The Philippine Online Chronicles

The Philippine Online Chronicles (POC) and Blog Watch signed today a partnership agreement with Yahoo! Philippines for the coverage of the upcoming Philippine national elections.

The agreement was signed at the Yahoo! Philippines headquarters in Taguig. Articles from Blog Watch and POC will be published online at Yahoo's election portal, Purple Thumb. Aside from articles, Blog Watch videos may be uploaded to Yahoo's video playlist. In exchange, POC will be able to publish Creative Commons-licensed content from Yahoo.

Purple Thumb is a microsite created and developed by Yahoo! Philippines to provide the latest election-related news from various sources. This online effort comes at the dawn of the first-ever automated national elections in the Philippines.

“With the help of our content partners the Purple Thumb microsite will bring to the Filipino people the most comprehensive election news as it happens," Yahoo! Philippines general manager Jack Madrid said during the launch of Purple Thumb last February.

"Not only do they receive the most updated news, the microsite also provides a platform to freely discuss opinions, share images, content and up to the minute news," he further explained.

Like Purple Thumb, Blog Watch is an election coverage site on POC, which has put together bloggers aiming to cover underplayed election-related stories that traditional media cannot always cover. Aside from regular articles and blog entries, Blog Watch utilizes various media platforms and conveys important stories through photos, videos, and podcasts.

POC, which is Blog Watch's platform, is a media network and news aggregator which presents a multiplicity of perspectives in a single article, instead of the traditional journalistic practice of straightforward reportage. As a platform for alternative viewpoints and a synthesizer of ideas, POC reports facts of the news as well as viewpoints on the news. POC is a project of Vibal Foundation, Inc. the non-profit arm of Vibal Publishing House, Inc.