A little research was put into this and what I feel and found out was, most maldivian sites are not popular at all. But maldivians do browse; mostly for porn, followed by news. This is the most popular two. Forums was one major hit of the year 2003/4. It started off with www.lockforum.net the trend and standards was followed by a lot of others. But www.kk4rum.net seems to be the most active now. Forums are not mostly used for any other purpose; just a place for people to upload pics of maldivians and a place to look for these pictures. Also talks about "love and sex" seems to be active to some levels. So to conclude I will say the web mostly is used for just these two purpose by most maldivians; for sex and news.
So which was the most talked and most famous; hmmmm! Some people will not like this at all; but I feel www.dhivehiobserver.com (DO) was the No.1 for the year 2004. I don't know about the CONTENT. I don't frankly care. But seems this is a source of news and gossip for a lot of people. From the very TOP to the very bottom. This site is so famous that there are other sites which are just there to fight back to this. Now one will totally say this is not true. But if you look into these sites, you will find that these sites main objectives are to fight back on the content of this so called "DO" and to it's creator. Proof? Read the news titles; about 40% or more of the content will be just about "DO"; why? I don't have an answer. These sites include. www.themaldivian.org and www.factmaldives.com. The rumor has these two sites are gov sponsored sites. I don't know how true this is; but this is the "story" (this mean i am not say'n so.. just the "rumor") on the net and on the streets. Seems that www.themaldivian.org is a project lead by one Dr.Shaheed or someone and the other site by the NSS or the Police. www.themaldivian.org is improved; it's changed from normal static HTML site to a more dynamic site using PHP and mysql back ends. DO and www.factmaldives.com still needs to improve on it. I think very soon www.factmaldives.com might do the same; move to a better content management system. But what ever the case is these 3 sites have people who just work on these alone, or they have a lot of free time. I mean they are so into it. Maybe the 3 are paid just to do this. But it's a nice show to watch and laugh at. A lot of drama is involved. Like when one party does a cartoon the others or the other will follow and attack back.
So what do i think of all this? I think it all comes down to "power" and "money" what ever those people talk; I don't think i'd buy half of it. There is not much interest given to the "ordinary" maldivian "futhaa" and "kabulo". We still suffer and I think we will for a long time to come. We are caught in the middle of the power struggle. Damn it guys! What's the fight for? Most of these fights won't have any "logic" behind them. "you hit!; I hit back too" that's the game now. I pity these guys. I think if they invest their time on helping people and try'n to contribute to the country it will be much better. But then agin, this is just my view.
1 comment:
DO is obviously the website of the year 2004 for people here in Maldives. Even though some of you may not like to admit it, and even though many of you will find it hard to swallow the truth (you do not want to either), DO captured the eyes of the entire Maldivian internet culture. What we have now is some sortof a teenage love/hate affair thing going on with DO and themaldivian and factmaldives (+ mdp, m.culture, pres.office, etc). The funny thing is that these website wars are the frontlines of the political arena, there is no other open way to communicate nor express any idea whatsoever.
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