Social Network Movie -- Luis Buenaventura (Part 1)

While everybody is getting zombie chitchatting about their life and others lives on social sites; Luis Buenaventura has been busy building not only a social network site, but a factory to spin webs for his many social sites, which are to make the world a better place, or to simply satisfy his needs, or whims.

Behind those dark glasses are social sites hiding
(Image from guttervomit.org)

I read the whole of his blog, guttervomit.com, as part of my 'research' about him. And, I'm just simply amazed at the different social networking sites he's spitting left and right that I cannot help but post a blog about it. I can imagine that right at this moment, his mind, even asleep, is probably busy weaving ideas after ideas for his next web toy.

Following is a list of Luis Buenaventura's web products, which I harvested from his blog. So this might not be a complete compilation. These are just based on my interpretation, so do not take them all as facts. Let's just call this a fan's tribute.

Highfiber.org -- In 2001, before graduating from UP, Luis put up highfiber.org, which is a, lifted from their facebook page:

"... community website started by Luis Buenaventura as a way to learn web programming back in 2001. It became fairly popular amongst web-geeks, goth-chicks, attention-whores, and people looking for pr0n and wareZ for quite some time." 

So, as you see, Luis created highfiber.org to answer a need, which was to learn programming, which, of course, then created a web community and has help others too.

B&B Multimedia -- This is not a social site, but a company Luis Buenaventura created in 2005. He sold his iRiver H320 for Php10,000 to fund his B&B. Their team were mostly into setting up websites. But even being a newbie at that time, they were already able to bag big-named clients; just to name a few, they got Philippine Ad Congress, Ayala Land International, myHomeland, Red Ribbon, had a deal with a UK-based marketing firm, and others.And, to top it off, some of the websites they created were web award recipients.

So it looks like his iRiver was a lucky charm.

oKs.ph -- In between working for his B&B clients, Luis was still able to pull off his oKs.ph November, 2005. Probably to keep his self from getting bored creating stiff corporate websites where he could not implement his bleeding-edge technologies.

The oKs.ph was an experiment to test if Filipinos were ready for a user-generated web platform, which was quite popular at that time, ala Digg. Or, maybe it was also an experiment to create a Kevin Rose of the Philippines.

After oKs.ph, Luis created a mini-flood of Web 2.0 social collaborative sites. Year 2006 was probably the year that he moved from building boring corporate websites to social network sites. His frustration over Red Ribbon's disapproval of his drag-and-drop shopping cart feature had probably driven Luis to create his own web projects which he can shape according to his fancies and whims.

gibbity.com -- It was a people-powered game review site. Just 2 months after his oKs.ph, while people in this side of the world were enjoying the New Year celebration, Luis was hacking the night away for his next Web 2.0 collaborative site. He released it after 10 days to the public to get help in weeding out bugs. It then became the first Web 2.0 application developed in the Philippines, got featured in Lifehacker, and the rest is history.

filmcrowd.com -- As its name suggested, it's the equivalent of gibbity for film reviews. It was created the same year gibbity was created. But while gibbity was a New Year baby, filmcrowd was a Holy Week baby. (Lesson learned: And, you wonder why Luis has fame and fortune? It's simple -- skip holidays.)

Were these two review sites created as yet to satisfy another set of Luis' needs? Well, he seems to love games and movies based on his blogs. But he confessed in one of his blog posts that he got the idea of collaborative review sites from the CNET's Buzz Out Loud podcast where one of the hosts, Molly, mentioned:

"She said something to the effect of "the only honest review is the user review," which set off a light bulb in my head the instant I heard it."

That Molly's statement had not only set off a light bulb, but plenty of light bulbs in Luis' head that he was determined to be a social site breeder. From his post:

"Eventually, I hope to have a family of user-review sites that each focus on a different medium, ..."

(Lesson learned here is that it pays to listen to podcasts.) 

What's next?
(Luis Image from guttervomit.org)

Please watch out for the next part. Web geeks, web links, game reviews, movie reviews -- what were Luis next web toy / social site / whim?

Part 2 is now available here.