Social-networking sites have taken off in Indonesia. Who will profit?
WHAT does the most populous Muslim nation do in its spare time? Increasingly, it swaps gossip online. Indonesia is now the world’s second-largest market for Facebook and the third-largest for Twitter, according to several web research firms. For industry insiders, however, the most exciting statistic is not how many Indonesians use social media, but how many still don’t. Of 230m or so Indonesians, fewer than 20% are connected to the internet.
Foreign firms see untapped potential. Facebook doesn’t even have an office in Indonesia, yet it has grown like crazy, to 30m users. In May last year Yahoo! ventured into this fizzing market by buying Koprol, a location-based social network. Indonesian culture seems particularly receptive to online socialising. People love publicity, don’t fret much about privacy and gleefully follow trends. “Everything is about friends and location,” says Andy Zain, the founder of MobileMonday Indonesia, a networking forum. …
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