The DAILY STAR broke into the information superhighway in November 2001 with the launch of its website, www.visayandailystar.com, and today has become an indispensable part of the lives of Negrenses based abroad.

The website was designed with simplicity and speed in mind, since its main purpose was to provide those who could not be reached by traditional distribution methods, especially Negrenses abroad, with news printed in the largest selling daily newspaper on Negros Island.

Updated daily, the website displays the same news content that can be seen in the published version of the DAILY STAR.

Since it was started as a free additional service, there was no budget for advertising and promotion. The news of its existence was spread only through word of mouth. In spite of that limitation, it had garnered a following of 1,500 daily visits within a year of its launch and as of March 2006 the daily average unique visits stand at 6,672.

Statistics also indicate that 65 percent of these visitors come from North America. Those kinds of numbers undoubtedly put www.visayandailystar.com as one of the biggest websites in terms of traffic in Western Visayas and should qualify it as a major player in the Philippine online community.

Its popularity is evident in the flood of email the DAILY STAR gets every time a technical problem delays updating or puts the site offline for a few hours, letters to the editor and columnists and donations to patients in need of help.

There have also been numerous anecdotes of Negrenses visiting their friends and relatives in the US and other countries and being surprised at how much more updated their hosts are on the issues and events back home since their hosts read the DAILY STAR with more regularity than they do.

What started as a simple project four years ago has become the link of Negrenses living abroad to the people and places they have left behind. It is proof of your DAILY STAR's commitment to keep in step with the times as it strives to provide the people from Bacolod City and Negros Island with the quality of service that has been unmatched for the last 24 years.*

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