The Third World Geek – Apple, Manga, Literature and Blogging Rolled into One

Admit it – there are a number of Apple Fanboys in the world. Our next featured blogger is not an exception – he is a self-confessed Apple Fanboy. Also known as PinoyTraveler and MercBlogger, the forever-18 ThirldWorldGeek doesn’t seem to let go of his love for anime and manga, while at the same time honing his writing craft by providing great stuff in his blog.

ThirdWorldGeek, or TWG, has lived in all three parts of the Philippines starting from the time he saw the light of the world. TWG was born and raised in Mindanao, was schooled in Visayas and is currently working in Luzon for some ‘superduperlupermultinational company.’ Now we know why he is also known as PinoyTraveler.

He started blogging way back in 2000 by writing his own literary works such as short stories, poetry, essays and everything else that you’d generally put in a personal journal. During those years, blogging was synonymous to having your own online journal where you get to express your thoughts through writing. Blogging was the fad back then – without the ads and making money through blogs.

Currently, he continues to blog about travel, technology and even about blogging, owning quite a few blogs around the blogosphere. Yes, a blogger who blogs about blogging; and mind you, he does write a number of interesting tips and stories on how to optimize and monetize your own blogs.

His blog, Third World Geek, is a repository of various things from blogging, anime, gaming, sports to technology. He gives out really useful information, like the Board Exam Results category where he compiles results from almost all board exams in the Philippines.

As a result, his blog is in the top ten blogs of TopBlogs.com.ph for Marketing and SEO. Moreover, it also features a lot of interesting general rants straight from TWG himself, which ranges from H1N1 virus, to Kal Penn. His writings are quite catchy too, which just further shows the literary side of this book collector personally afflicted with wanderlust.

TWG believes that blogging is fun but it’s more fun when you earn money from it (and we are not going to disagree, are we?) He even adds that:

Sometimes, however, the desire to make money from blogging becomes too overpowering that it’s easy for a blog to lose its identity. What started as a really good blog focused on a specific theme, for example, suddenly starts doing a shotgun blogging approach where all topics are fair game as long as they bring in lots of traffic and a few dollars in AdSense money.

I’m not saying that it’s wrong, hey, to each his own! But, you know, sometimes, looking at some of those ‘could-have-been-great-blogs’ gone awry, one can’t help but feel a pang of sadness. Sabi nga ni anonymous, money only lasts for a couple of bottles of beer, but glory lasts forever.

And we couldn’t agree more.

ThirdWorldGeek is currently collaborating with a couple of blogging friends for a new company before the year ends.

—————————

Bloggista’s second featured blogger is a personal friend since the early years of living and working in Makati way back in the mid ’90’s. It was then we realized that we both grew up in the same place, both experienced the same UFO landing somewhere in Mindanao, and finished college in the same city in the Visayas.

After 9 years of no communications whatsoever, in 2008, I was meeting a fellow blogger for the first time, Novz of Ceblogger.com in a coffeshop in Makati when he told me he’s coming along with a friend, who’s also a blogger. Well it turned out to be TWG! It’s a small world, indeed…

Bloggista Featured Blogger is a weekly post special “showcasing” bloggers of different niches. If you want to be featured (or want to suggest someone to be featured), send me some details (see this post for info).

~

This entry was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 12:46 am and is filed under Bloggers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.