About Startup and Media Coverage

One day, I found this article on my Twitter timeline (I’m sorry I can’t remember from whom I got this link). The article sticks in my head because, not only because it’s interesting to think about, I’ve experienced something similar with the condition pictured in the article, I am from the media side.

One point that caught my attention from the article written by Tara Hunt is about the readiness of a startup that develops service or product to be covered by the media. That a premature service does not need media attention, the amount of media coverage sometime does not goes in proportion with the success of the service and that the quality of the product is the main thing. Startup should be able to focus on feature development and maximum service for user.

Then, how a startup must deal with media coverage? Is it better to stay away from the media or the otherwise? Should media attention be delayed as long as possible until the service is ready or the sooner the better to inform the media about it?

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Ipsos Survey Result and Opportunities for Online Trading Players

Recently, Ipsos released the result of its survey that shows some things about the behavior of internet user in Indonesia in shopping online. Ipsos is an independent market research company run by professional researchers. Founded in France, it now has offices in 84 countries.

The survey says that 69% of internet users in Indonesia do a web search to find the product that they want to buy, and 48% from total count of respondents purchase goods online, the count is 44% for Indonesia.

Trust

Looking for information includes comparing prices as a common process done by prospective buyers in online shopping. Even though the survey says that respondents gather information on the product they want to buy, it is not mentioned in details about what kind of information gathering done by these buyers. Are they using search engine or looking directly and comparing from online stores, marketplace or forum; or do they ask their friends or considering other people’s opinion or find things by themselves in the web.

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Is There a Need to Reboot Koprol?

It’s been over a week since Yahoo laid off 2000 of its employees globally and we also saw that it dismantled the Koprol team along with it. The Indonesian engineers had been working on various other Yahoo products aside from Koprol and they were casualties of an effort to make the company more efficient. It was a simple numbers game and the Koprol team came up short.

While Yahoo did not announce an end to Koprol, the axing of the team said enough; Koprol is going away soon. The question now is, is there a need for it to be reborn outside of Yahoo?

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[Music Monday] Why You Should Care About Ringback Tones

For many in Indonesia, the ringback tone is somewhat of a controversial issue; drawing the ire of many, and polarizing related industries into an almost “for-and-against” situation. But not too long ago, ringbacktones were the craze of the moment and the darling of the music industry (and remains the darling of the music industry, depending on who you ask). And not only the music industry – the soaring growth of the ringbacktone market was one of the first indications that Indonesia, as a digital content market, is simply different from other countries and plays by different rules.

I have been writing about how music startups have actually been around in Indonesia for the past 6-7 years or so, and I felt it fitting to dedicate the last post in the series to discuss the ringback tone. Popularized in Korea to replace that boring connecting tone when you wait for the person on the other end to pick up your call, ringback tones (also known as ‘color ringback tones’, as they added ‘color’ to your ringback tone), the technology was imported into Indonesia in 2004 when both Indosat and Telkomsel started building their ringback tone services and offered them to the public later that year. The telecommunication companies approached the music labels to obtain attractive content for these services; negotiations took place, and business deals were agreed which were to define the business model for ringback tones across the industry.

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[Dailyssimo] E-commerce in Indonesia, What We Need Is a Service That We Can Trust

Opening an online shop is much easier than opening a regular shop; at least it can be measured from cost factor. However, inviting buyer to come and be a customer of a store is much more complex than just opening it. Let me invite you to examine from various point of views.

For a buyer, money is something sensitive. A buyer would never want to give their money in exchange for an item if they do not want the item or if there is something that makes it hard to get the goods after they made the payment.

Just imagine, if you want to buy a music CD, the options are to purchase it at nearest CD store or at on online shop. What do you think will be the consideration?

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[Simply Business] Getting Your Startup to its First Million Users

I’m truly amazed with how 30 million people can be drawn to Instagram or 50 million to Draw Something, not to mention 800+ million users on Facebook. It’s really interesting to see them grow, but what interests me more is how they can get their first million users. How did they do that? Of course the next obvious question is how you can implement their strategy to your own startup?

Rama wrote a great piece about this topic as well yesterday, he suggested that we go directly to phone manufacturers and telcos. If you’re in a content or mobile app business then this is totally true. But it may not work if you’re in e-commerce like me. I myself prefer a more simple and direct approach, so here are the top three ways that I learned from my research.

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CDMA Operator Keeps Losing Money, Now What?

There is a topic raised by IndoTelko and becomes the main question for me for the last few days. Of the four still operating CDMA operators, two of them has been suffering heavy losses (Bakrie Telecom and Smartfren), one operator is basically can be considered dead (StarOne) and another one (Telkom Flexi), even though protected by the largest telecommunication company, is in fact experience a major customer decrease and no longer active. Why is that? Is there any way for them to remain and compete with their competitor, especially the “Big 3” GSM operators that dominate the market?

Let’s first review the condition of CDMA operator globally. Countries that own CDMA operator that is still running until now, are few. Only the United States, Japan, Korea and China are considered to be successfully defending their CDMA operator. The rest prefers to maintain the GSM hegemony. The success story of CDMA operator in these countries is relatively similar; has a broad range of coverage and supported by high-speed broadband technology to access data.

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[Dailyssimo] Yahoo!, Big Boat In A Big Wave

April 5, 2012 may be a judgment day for half of Yahoo! employees in the context of internal policy changes in this Internet-based company. Yahoo! lay off 2000 employees including the ones who worked at Yahoo! Indonesia. This is the first time that the decision to lay off employees has an impact on Indonesia. There were at least three lay off storms had hit Yahoo! during my work at the company which impact also reached its regional office in Singapore.

Running an internet-based company is like surfing where we have to be smart to know how big the waves are coming and how quick we have to maneuver. This information is important to know not only for decision maker but also, in my opinion, all employees so they know what to prepare for their personal survival because in the end… if something bad happens then they have to rely on their own parachutes.

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[Music Monday] Forgetting About Digital Piracy

It all started with a chat. I came late, so I didn’t get to see this presentation by Robin, but the blog post covers it pretty much (it’s a good read, so if you haven’t read it, read it now!). Robin basically says that the digital era is a major shift in many things and should not be viewed just as a new ‘channel’, but also a new way of thinking. Taking a different approach, so to speak. I’ve written about this several times, even here on Dailysocial, and I generally believe that the audience has changed. Not only because of things going digital, but a true paradigm shift in the industry itself. The changes happened in large part due to the digital, unlimited copying nature of the Internet, but it impacted non-Internet industries as well.

But let’s step back a bit and look what a business is. Many businesses basically take one thing, a product or a service, and try to sell it as many times as they can, with minimum effort in modifying the product. At some point the money they invested in making the product or service can be recouped and they can make a profit. The recorded music business, in essence, is not selling music, but selling the music product; i.e. CDs, cassettes, vinyls. Produce and record once, and essentially sell copies of that recording. Even music copyright is constructed around this. The payment of royalties is based on the amount of copies sold. Of course, any copy obtained without any payment of royalties, is viewed as a copyright infringement. The act itself, whether or not for commercial gain, is known as piracy.

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