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MEGASTAR IN CYBERSPACE
by Bayani S. San Diego Jr., Philippine Daily Inquirer, December 5, 1998
Last Nov. 12, the Philippines' megastar Sharon Cuneta finally went online in the World Wide Web. Ma'am Sharon's homepage address, www.sharoncuneta.com, made its much-awaited debut in cyberspace. After the long wait, after hours of searching in Yahoo and Yehey, after zooming up and down the labyrinthine corridors of the information superhighway, Sharonians all over the world can now have the chance to "visit" their idol, at least in the Internet. Initial response to Shawie's web site is impressive, or in the exact word of Ronnie Miranda, president/webmaster of Storm Visualization & imaging (StormViz, the company behind Sharon's web site): "Overwhelming. It has really been a very much-awaited web site not only locally but also globally. Sharon is very popular abroad that many of her visitors are from other countries. Read the guestbook... it says it all." Indeed.
Barangay Sharonian is everywhere. Fans from near (Ayala Alabang, Ozamis, Dumaguete) and far (Aukland, New Zealand; Virginia Beach, Kuala Lumpur) have signed in her guestbook. A bunch of Filipina nurses from Fortworth, Texas also dropped by to say "Hi!" There were also visitors from places her local Sharonians surely haven't heard of, like Etobicoke in Ontario, Canada and Stavanger, Norway. The web site also afforded long-lost friends to renew ties with Ms. Mega - like her Stockton 1990 concert promoter and a Vicor dancer, as well as a cyber-pal from Puerto Princessa. Local celebrities like Teresa and Bing Loyzaga were also among the first to log in. The guestbook also produced a cute bit of trivia: the owner of Super Ferry, one of the blue-chip companies Sha endorses, called her "Boss." Boss Shawie herself is excited by all the frenetic activity in her hp (cyber-lingo for homepage). One fine Sunday morning, she was unable to retrieve the incoming messages in her personal email address, so she decided to visit her web site and respond to the early birds who signed in her guestbook. Needless to say, the recipients of the mega-missives were incredulous. "Hindi sila makapaniwala," Sharon laughs. But she is really like that, friends would readily attest, she personally attends to all her correspondence, her fan mail, her business mail, her electronic mail, her Christmas card list, etc. "Unfortunately, there's only one of me. Multiplicity, anyone?" As they say, send in the (cyber) clones.
Last Nov 17, Sharon's web site was chosen as the Best Cyber Pinoy Site for the Day by Tanikalang Ginto, the Philippine's most comprehensive web directory. Can the Webby awards be far behind? Heart-warming the feedback is, but when you talk in terms of cyber figures, the response to sharoncuneta.com becomes all the more compelling. For 12 days, it easily clinched 330 hits per day. After Ms. Mega announced her web site address on her Sunday TV talk show "Sharon," the frequency of visits increased remarkably. (Twenty-one visitors who signed in the guestbook specifically mentioned that they heard about the mega homepage on her TV show, which is broadcast in North America through ABS-CBN's The Filipino Channel.) "Considering that it has been much-awaited and considering the popularity of Sharon worldwide, this is not surprising., " Miranda says of the skyrocketing figures. "But for a site that went online for just a couple of days, this is an amazing feat. As the site propagates throughout the entire Internet, it is expected to generate more hits, perhaps reach at least 1,000 hits per day." True enough, on its third week, Shawie's web site has notched 1,000 visits per day. In an email to the megastar, Miranda wrote: "Your site is really getting most of the traffic now. I got my access reports for today. I'm just halfway through my monthly cycle and I've already used up 67 percent of my monthly Network Traffic Allowance. This is the first time this has ever happened since I've been online 2 years ago. :) Traffic suddenly shot up when your site went online."
In layman's terms, Network Traffic is "a measurement (in megabytes) of how much data flows into and out of the server, This includes accesses to web pages, FTP (file transfer protocol) uploads and downloads, and e-mail traffic." "Everytime I dropped by, it said: Under construction," wrote a letter-sender. "I kept on checking, so I was excited when your hp went online!" Sharon's web site was over a years in the making. The megastar was still in Boston for her one-year break from show biz to keep house for husband Atty. Francis Pangilinan who was then taking his master's in public administration in Harvard, when she first got in touch with Webmaster Miranda in October 1997. "Formal agreement was finally made in April 1998," Miranda recalls. "During this time, I got her domain name online so that it would immediately get indexed by the different search engines (like Yahoo, Yehey, Infoseek, etc.). It was only a few months after she came back last June that I started receiving materials for her web site and it took me about two months to construct everything." Sharon, true to form, took personal interest in the hp's design layout. "She gave me a general idea of what she wanted - simple, classy but fun. She specifically wanted bright or pastel colors. This was appropriate since it suits her personality. The layout and design was based on the materials given. Since I've done several official celebrity web sites (like those of Zsa Zsa Padilla, Mikee Cojuangco, Charlene Gonzles, Gelli de Belen) already, I made sure that the design would be different from the others while keeping focused on content, information and navigability."
Webmaster Miranda sees a bright future for Shawie's hp. "The site is still at its infancy and more materials on Sharon's career history and personal life can be placed in the site," Miranda asserts. "Since this is Sharon's site, she will be able to share herself to the world the way she has always wanted to." Visitors are asking for more interactive features - like more photos that can be downloaded and saved, as well as visual and audio clips from her movies, concerts and recordings. "At present, Real Audio clips of Sharon's performances (with guests Martin Nievera, Pops Fernandez, Gary Valenciano and Ara Mina) on the TV show "Sharon" are available in the site," Miranda says. "More materials are still being gathered. So keep on visiting the site to see the latest updates." The site has more than served its original purpose, which is to allow Sharon to keep in touch with her followers in cyberspace. It not only provides the latest news (like her being the recipient of the Second Metropop Star Search Gintong Tinig Award from the GMA Foundation), but also allows her fans to send in their requests. Ms. Meg, can they make a request? Most certainly. The guestbook has yielded requests ranging from the usual to the unusual. Some fans ask for the usual autographed photos and greetings on her talk show. Fans who live in North America in turn ask her where they can buy VHS tapes of her movies and concerts.
A letter writer from the United States was even inquiring about a long-lost friend who happens to share Shawie's surname. More than a handful requested for Sharon's concert tour to visit cities as diverse as Roxas City and Tampa, Florida. A US-based newspaper editor, meanwhile, invited Shawie for an online chat. Her loyal TV viewers request not only for her to sing old songs (like "Don't Ever Make Me Cry"), but also for her to invite such stars as Jaclyn Jose, Dina Bonnevie, Thalia, Jomari Yllana and Aiko Melendez, Troy Montero, Patrick Garcia and, get this, Richard Gomez and Lucy Torres-Gomez. The most unusual request thus far is from a Star Network employee who wants Sharon to be the guest speaker in the ABS-CBN Talent Center's acting workshops for young actors - a chance for her to give an inspirational talk to show biz neophytes. Sharon's website not only makes the megastar all the more accessible to her (cyber) fans, but it also allows her to shine brighter, enlightening the minds and enriching the lives of Sharonians in the World Wide Web.
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