Yuga wrote about this almost two weeks ago: the local blogosphere is dominated by showbiz blogs, now overtaking those of political nature. The idea caught up with several Filipino bloggers, with The Ca t explaining the trend that prevails for weblogs around the world.

Just yesterday, Manolo took a stab against entertainment weblogs, specifically those covering Pinoy Big Brother. I find this rather amusing, being one of those running a weblog on the topic.

Both Manolo and Yuga, along with Mikey, suggest that entertainment weblogs are simply products of the AdSense phenomenon, a fact I cannot deny but also cannot completely agree with. Unfortunately, the greater number of local nonsense blogs has led everyone to thinking that most showbiz weblogs are simply scraping and reposting without providing anything new. Certainly, there are exceptions. An office friend writes for my PBB blog, and certainly doesn’t just write entries without substance, but rather provides interesting thoughts regarding the daily developments in the reality show.

My reasons for starting the blog midway into the show’s first season was simple: my friend had a lot to say about the show that would be valuable to people with a strong interest in the topic. At the same time, AdSense provided an option to monetize the traffic and somehow cover the cost of running the site, with a few dollars to spare. This is in line with what I’ve been promoting, that blogging can be a fun learning/interaction tool and provide spare income at the same time.

Looking at the environment in a different way, we may be judging the popularity of weblogs incorrectly. At Pinoy Top Blogs, Filipino sites are ranked using evoTopsites, which may be using metrics not entirely applicable to a wide range of interests. This does not rate the high “stickiness” of content in political weblogs, and the passing nature of entertainment weblog traffic. Perhaps if we take a different method of ranking, some local sites would surely lose value, while others will jump to the top. More importantly, revenues and traffic should never be the primary considerations in ranking; a weblog’s primary goal should be to fulfill its objectives and reasons for existence, which for my sites has always been the spread of valuable information to those who need it. Only then can a weblog be tagged a true success.