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DIGITAL MEDIA ACROSS ASIA

Indonesia: Social Media

Web 1.5 Applications
1. Search Engines
2. Online Forums

Web 2.0 Tools
1. Blogs
2. Social Networking Sites
3. Micro-blogging
4. Others

WEB 1.5 APPLICATIONS

This first section briefly features two common online tools used by Indonesians: search engines and forums. They have been classified as Web 1.5 to contrast them with newer and more sophisticated social media applications such as social networks and micro-blogging.

1. SEARCH ENGINES

Search engines are common among any kind of web user and not surprisingly, the Indonesian ones. Some of the top search engines in Indonesia include:
- Google in five different languages: Bahasa, Javanese, Sundanese, English and Dutch;
- Yahoo! in four different languages: English , French , German , Japanese
- endonesia.com: a completely local search engine with a Bahasa Indonesian interface, and links to the "hot" websites of the season

2. ONLINE FORUMS

Forums are still very predominant and highly popular social networking applications in Indonesia. Discussion threads continue to be interactive and forum members are very responsive.

Kafe Gaul

Kafe Gaul is almost equivalent to Singapore’s FunkyGrad portal that includes news, reviews and online membership. However, instead of a campus-life focus, there is more emphasis on social networking and dating. Writing styles in this website are varied as articles are not written by professional reporters and writers.

Kaskus

Kaskus is one of Indonesia’s largest forums with over 360,000 members. There is a wide array of discussion topics ranging from general news updates or social issues (for example, Indonesian tax wars), to more light-hearted topics such as movie or restaurant reviews.

Kaskus also leverages on its large member pool and link them to Kaskus Radio, which not only streams live Indonesian and international music but also provides lyrics. This sister site continues to act as a forum as it includes discussion pages, and even links users to MiRC for live chats.

WEB 2.0 TOOLS

1. BLOGS

The following are some statistics (as of 6 April 2008) from blog-indonesia.com, a website which currently has 6001 registered bloggers for Indonesia-related blogs:

Categories of blogs on Blog-Indonesia:

Personal	4113	68.54%
Information Technology	411	6.85%
Photo Blog	80	1.33%
News	116	1.93%
Entertainment	147	2.45%
Travel	78	1.3%
Opinion	569	9.48%
Popular Science	140	2.33%
Kitchen	103	1.72%
Education/Career	224	3.37%
Sport	13	0.22%
Community	28	0.47%

Based on this information, 3671 of the country's 6001 bloggers write in Bahasa Indonesia. Among the major groups of content that Indonesia blogs cover, our research has zoomed in on the following four major groups of the country’s blogging population.

Expatriate Blogs

This group comprises of expatriates whose blog content is focused on their life in Indonesia and how it is like to adjust from a foreign lifestyle to an Indonesian one. Such blogs often link helpful sites for fellow expatriates, such as Indonesian language online dictionaries, currency and time converters, and other blogs belonging to members of their local expatriate community. As many of these bloggers are from the Western world, these blogs tend to be written in the English language.

Examples:

Technology Blogs

Technology bloggers discuss all things tech, from new hardware to social media applications to Open Source software. Although social media platforms and applications (such as Wordpress, blogs, Wikipedia etc.) are commonly discussed, the topic “social media” is not often found. Majority of this group understands English although the written language adopted online is predominantly Bahasa Indonesia.

Indonesian tech blogs are comparable with their global counterparts, with the characteristics of a neat and organized interface, and use of sharing/syndication tools such as RSS feed.

Examples:

Current Affairs/Political/National Development Blogs

Current affair blogs focus on regional and global new discussions. We observed that these blogs are less opinionated, and are more focused on reporting facts. Bloggers concerned about national development write in a similar style, merely quoting news reports with limited personal input. Blogs in this category which are written in English are usually owned by professional journalists.

