
The Internet's 10 Most Influential Filipinos
Ken Ilio
Profile.
Ken Ilio is known as a Web
pioneer, having created the content for the Philippine community since 1994, specifically the multi-
awarded mega-site Tribung Pinoy (http://www.tribo.org), and the first Philippine Web directory,
Tanikalang Ginto (http://www.filipinolinks.com). Ilio actually works as a urologist at Chicago's
Northwestern University Medical School. It's a wonder he was able to put up so much content doing this
alone and on a part-time basis - Ilio himself searches high and low for anything related to the Philippines.
He has done a project for PBS called Shattering the Silences and has since designed web pages for Filipino
artists and photographers like Santiago Bose, Larry Alcala, and Ronald Soliman.
Why he's influential.
The Internet's
10 Most Influential
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The Survey
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Long before Filipino surfers logged on to Yehey and
EDSA, they were already checking out Tanikalang Ginto to look for Filipino-related Web sites.
To this date, it has remained one of the most comprehensive Filipino Web directory. He was also since
1995 giving out his Sigay icon award to the best site of the day. The directory is the Yahoo of Pinoys - it
was there at the infancy of Philippine Web content. In this sense, Ilio has helped promote Filipino Web
sites. Just as important, he helped create a Filipino community on the Net. He speaks of the Filipino
diaspora throughout his site. Filipinos who were brought up abroad find solace in the pages of Tribung
Pinoy, which is littered with all aspects of Filipino culture - his popular sections are The Filipino Gallery
and The Filipino Cuisine.
Vision for the Net.
Since the early days of the legendary soc.culture.filipino
newsgroup, which inspired his sites, Ilio already understood the importance of creating a community of
cyber Pinoys. Having established content and community successfully, he plans to moce on to the next
wave - e-commerce. His site is an affiliate of Amazon.com and CDNow, and has set up Made in the
Philippines (http://www.madeinthephilippines.com), his own online store.
This article by Janette Toral, Franchette Soriano,
Emir Samonte, Anthony Rola and Carlos Gonzales was published in The Web Philippines
January/February 1999 issue. WIRED! Philippines thanks TWP editor-in-chief
Heinz Bulos for giving us permission to republish the article.
Articles in WIRED! Philippines are copyrighted by the authors.
WIRED! Philippines is a monthly online magazine published and hosted by
MSC Computer Training Center
Copyright 1999 MSC Communications Technologies, Inc.
All rights reserved.
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