Gerakan Bawah Tanah - Mr. GBT

I am lucky. I am in the right place and in the right time (for certain kind of technologies). I had this feeling when I had access to a NeXT computer and was introduced to WWW during its infant stage. The same thing with Linux. But, that's another story. Right now, I am in Indonesia, one of the "biggest" internet community (market) in the world. If you have a product to test or a market to penetrate, Indonesia is the place. To see how big it is, have a look at this stats.   There are many countries that are smaller compared to Indonesian's netizen (cyber citizen). Even if the whole population - and the cats and dogs - in those countries have access to the internet, their numbers are still small compared to Indonesian's number. Now, what do we do with this opportunity?

The world fall in love with selfie. Even selfie has become a word in English dictionary recently. What you don't know is that we, Indonesians, "invented" selfie. For years young Indonesians - especially girls - take mug shot of themselves and post them in their facebook profiles. They even have certain style that I cannot explain. I just cannot describe it. (Later, when I know how I will update this.) But, trust me, we know our stuff. Selfie is our thing :) I saw an interesting article this morning, a comparison between selfie styles in different cities. Oddly, Jakarta or Bandung is not even in the list. They got it wrong!

I guess I congratulate WhatsApp too soon. Not long after WhatsApp is bought by Facebook, the system went down. (At least a couple times here in Indonesia.) As I mentioned in previous post, many Indonesians are using WhatsApp for many things (as a backup of SMS/text msg). When you depend on a system and the system is down, you're angry. And in this particular case, looking for another solution. Fortunately, there's Telegram . I am pretty sure that MANY Indonesians are installing Telegram right now. I do. This is the moment for Telegram to seize the day . I am pretty sure that their traffic will increase significantly. (And perhaps for Twitter or Google to buy Telegram!) One of the features Telegram puts forward is secret chat. With the new Snowden-era I am sure that many would like this feature. Although, Indonesians are not so into privacy. Cost - in this particular case, Free - is the main feature. Second is small footprint (so it can run on inexpensive devices). Way to g...

Facebook surprised many people by buying WhatsApp. Some people questioned the move, but I think it is a good move. Here's why. In Indonesia, BlackBerry and its BBM used to be the number one messaging platform for mobil users. Since there are more than 100 million mobile users in Indonesia, the market for mobile messaging is significant. BB captured the first market. At that time, it is the only available solution. Then came WhatsApp. We embraced it right away. The reason is that we do not have to use BB devices to run the application. Remember that BB devices used to be expensive (but, people bought them for social status and lifestyles) and you have to use BB services. Not nice. That makes non-BB users addopted WhatsApp quickly. Personally, I don't like messaging on my phones since I tend to get quite a number of messages. I leave that to my emails. (I receive 500 emails/day.) But, people are organizing many things with WhatsApp. I have no choice but to use WhatsApp. It...

The term "selfie" has becoming more popular these days after head of states took portraits of themselves (selfie) and was captured by news media. But, in Asia countries - like Indonesia - this is nothing new. Sic selfie photos have become part of Indonesian cyber culture since day one. Few years ago I often take pictures of my self and post them on various social media. I wasn't thinking. Then, there were problems (of people abusing the photos, stalkers, etc.). Now, it is my policy of not to post selfie. In fact, I don't take pictures of myself anymore. What's new? Selfie stick - also known as Zuckerberg selfie stick - is becoming popular. What is it? It's a stick where you can mount your digital camera at the end of the stick. You can take pictures of yourself (or with friends) without the help of other poeple. Go search the internet for it. You know what I mean. No, I won't buy one!

Just found the following slides in slideshare, " Indonesia - the social media capital of the world " by On Device Research. Interesting ... The data are correct. Although, at the end of the slide, the address is not in Indonesia. Yeah, I know. I keep on hammering this issue. You have to be in Indonesia to understand Indonesia (Indonesians). Where else would you be?