Examples:

Muslim Blogs

Out of the four groups, this one houses the most provoking content. Besides general evangelism of the Muslim faith, detailing common festivals and practices, Muslim bloggers address the terrorists versus Islam controversy. Writing styles greatly differ among blogs in this category, as there are many discussion points and perspectives.

Due to language constraints as mentioned above, we are only able to comprehend the Muslim blogs written in English. However, we believe that Bahasa Indonesia and the Arabic language are used far more than the English language for such content and our team invites any translators familiar with these two languages to contribute to this section of our Wiki.

Examples:

INTERVIEW FINDINGS

Budi Putra, a former journalist turned full-time blogger, mentioned that blogging got popular about two years ago when the Internet infrastructure in Indonesia was experiencing improvements. He also added that blogging has become so popular that some bloggers are already venturing into blogging-related businesses and activities. In his blog, he regularly updates on the latest technology improvements in Indonesia.

Kosasih Iskandarsjah, founder of edu2000 (see Social Media in Action), mentioned that Indonesians are mostly politically aware thus blogs are usually related to politics or some causes, including religion. As Internet access is mostly available in offices, schools and Internet cafes, a majority of the bloggers are young professionals in their late 20s or early 30s.

PESTA BLOGGER 2009

Pesta Blogger 2009 (Blogger Party 2009) is a national event, held on October 24, 2009. It is a day where Indonesian bloggers come together for a day of meetings and conferences. The whole day is dedicated to all things blogging, and sharing new and interesting ideas on blogging in Indonesia. First held on October 27, 2007, this is the 3rd successive year the event has been organized. Muhammad Nuh, an Indonesian minister had declared that each year, the day of the Pesta Blogger event, was also set as the National Blogger Day of Indonesia.

Pesta Blogger serves as a forum for the bloggers in Indonesia to meet directly, exchange information, develop discussion, and expand the network. This year, 2009, this theme was set around "One Spirit One Nation". This year, the event was organized by the local public relations consultant Maverick, as well the we design consultants, Bubu.com. One of the major sponsors of this year's events included the U.S Embassy.

Photo credits: www.thetraveltart.com

2. SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

A quick search for the number of users on the "Indonesia" network on some prominent social networking sites reveals to us the following:As of April 2008, Friendster has over 1,000,000 registered users under its Indonesia network, Facebook's number is 152,432, and MySpace comes in at 1,675. For lack of better data with the precise number of Indonesians using such services, through these searches, we see that Friendster appears to be the most popular social network of choice for Indonesians online. This would be under the assumption that Indonesian Friendster users are still actively using the application. More than just international social networks, Indonesia has its own version of Friendster as well.

FUPEI.com (Friends Uniting Program Especially Indonesian), set up on 3 May 2004, saw over 2,000 members joining the site by the end of its first month. The site now has Friendster and MySpace fusion kind of look, with equipped with all the tools you would expect of a social network such as journals, photo albums, and video and music file sharing. Like many other social media applications which are taking off slowly in Indonesia, FUPEI makes complete use of the Indonesian language, to bring familiar social media services closer to home.

Recent report about Facebook users increase in Indonesia:

Source: http://www.medianama.com/2009/10/223-facebook-mobile-seeks-operator-partnerships-app-developers-in-india/#more-9438

This graph from Google Trends estimates the number of daily users from Indonesia in the last 12 months to friendster.com and facebook.com:

Indonesia: Social Media - DIGITAL MEDIA ACROSS ASIA

Facebook with north of 2 million Indonesian visitors a day and Friendster heading southwards but still with a million uniques.

Indonesia's ranking of the world's two most popular social networking sites:

Friendster	Facebook
Indonesia	United States
Phillipines	United KingdomI
Malaysia	Italy
United States	Indonesia
Singapore	France

Source: www.indonesiamatters.com/5072/time-wasters/

3. MICRO-BLOGGING

Put simply, micro-blogging allows its users to write and publish very short text updates about whatever it is they want. There, users chronicle and share the things they do, the way they feel, and any other things they feel like mentioning, in a very brief way. Moving beyond having to type such text in front of a computer, such updates can now even be made via text messaging on mobile phones. Given what we have found about the mobile industry in Indonesia, micro-blogs may just be the next big thing.

