Entertainment, sports and news or public service announcements are considered the top three things that Filipinos care about based on how they use Twitter in terms of keeping themselves updated.
Twitter’s managing director for Southeast Asia, Arvinder Gujral, shared that such topics generate the most engagements among Filipinos, according to the microblogging platform’s recent observation.
Apparently, the country is considered as one of Twitter’s fastest-growing audience markets in Southeast Asia, wherein 57% of Filipino users regularly go to the platform.
Gujral noted that whenever topics concerning celebrities, show business, basketball and news or announcements are posted, its traction in the Philippines grows incredibly fast.
“Public discourse has become more open than ever. Millions of people jump into discussions of various topics on Twitter where they have the power to shape the conversation,” he said in a press conference in Sheraton Manila Hotel on Tuesday.
Twitter prides itself for being at the forefront of real-time conversations, where people go to know what’s happening—the platform’s upstanding tagline seen every time a user clicks the blue “tweet” button.
As of this year, there are 84% of “heavy” Filipino social media users based on the microblogging platform’s media consumption behavior, according to market research company GlobalWebIndex.
Meanwhile, here is a breakdown of the top subject matters Filipino users care about:
Entertainment
Filipinos are known for their undying love towards “teleseryes” and soap operas regularly aired in media networks as a form of entertainment.
In fact, some of them in social media have touted the Philippines a “nation of teleseryes” after a 2012 study revealed that Filipinos were the most emotional people in the world, according to US pollster Gallup.
This is evident in how hashtags used by local television series and programs usually top the list of Philippine trending topics in the platform.
Most TV shows propose hashtags for every episode they air in the hopes that it would trend on Twitter’s charts and catch more viewers.
If not “teleseryes,” tweets about star-studded events like the ABS-CBN Ball would trend among Filipinos with the help of different media outlets’ live reports incorporating the associated hashtags.
Sports
Filipinos’ love affair with sports—particularly basketball— endures and this is evident in how they go to Twitter to know real-time updates about games and their favorite teams.
Sports accounts of media outlets would usually release blow-by-blow accounts of the game, especially if it is highly-anticipated like the yearly matches of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines or UAAP.
Such matches would gain traction on the microblogging platform, heightened by students’ and alumni’s posts expressing their thoughts and feelings about their athletes.
News or public service announcements
Filipinos keep track of local and national affairs as they consume news on Twitter. The platform gives them a stage to engage in public conversations.
While media outlets do not usually add hashtags on news items, the platform is relied on by Filipinos in cases of announcements such as class suspensions.
According to Gujral, Filipinos dominate Twitter when weather disturbances occur. And an interesting hashtag often trends for hours when this happens—”#WalangPasok.”
He noted that government agencies and units would incorporate the hashtag to release announcements which would then be immediately liked or retweeted by millennials and Gen Zers, who comprise the largest section of users on Twitter.
