Abot Tanaw Social Media Network: The business of free services

MANILA, Philippines - The best things in life are free. That’s a popular saying and a nice sentiment-but can we really put that to the test?

It sounds too good to be true but that’s exactly what Chairman Efraim Genuino and businessman Kim Go are determined to prove: you can provide free services while at the same time build a good, profitable enterprise.

Essentially, Genuino’s brilliant idea is this: make communication between OFWs and their families more accessible than it already is.

That idea has now been realized through the newly established concept, Abot Tanaw, a social media network offering free voice and video telephony services to OFWs. Through Abot Tanaw, OFWs will be able to connect with their loved ones through voice and video technology-and for free!

The idea of offering a free service was born out of a conversation between Go and Genuino. The two had been talking about how costly it had become for OFWs to stay in touch with their families; eventually, the two ended up figuring out not only how to improve communication between OFWs and their loved ones, but how to make it more affordable, as well.

Genuino was persistent on improving this concept of simultaneous voice and video communication with Go.

“Hearing the voice is good but nothing beats looking at a face while talking,” recalls Genuino. “The internet is too complicated for many of our OFW’s and it is too public.”

“We came up with Abot Tanaw with the well-being of our hardworking OFWs in mind,” says Go. “Our service is a tool for connecting them with their families and we’ve integrated telecommunications and social interaction through a venue where they could get in touch.”

Abot Tanaw has service hubs strategically located in various parts of the Philippines. Through these service hubs, OFWs in Hongkong now have the chance to connect with their families back here. Also soon to open are service hubs in Singapore, Macau, and Dubai. Through a highly advanced communication infrastructure and patented technology, Abot Tanaw bridges the distance between OFWs and their families, at no cost to them.

With over eight million OFWs deployed around the world (and their numbers increase annually) there is now an urgent need for advanced, easy-access and ready-to-use global communication for them and their beneficiaries.

And yet, the availability of high-tech, advanced communication is of little benefit unless the cost can be brought down, so that there is no added financial burden to OFW families.

This is where the ingenuity and socially-conscious platform of Abot Tanaw comes in. Based on the “Freeconomics and Freemium” concept, Abot Tanaw provides its services for free to end-users. The free services on the other hand are made possible through “sponsorships” made by advertisers.

As members register to Abot Tanaw’s “social network” of end-users, the system gathers information and flashes multi-media messaging services to specific market demographics an advertiser wishes to target. Registration to Abot Tanaw grants potential sponsors a formidable captive market network.

While in-call, various messages and communication packets from sponsors are inserted in the service hubs through its equipped digital multi-media boards.

“The ads are also strategic in terms of which type of end-users the sponsors are targeting,” says Go. “If the sponsors wish to capture gender-based market or a specific age bracket, Abot Tanaw can easily specify which users are able to view which kind of ads.”

Abot Tanaw provides their customers the ability to “connect” with their family overseas, while at the same time providing advertisers and sponsors a competitive advantage. Since their technology is able to harness and manage information through a database of their “network” members, the broadcast of ads is easily controlled and dispersed to a specific target market.

Sponsors and advertisers benefit by having at their disposal a medium to deliver their messages to a specific consumer directly—without being obtrusive and impersonal.

The Abot Tanaw service hubs, aside from ensuring comfort and convenience for customers to use, are also great opportunities for other commercial businesses like food and entertainment-the locations of these service hubs will surely be the “destination spots” for OFW communities abroad as well as their families back home.