Text-to-social networking sites vs. poll cheating

The Commission on Election (Comelec) is harnessing cellular phone text messaging linked to online social networking sites—Facebook, Friendster, Tweeter and Plurk—as a medium for concerned citizens to report to it and the rest of the world possible attempts of cheating during this country’s synchronized national and local elections this May 10,2010. The functionality forms is part of the capabilities of bagongbotante.ph, the Comelec’s official online social network site, which formally launched on November 13 at the Magnet Café in Bonifacio Global City along with IBAnangayon.ph, its official voter’s education website on its Precinct Count Optical Scanning System (PCOS).

Bloggers—mostly Filipinos in their 20s the Comelec invited to cover and write about the event—greatly outnumbered the handful of journalists also present.

The social networking site, bagongbotante.ph targets Filipino online social network users—40 million mostly young Filipinos registered on Friendster alone. As such, Comelec believes they could then accurately inform others through the Internet and by physical word of mouth about the mechanics of the PCOS, the automated vote counting system to be introduced on May 10.

The Website, IBAnangayon.ph gives in layperson’s language information on the PCOS with IBA an acronym for, “It’s Better Automated.”

In October at a press preview at the Old Swiss Inn in Makati City, Comelec spokesman James Jimenez told members of the Information Technology Journalists Association of the Philippines (ITJAP) or CyberPress that the electoral administration body would employ Internet-based “New Media” as part of its public information toolkit to dispel doubts and fears about PCOS.

At the launch, Michael Jabillo of the IT firm saklolo.net said that users had the option to directly register on bagongbotante.ph via cellular phone texting, and this would enable them to use texting to post their reports on the social networking site’s shoutbox.

The Comelec social networking site had been configured to immediately link these comments to Facebook, Friendster, Tweeter and Plurk, according to Jabillo. Making the cellular phone texting-online social networking interface possible was AKA, an applet or mini-software installed in bagongbotante.ph.

Jabillo, whose firm developed the mini-blog applet and configured it into the Comelec online social networking site, told The Manila Times that the interface had been intended to serve as bridge to the site for Filipinos who had never or had seldom used the Internet, but were users of a mobile phone’s SMS feature.

Jabillo, who spoke briefly with The Times at the event, reminded this correspondent that the Philippines is the texting capital of the world.

Their firm specializes in the marketing of software for m-commerce, e-commerce via cellular phones and other mobile devices.

For his part, Jimenez told The Times that the Comelec would encourage all other content to be posted on the shoutbox of bagongbotante.ph, in order to build an online community whose members were passionate in the advocacy of the use of the PCOS.

In Addition, Jabillo also told The Times that it is highly possible that this would be the very first time in the world that text-to-online social networking interface applications would be used to educate voters.

While at the October ITJAP briefing, Jimenez said that it was possible that this would be the very first time in the world that an online social network would be used to build a community to inform voters about new technology for voting.

Finally, during the bagongbotante.ph launch, bloggers wrote tweeter posts on the event and these were displayed on a screen projector. –IKE SUAREZ CORRESPONDENT, Manila Times