Plurk and Twitter are amongst the Indonesians favourite micro-blogging or micro-messaging sites. Indonesia ranks 2nd amongst the country rankings for plurk, whilst it ranks 9th for twitter.

Plurk with about 30,000 daily visitors from Indonesia, Twitter rapidly catching up and likely to overtake shortly.
Source: www.indonesiamatters.com/5072/time-wasters/

Here are previews of two other not-so-known Indonesian micro-blogging services.

MOODMILL

Indonesia's Social Media - Social Media and PR across Asia

Moodmill is the brainchild of Felix Widjaja, a 26-year-old living in Pluit, Indonesia, who had been harboring the idea of spawning a start-up company to develop social networking websites since mid-2006. After months of coding, R&D and searching for a team, Moodmill.com, a micro-blog which has been reviewed as somewhat of a Twitter hybrid, was launched in April 2007. As its name suggests, Moodmill.com is a social mood management site. What makes Moodmill a cute alternative to Twitter and Jaiku is that the every post has along with it a mood meter, a colored bar indicating if the user is in “bad mood”, is feeling kind of “hmm…” or is “excited”. The accompanying post is then supposed to explain why that mood, although it tends to just be anything the user wants to say. Moodmill’s “Recent Mood Makers Chart” also shows the latest users who are “happy” or otherwise so you can get to know people who are as elated as you are. The languages used on Moodmill are diverse, since it is just an Indonesia-based service for everyone online. It is notable, as well, that the service’s interface is all in English, suggesting a much wider target audience than just Indonesian. As of September last year, six months since the site’s launch, it had garnered over 1,000 members. However, how far this service can expand remains to be seen. If the logging of moods is merely a fad, Moodmill may not be all that sustainable as a micro-blog.

KRONOLOGGER

Kronologger is a microblogging service aimed at Indonesian users that was launched by the Asia Blogging Network (ABN), an Indonesia-based blog network, in August of last year. 'Kronning' is the new buzz word that has been defined by ABN as "a mobile activity where you could post shortly what you are doing and where you are".

With Kronologger, we start to see Indonesia moving towards the integration of technologies (mobile and Internet) as a big part of its value proposition is that kronning is meant to be something you do when you are on the go. The service, provided in Bahasa Indonesia, is easily accessible with cellphones. Moreover, when Kronologger is connected to via a cellphone, it will display the service's mobile-optimized page to save bandwidth.

Furthermore, the people behind Kronologger are not just keeping things running as they are. Its programmers are now trying to improve the service so that it may be integrated with other micro-blogging and blogging services, such as Twitter and Wordpress. Coupled with its popularity because of its personal touch with its use of the native language, steps in this direction of fitting Kronologger in with the rest of Web2.0 is very encouraging for social media in Indonesia

4. OTHERS

Content-sharing portals like SharingFoto and Layartancap.com are Indonesia's Flickr and YouTube respectively. These customized versions of social media tools that the world is familiar is a clear trend in the country. Their appeal is understandable as these communities are centered around a common language, assuring people who join and form these communities will be "people like me" i.e.the average Indonesian web user.

Sources:
Asia Blogging Network's feature on Kronologger (6 Aug 2007) : http://asiablogging.com/blog/209/start-kronning-now/
FUPEI.com ? Friendster-like site built on PostNuke (7 Jun 2004): http://community.postnuke.com/Article2606.htm

Media Industry in Indonesia- an overview: http://www.pressreference.com/Gu-Ku/Indonesia.html

Also read:

Read more about Social Media in Indonesia:

Indonesia: Social Media - Social Media and PR across Asia

sgsam2k	Latest page update: made by sgsam2k , Nov 12 2009, 12:32 PM EST (about this update About This Update Edited by sgsam2k 11 words added 8 words deleted view changes - complete history)
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