23
August
WikiPilipinas reaches 100,000 visitor mark in 24 Hours
WikiPilipinas.org, the biggest online Philippine encyclopedia, experienced a phenomenal surge of online visitors – a total of 100,000 in the 24 hours after it was launched to members of the press yesterday, August 22, 2007, at Milky Way Restaurant in Makati.
The launch of the Philippines ’ first and largest online encyclopedia was immediately picked up by local television networks, print media, and members of the influential blogging community. On television, GMA-7 scooped other networks, and aired its first news report on the WikiPilipinas project on its 6 p.m. news program 24 Oras anchored by Mike Enriquez and Mel Tiangco, and again, on the top TV news magazine, Saksi, hosted by Arnold Clavio and Vicky Morales.
“We are overwhelmed by the public response to the project,” said WikiPilipinas founder Gus Vibal. “Starting from a handful of visitors, our website traffic scaled exponentially to 250 by 6 p.m. , 780 visitors by 7:49 p.m. , and tens of thousands by 12 midnight after the Saksi segment was aired.”
By noon the following day, WikiPilipinas reached the 100,000 visitor mark making it one of the fastest growing internet start-ups in Philippine history.
The surge necessitated an immediate escalation of WikiPilipinas’ web hosting solutions. It turned to VConnect Inc., a BPO company and its technology partner. Its general manager, Butch Capistrano supplied an IBM X-series Web Server 3850 to rapidly meet the website’s expanding requirements. WikiPilipinas’ new world-class server is powered by dual 3-gigahertz Xeon processors, 4 gigabytes of RAM, dual 750 gigabyte hard drives, and a dual gigabit Ethernet port. Its internet pipeline is supplied by IP Converge. To meet its escalating traffic, VConnect has increased WikiPilipinas’ bandwidth allocation to 10 megabits per second, equivalent to 5 E1 connections.
With this configuration, WikiPilipinas and VConnect Inc. are confident that the website is ready to take on hundreds of thousands volunteers who will help catapult it to the top ten wikis of the world. Its stated ambition is driven by WikiPilipinas founder’s challenge to all Filipinos to make a cultural and technological landmark in the world.
“Our visitors come from the United States, Canada, China, Japan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Romania, and South Africa – anywhere where there are people who love the Philippines and the Filipinos.” said Vibal.
Influential blogger, Kristine Mandigma, president of the literacy advocacy group Read-or-Die Foundation, describes WikiPilipinas as “the online version of an omnium gatherum… a motley and captivating assortment of ideas, facts and factoids, emotions, dissertations, and agonized biographies.”
Nino Gonzales, an information technology blogger and a Filipino member of the rival Wikipedia team, called WikiPilipinas, “the biggest open-source collaborative research infrastructure in Philippine history.” In a follow-up article in a tech magazine on August 7, Gonzales predicted an impending Wikipedia versus WikiPilipinas turf war.
Lawrence Casiraya, in an article for Philippine Daily Inquirer, wrote that “the founder of Wikipilipinas.org is hoping for the ‘long tail’ effect to give more prominence to Filipino culture on the Internet.” He added that with 100,000 articles, WikiPilipinas will become one of the largest repositories of information about Filipino culture.
For more information, contact:
Alfred Ursua tel no. 0917-8239784 or email Alfred@vibalpublishing.com
