
In November 17, 2008, ABS-CBN made an announcement that it bought a 5% minority stake of .īy October 2010, Multiply was increasing its foothold in the Philippines and started looking for a General Manager.
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Its official entry in the Philippines started out in late 2007 when it made a ad deal with local TV network ABS-CBN. Multiply started out as a social networking service. Perhaps, that deal with Smart sealed its fate and in March 2018, Chikka announced that it will completely shutdown.Īt the time it closed down, there were actually 4 other services offering similar features ( 4 Alternative Sites Similar to Chikka). In November 2009, we broke the story that Smart bought and inside sources told us the deal was worth around Php750 Million (not a bad exit if I may add). It had over 38 million users at that time. This locally-developed messaging app could have made it globally and, at its peak, its services were available with 45 carries in 14 countries. In fact, we thought it was way ahead of its time - ahead of Viber, WhatsApp, Line and KakaoTalk.Īside from being a popular mobile instant messaging, it offered mobile payment using load credits, Free-Reply SMS, mobile auctions, matchmaking and social networking, among others. The Yahoo! Philippines portal officially shut down in June 2015, followed by Yahoo! Messenger in July 2018, Yahoo! Groups in December 2020 and only recently, Yahoo! Answers was also closed in May 2021.Ĭhikka had the makings of a great tech company. Yahoo! Answers was also one of the channels I frequent a lot.īut alas, good things must come to an end.
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Yahoo! Messenger was the de facto chat service and the free chat-to-SMS feature was a lifesaver. Yahoo! Groups had the most number of users from the Philippines and so did Yahoo! Games (anybody still remember playing online chess and scrabble with their Yahoo! friends back in 2002?). Everyone has Yahoo! Mail back then, some of them still being used until this day. Many might not see Yahoo! as their preferred search engine but a lot of the services and apps made by this Web 1.0 giant were a Filipino favorite. Here are some great tech companies that thrived in the Philippines and their eventual demise. But, alas, the love affair doesn’t always last forever. Why else are we considered the Social Media Capital of the World?Ī lot of tech companies consider the Philippines their home or, at least, a great place to gain massive adaption.

Despite being a 3rd-world country, we’re always considered early adaptors or heavy users.
