iSTorya.net -- Cebu's Active Online Community

Before Friendster and Facebook, Cebu has already iSTORYA.net, a forum/social site. If you want to get a feel and know more about Cebu, skip Google. Instead, get more reliable information, about the ins and outs of Cebu straight from the locals by visiting iSTORYA.net. The iSTORYA.net now has 62,000+ members and 7million plus posts, from the initial 8 members when they started on February 22, 2002. So with 8 years of contents generated from thousand of members, you will really find valuable resources instead of trying to find a pin in the haystack of Google results about Cebu.

What is iSTORYA.NET (More than just TALK)? (Lifted from its friendster account)

The word istorya means talk, communicate, express or exchange of thoughts and ideas. It is an online community website first of its kind in CEBU. A venue for exchanging of diverse ideas. It is a dynamic website that appreciates the advantages of web or Internet technologies in linking information and ideas with people, products & services with consumers. The website anticipated the need of surfers that frequently have to find, at their own time and at great expense, information about the Cebuano environment in particular. This need for information becomes more acute with people across continents or countries just to get information about the Philippines or more specifically to Cebu. A concept of web-based community information delivery that answers the need of surfers with different activity profile. iSTORYA.NET is a major venture and powered by JAGs Media Network in the area of web-based community, guide and information. Its main differential advantage is its sensitivity to the needs of surfers for accurate and latest information for everything about CEBU.

I'm a member of iSTORYA.net but not an active one though; but I know some of my friends are. I find iSTORYA.net very useful when I need to find reviews and feedback for a certain local product, service, events, etc. It gives way better results than Google.com. I got reliable information from it when I looked for an eye doctor for my mother, I need feedbacks on different schools when I was searching school for my kids. The replies to forum threads are very honest and can be very detailed that they can really help you in making decisions. And, if you want to know, the eye doctor I got based from the posts on iSTORYA.net was really a good one. (My iSTORYA public profile http://www.istorya.net/forums/members/owrange.html.)

If you have plans of relocating or finding a job here in Cebu, you can check iSTORYA.net and you will find reviews of different call centers and business here in Cebu; thus, you will have an idea of what companies to check out and avoid. Or, if you simply want to travel and you want to find out where to stay and to go, where and what to eat, no one knows better than the Cebuanos. Or, if you simply want to connect with people in the Southern part of the Philippines, you can find an active community in iSTORYA.net. When I say active, you will really find real people talking, not spammy accounts posting spammy links.

So if you have a business or something, and you want to connect with the Cebu community, you can start with iSTORYA.net.

The main team (admins) behind iSTORYA.net are BeoR (Gerald Yuvallos), Galadriel (Janice Yuvallos), and Vern (Vernon Wenberg III). You can find here the list of moderators. Kudos to them for the 8 years of keeping the online community up and running. =)

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I'm hoping soon to get the story behind this Cebu's online nook, iSTORYA.net.