In past post, I mentioned that Indonesians love Path . Sure enough, Path closes funding deal led by Indonesian's company; Bakrie Global Group. But, we have to realize that Indonesia's cyber space is a fast changing environment. That's why - as I said many many many times - you have to be here, physically in Indonesia to know this. People are not flocking to Path anymore. In fact, I have uninstalled Path. And many have done so, leaving Path. It's just a short infatuation. Unless, Path is doing something, it is dying. Go down here . Talk to the people here. They are your main users! Most people think that sharing things in a close user group is the main thing. Thus, Path. But, most Indonesians do not care about privacy. They want people to see their postings (text, photos, etc.). The more people see the postings, the better. And you cannot do that if you post to just your friends. Update . After this news, there are plenty of funny "news", jokes, etc. ...

Gone are the days of BlackBerry in Indonesia. It is replaced by ... Oppo ! When I go to stores or malls that sell cellphones, there used to be many counters with BlackBerry signs. Nowadays, the view is diffrent. It is Oppo sign. At first, I thought the trend is Samsung. But, it is Oppo. I didn't see it coming. Oppo phones are Android phones. They have great features similar to those of Samsung's (and some say are better) but are less expensive. Price is still the dominant factor in Indonesia. Although, lifestyle still dominates the buying factor. In this case, Oppo did the right thing; great lifestyle and less expensive. [I still miss my Samsung Galaxy S4 though. It was a loaner and had to go back to the owner. I really like it.]

G+ has just changed the look and feel (again). And, again, I don't like it. Correction, I actually like the look and feel but it is slow to show. That's because our internet connection is not as fast as in the US. People in Google seem to forget that there are places in this world with limitted bandwidth. In fact, many countries with huge number of internet users have slow internet connection. Indonesia is one of them. In another post I mentioned that Twitter is gaining popularity ove Facebook in Indonesia. One of the reasons is that Twitter is lighter than Facebook. Most of users in Indonesia access social network through mobile phones (smartphones). The quality of 3G or CDMA connections varies between places. Even in big city, like Bandung where I live right now, there are places with bad signal quality. My home is one of them. I opened my G+ page and it keeps on giving "loading" message. It's just too bloated. Trying to be fancy but ended up in the gutter...

Last time I wrote about the demise of BlackBerry (BB) in Indonesia and no one believed me. As you can see, BB's share is getting smaller and smaller. Android is getting all the attention. This time, I'll write my take on Facebook vs. Twitter. Indonesians love to talk. We don't write, but talk. It's just our culture. That's why the number of written publication in Indonesia is very small. Our culture translates well into Facebook. We love to tell people about our family and stuff. We love to show our photos. We love (class) reunions. Have a reunion, take pictures, upload them right away. Tell the world. Let's not go into taking photos of our food. That's another "strange" behaviors. Privacy? Well, that's not an issue to us. We don't really care. Ha! Seriously. Originally, Facebook is only accessible through web or computers. Access to computers are still limitted in Indonesia compared to cellphone. Thus, only a small number of people j...

I was told that in terms of number of Facebook users, Indonesia is number 3 in the world - after USA and UK. [reference / url needed] Whoa! This is something that you cannot predict. I can assure you that this is true. In Indonesia, everybody (and his/her pets) perhaps has facebook account. Some even have more than one accounts. (One for each personality? ha ha ha.) The number of Facebook users in Indonesia exceeds the number of people in Singapore and Malaysia! Take that! Because of Facebook, many people buy BlackBerry (BB). Yes, you may want to check with RIM that the number of BlackBerry users in Indonesia is unbelievably large. I guess, we can safely say that facebook is a killer application for BlackBerry. At least, that is true in Indonesia. My point is that Indonesia is an important market for BlackBerry and Facebook. This is also true for Nokia. (Indonesia is perhaps the biggest market for Nokia smartphone, such as communicator!) Why Facebook and BlackBerry are popular in Indo...