MANILA, Philippines – Philippine digital lifestyle purveyor Globe Telecom and Facebook are working together to support the developer and startup community in the Philippines through Internet.org.
Internet.org is a Facebook-led initiative aimed at connecting the two-thirds of the world who are not yet connected to the internet. Today, Internet.org is available to more than billion people in 18 countries across the world.
Jackie Chang, Product Partnerships Manager for Internet.org at Facebook, will be the guest speaker at the startup community’s Raid The Fridge event hosted by Kickstart Ventures, Inc., a wholly-owned venture capital subsidiary of Globe. Raid The Fridge draws over 150 founders, investors, and developers every last Thursday of the month.
“#RaidtheFridge is Philippines’ reliably recurring startup community event: its everyone-is-an-equal atmosphere builds bridges across startups and corporates, founders and investors, developers and business. The drinks keep things friendly and fun and the heart of each evening is the 8pm speaker slot and the candid open forum that follows. We’ve featured speakers from all over the planet – and this time, we are thrilled to welcome Facebook’s Jackie Chang who will be talking about the Internet.org initiative and how it can impact local startups and developers for a much-needed global exposure,” said Minette Navarrete, President of Kickstart.
“Globe continues to share with Facebook a common pursuit of broadening the digital lifestyle to make it more mainstream. By opening Internet.org to developers and entrepreneurs, we see more opportunities for the local digital startup community to expand their reach, propagate social advocacies, and push entrepreneurial pursuits at the grassroots level,” said Globe Senior Advisor for Consumer Business Group Daniel Horan.
“We are committed to working closely with Facebook to bring more Filipinos online, and to benefit from the free basic services offered through Internet.org. With this collaboration, Globe has achieved its current position of being the purveyor of the Filipino digital lifestyle and the undisputed leader in the mobile data segment,” said Horan.
On the other hand, Glenn Z. Estrella, Globe Vice President for Digital Media said: “We are excited over this milestone since developers will now be given a voice to share their information to the internet. This will also help our local developers share their apps not only to people in other Asian countries but also to those in Africa and Latin America. By providing tools and informational web app related to jobs, education, government information and news, etc., they will be instrumental in building community awareness.”
Last May, Facebook announced the Internet.org platform aimed at supporting local developer communities. Attendees will have a chance to learn more about developing relevant content and services for Internet.org during the Raid the Fridge event on Thursday, September 24, 2015 at 8:00pm at the Kickstart office in Makati City, Philippines.