are we trying to become, we have already achieved it to a large degree; we are trying to become the most useful site about cebu. of course, we can become more useful still, and we will: more content and more features are coming soon. (if there are any features you would like to see, please, feel free to send us feedback.)

regarding business development: i believe that if you provide society with usefulness, the money will just follow naturally. that is what happened with all the great websites (yahoo, google, ebay, etc.) which weren't about making money in the first place, but about fulfilling a need that wasn't being taken care of. in our case, there was no good web portal for cebu.

[potterboy]

hmmm... its like msn.com from a quick view.

both sites are cool, nothing much to compare about.

does way blima have a Buy and sel board? coz i ddnt see one. maybe coz i ddnt browse the site that much.

cebucentral... hmmm. <--- need i say more?

[M@rv|n]

CebuCentral.Com is an online directory, lifestyle and information website of different establishments, events, entertainment, festivals and other relevant and general information about Cebu City.

Wa'y Blima!, released on October 1, 2004, is a rapidly expanding web portal for Cebu, an island in the Philippine archipelago. Wa'y Blima! is focused on Cebu Province, Cebu City, and all things Cebuano. In case you didn't know, Cebu City is a thriving city of just the right size. The climate is pleasant, the food is fantastic, and the people are beautiful. Not least, we also have fantastic beaches and resorts. Wa'y Blima! - which is pronounced why blimma and means "No Problem" in Cebuano - is the definitive web portal to Cebu for visitors and Cebuanos alike.

just by reading the first paragraph of your about us i really dont understand whats the purpose of http://www.wayblima.com it really makes me confuse if your about us is talking about the website/portal or about ur group/company or ur talking about the beauties cebu yet you claim that ur not promoting cebu, still http://www.cebucentral.com is

including text and photographs, is original,

i dont want to count how many times i read this pharse or similar to this pharse

[HybernaTe]

well, our stance is that portals aren't supposed to promote anything. promoting cebu is the job of the cebu tourism board and so on.

Well as a cebuano I can take part of promoting cebu. (dili lang ta salig sa DOT, they them selves are working hard on it). We all benefit from it! More tourism and business makes Cebu more progressive and more jobs.

[oon]

just by reading the first paragraph of your about us i really dont understand whats the purpose of http://www.wayblima.com it really makes me confuse if your about us is talking about the website/portal or about ur group/company or ur talking about the beauties cebu yet you claim that ur not promoting cebu

the about page explains what wa'y blima! is about. wa'y blima! is about cebu. most people in the world have never heard of cebu. they have no idea cebu is an animal, plant or mineral.

still http://www.cebucentral.com is

lagi, lagi. i never said it wasn't.

i dont want to count how many times i read this pharse or similar to this pharse

a lot of sites just copy information from other sites. in fact, our articles have been stolen, twice na. so the little notices you see in the margins here and there are intended to help people understand that we were the ones who produced the content, not the ones who stole it (when they see the same article elsewhere). what differentiates wayblima.com from all other sites (and all other media for that matter) in cebu is that we don't just re-release press releases. we do more than just parrot what the businesses tell us; we try to get our own content. it takes a lot of time, money, and effort, but we still get our own original content. even the newspapers don't do that. i think this is an important point, and it deserves to be emphasized. in fact i might put it in the html template so that it's announced on every single page.

[oon]

Well as a cebuano I can take part of promoting cebu.

of course. i didn't say we don't promote cebu. it's just not our primary mission, and neither should it be the primary objective of any business other than the DOT. however, all citizens of cebu have an interest in promoting cebu, and, ultimately, the best way to do it is to be honest, to do whatever you do well, to not overcharge your customers, to not to give bribes, to pay taxes, not to throw garbage absolutely anywhere, to make sure your car's exhaust is clean, to not cheat foreigners (or anyone else), to return someone's cellphone or wallet if you find it in a taxi, to stop if you see a pedestrian at a pedestrian crossing, to report illegal activites, to avoid drugs, to get your pets spayed and vaccinated, to complain to the civil authorities about problems, to participate in elections, etc. etc. etc.

in other words, if you are a good citizen, and do your job well, you are already helping to promote cebu.

meanwhile, if you just have a website telling people what a great place cebu is... i don't think it will be effective, because there are websites like that about practically every city on earth, and (like i already said) people don't go for propaganda anymore.

on the other hand, if you had a choice of visiting a city with a good web portal and one without, wouldn't you go for the one with the good web portal? you'll have lots of useful information beforehand, which will make your visit more pleasant. i don't know how many emails we got thanking us for the jeepney routes. by doing our job - being useful - and doing it well, we are promoting cebu. wa'y blima! has probably done more to promote cebu than any other website (except livinginthephilippines.com which is a fantastically useful site for foreigners).

[plluisma]

hambugero man ni ang mga taga wayblima diay...or kulang sa pansin...self-praising ug una..ang makaingon kung mas nindot or mas maayo mo is ang mga nakavisit sa inyo sites dili kamo mismo...

dili daghan istorya wayblima, show it in your work kung maayo ba gyud mo..cebu portal na ko sugod karon...dili ko ganahan ana mga hambugero

[vern]

Both suffer from the same crutch ... that neither offer none or little original content. Content is either taken from other sites or with the use of scripts with data that is readily available someplace else. If you have no original content ... why would I want to go there? If I was a resident of Cebu, I'm better off asking a neighbor, a friend, a taxi driver. If I was a tourist in Cebu, neither portal is the first thing that comes to mind when I want to find something to do. If I was a tourist who might be interested in Cebu, none of these directories mean anything to me but gibirish. The entertainment section of cebucentral is lacking, uninspired, and at times complete ripoffs of other sites. Why are there rottentomatoes.com reviews on your site? Paying for feeds does not count as original content. The bad thing is, that is pretty much the only lengthy content on the site that a user might want to read. wayblima.com however actually has ORIGINAL content, ORIGINAL PICTURES, and ORIGINAL "editorials". I also feel that the development team at wayblima.com has more credibility. People think data is static, but is actually far from it. It uses Perl ... you know, what people had before PHP. ... and still a lot more powerful than PHP. With enough support, hopefully the site will grow in size and content. My point here is ... content! content! content! Unless you want to offer a service that people will want to come back for, content is the only reason to come back for.

I like the discussion guys, but people are tending to be defensive as if protecting their nest. Keep everything constructive and keep the replies to those comments ... constructive as well. In any case, neither site has done the "cebu portal" very well, so who "wins" this "war" is still up for grabs.