Most foreign-run Web sites, even the larger ones, remain labors of love. Some, like Taiwanho and Forumosa, earn money, but this is used for site maintenance and group activities like monthly happy hours. People contribute their time and energy because they want to help foreign residents and tourists find useful information, express their opinions, and meet like-minded people online.
"First and foremost [Forumosa] is community service. This is no different than volunteering to monitor a crosswalk at the local elementary school or helping out with story time at the local library," said Van Dyck. As a result of his association with Forumosa, he's developed "a fantastic social network" and has "friends up and down the island."
The same is true for many personal blogs. David Reid, a 33-year-old English teacher, runs David on Formosa (blog.taiwan-guide.org), where he posts useful information on Taiwan, photography and accounts of his travels. He's not looking to make any money, though he wouldn't mind if the ads on his site eventually generated "five or 10 (US) dollars" a month to pay for maintenance. "The main thing is just to share information and my personal experiences with other people," said Reid, who had consulted blogs similar to his before moving to Taiwan. "I wanted to give something back."
Turton also says he's not in it for the money, though maintaining his kind of Web presence is hard work. In addition to blogging an average of two hours per day, he teaches full time at Chaoyang University of Technology (朝陽科技大學) in Taichung and commutes six hours per week to Tainain, where he's studying for his PhD. He's involved with several Web sites, and recently had to upload 3,500 photos to Flickr.com after they were erased by one of his Internet providers. Turton said he has received threatening e-mails and telephone calls from people who take issue with his views, and has twice been threatened with defamation suits.
Still, blogging has been "a very positive experience. I've met a lot of great people," he said. "If you start a blog and the content is halfway good, you become a sort of minor expert on Taiwan affairs because the rest of the world is, relatively speaking, so ignorant."
"My goal is to get Taiwan out there," he said. "Taiwan is so low on the US radar right now, but it's so important."
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