Last Thursday, Philos and I went to Smart's Sandbox launch party. According to the press release, "With the launch of Sandbox, the latest web platform that unites social networking, online media content sharing and downloading, as well as web services, the future of digital connection for Filipinos comes with a new breakthrough interactive experience." That's a very long sentence, and I'm not sure what it means. All I know is that Sandbox is something like Multiply meets iTunes Store. But hey, impressive buzzwords!

This is what Sandbox is like. You understand now? No?

The event was held in a nightclub during daytime. Because it was a workday, I expected it to be a nice cozy affair with very few people showing up. I couldn't have been more wrong. The place was packed, the music was loud, and most of the partygoers were very well dressed. Well, duh, it was a party in a nightclub. What did I expect? I felt so underdressed that I covered up my chickenmafia.com T-shirt in shame.

Of course, Philos and I wasted no time. We squeezed through the crowd and went straight for the buffet table to stuff our faces with food. After that, we parked ourselves in front of a row of notebook computers, because we're losers who don't like to socialize. I logged into Sandbox and started blogging there as the program started.

If you have a Sandbox account, you can read my live blog entry here. If not, go sign up. I'll wait.

Also, please add me as a friend, because having lots of friends I don't really know or care about is supposedly a cool thing on online social networks. Look me up--my user name there is "angrychicken." I'm angry because they require all user names to be between 8 and 12 characters, and "joyfulchicken" has 13.

 

I always feel uncomfortable in loud crowded settings, so my live blog entry was mostly a whiny rant. Halfway through the program, as I was just about to take a break from blogging, a scary old woman beside me jabbed my shoulder and said, "Keep typing." I turned my head and saw a big TV camera pointed right at my screen. I suddenly got very guilty about the harsh words I had been spewing, and I tried to cover them up by scrolling up and down very quickly to hide them from the camera. The scary old woman looked annoyed, but she instructed the cameraman to shift the focus to Philos, who proceeded to perform for her like a good blog monkey. (See Philos's blog entry for some photos of the event.)

But despite all the things I said in my live blog entry, I did have a reasonably good time. The food was good, and... uh... I had a good time. I swear. Smart can really throw a good party thanks to their bottomless PR and marketing budget. And if their development budget ever catches up, Sandbox has a shot at becoming the dominant social networking site in the Philippines.

I hope they come up with better ads than this though:

Real Sandbox users aren't that annoying. Well, okay, many of them are, but you can say the same thing about all popular social networking sites overrun by dumb teenagers. At least Sandbox has a few cool and intelligent users like me. Sign up now and watch out for all the cool and intelligent stuff I'm planning to post there.