The Mike Abundo Effect

A while back, I asked if you guys could help Filipina blogger Vicky Ras find her biological mother. Looks like blogging and social networking came to the rescue.

After 28 years, public relations executive Vicky Ras was ready to give up the search for her biological mother.

But last week, a comment in her blog entry “Finding Mom” from a certain “Dondon” changed everything. The anonymous tip provided links to two social networking profiles of Marigold Gomez, Ras’ biological sister whom she never met. She found out about her real sister’s name from her adoptive siblings only recently.

Ras opened one website link leading to an eSnips profile, where she found a Yahoo! Messenger address. She quickly added it to her directory, and sent a short message explaining her “dilemma” and her years of search for her biological mother.

Her message also included a link back to her personal blog.

“Turns out I got the right person. She’s my biological sister!” she said in a long text message she sent out to her friends.

So when her Yahoo! Messenger message went unanswered, she thought her search was over. Little did she know that her biological sister received the message, and alerted their mom, who in turn, rushed to Ras’ home in Bicol.

Her biological mother was now living in Legaspi City, about four towns away from her Bicol home. Ras’ biological mom eventually caught up with her adoptive sister in Bicol.

Everything fell into place after Ras got a call from his adoptive brother who was a doctor. Instructed to meet in Antipolo, his adoptive brother hinted that he had a surprise for her. When she got to his adoptive brother’s clinic, a call came.

It was her biological sister on the other line.

“That’s when I broke down. He got my sister on the phone and she passed it on to my mom. She sounded just like me! We were both crying we can hardly speak. I now have her number and hopefully we’ll see each other soon,” Ras said.

Congratulations, Vicky. Have a happy reunion with your mom next week.

Once again, Google makes Microsoft look stupid for buying Facebook stock at Zuckerberg’s ridiculous price. They just launched a social graph API that allows developers to harvest relationship data not just within social networks, but across the open Web through XFN and FOAF.

OpenSocial for widgets, and now Social Graph for relationships: Google is building a suite of APIs to blow social networking out of information silos and wide open across the Web. As demonstrated by Facebook banning Scoble for harvesting his own social graph, that openness is Zuckerberg’s worst nightmare.

While bottom-tier social network Multiply stepped into deep shit by partnering with ABS-CBN, OpenSocial-enabled Friendster is expanding its Philippine office. Friendster serves 10.7 million Filipinos — and despite their history of technical glitches and patent trolling, I like the way they show how people are connected. They’re smart enough to use OpenSocial, they didn’t lure users through illegal filesharing, they didn’t lure users through nontransactional online “storefronts”, and they didn’t become party to a petty network war. Friendster already avoids a lot of the mistakes Multiply makes.

That’s because Friendster focuses on its core business of social networking — from expanding in key markets to adopting the right technologies. Even its patent-trolling is on focus. Multiply, meanwhile, goes half-baked on everything — from ersatz filesharing and content management, to ignoring de facto industry standards, to relying on some silly TV station to sell ad space.

Here’s the bottom line for Filipino social networkers: Multiply is slow to adopt standards, dependent on a TV station, and unfocused as a social network. Friendster adopted OpenSocial early, maintains its own office in a key market, and remains focused as a social network. Multiply serves around 2 million Filipinos, Friendster serves 10.7 million. If you want to connect with Filipinos, then screw Multiply. Use Friendster. That goes for users, developers, and advertisers.

(Of course, to connect with your American friends, use MySpace. Story via Hans Koch.)