Tag: column

[Simply Business] The Need for Niche

I am a big fan of basketball, from watching intense games of the NBA, to the exotic collection and vibrant culture of the shoes to actually playing the game on a regular basis. To put it short, I’m a basketball geek. I’ve invested in shoes (lots, like once per 2 months), jerseys, apparels, renting courts twice a week to play, and even NBA.TV yearly subscriptions and I spent all of my hard-earn money happily. I am a very good example of a niche market: obsessed, marketable and willing to spend.

One good example of a ‘startup’ that attack my niche market is @ngobrolNBA. The owner of the @ngobrolNBA account: @irrilD is a true NBA fan, you could tell from the 300 jerseys he owns or the uncountable shoes he collects over the year. Clearly the man got love for the game. He created the account out of love, and he’s smart enough to capitalize it.

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[Dailyssimo] Election on Social Media

For citizen of Jakarta, last July 11, 2012 is a day that attracts quite large attention because it was the day of the election for the new governor and vice-governor for Jakarta. The win of Jokowi-Ahok in the first round is quite surprising for many parties, but truthfully, said pairing is quite prominent after Foke-Nara pair. Then what about the cyber space? What happened? I will try to analyze the monitoring result by our friends on Saling-Silang which infographic can be seen here.

Based on the monitoring result of SX Index team, it is recorded that No. 5 pair (Faisal Basri and Biem Benyamin) manage to collect the highest positive sentiment of 92.43% while the next in line is Alex Noerdin and Nono Sampono pair with 84.49%. Hidayat Nur Wahid–Didik J. Rachbini 79.91%, Hendardji Supandji–Achmad Riza Patria 78.59%, Joko Widodo–Basuki Tjahja Purnama (Ahok) 78.27% and lastly, Fauzi Bowo–Nachrowi Ramli pair with 70.98%.

This result is very different with the reality. Yes, because many forget that the percentage of internet user in Indonesia is only 23% of Indonesian population and mainly focused in the big cities, and only 4.1% is in the rural area (data can be seen here). This means the success in social media is not valid to be an accurate prediction of the total result. But if we rule out the sentiment happened in the conversation, the buzz is quite representative. In the infographic, highest buzz is for Jokowi-Ahok pair and Foke-Nara. This means, both pair candidates manage to flood Twitter timeline with whatever sentiment and succeed in making a lot of people talk about it on Twitter.

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Introducing: Manic Monday

Today we’re veering from the oft-serious topic of the digital music business to go slightly mad. Well, not entirely (at least not yet), and I’m not going to break out in song on a tech blog. I am, however, introducing a new title to this column, ‘Manic Monday’, which could be applicable to any number of things related or not to tech, since we all “love” Mondays. But bear with me a bit, and I’ll show you a bit of what’s in store.

So for those of you who don’t know, ‘Manic Monday’ is a song by a band called The Bangles, which are probably more popular as the band behind the song ‘Eternal Flame’. The song itself was written by Prince, which became a no.2 hit in 1986, only outsold by Prince’s own ‘Kiss‘. The song’s lyrics basically tell about the fleeting dread that we feel when faced with yet another Monday, a feeling that most of us feel all to well.

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[Music Monday] The Darker Side Of Digital Music And Why iTunes Store Dropped Indonesia

Many people are not aware the complex structure that sits in what is vaguely known as “the music industry”. For many people, what is seen through the media is the musician, artist or songwriter (albeit not as often), and sometimes a mild mention of the music label here, a record producer there, and sometimes the supporting musicians of  a certain album. But actually, a clockwork between songwriters, publishers, record producers, music labels, distribution channels, artists, and countless other people and bodies are involved in an intricate (and often confusing) dance. So, what happens if that clockwork breaks down?

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[Simply Business] The Need For Collaborating and Networking

I was just getting back home from a nice #geekball* session with the guys and we decided to hang out a bit at Tista’s office for some drinks and BBQ. We had a long chat about the NBA, Star Trek,  and ended up with some collaboration ideas among our companies, sponsorship deal, and creating a CTO Club for sharing technical problems and solutions. How can a random discussion leads to a productive collaboration? No idea but that’s something that can happen when you’re hanging out with like-minded people.

This is not the first time it happened and it sure won’t be the last. Most collaboration and ideas are born outside of formal meetings. Most of the big deals of my life were born over drinks, at an after-play at a basketball court or just hanging out with friends and future partners. Formal meetings are just for the sake of formality and signing documents.

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[Dailyssimo] Return of Investment in Social Media

If you read my article about the KPI of social media it is closely related to what we know as ROI (Return Of Investment). There has to be a clear benchmark to count ROI, so KPI is the benchmark for ROI.

Many say that ROI in social media is unmeasureable but can be tracked, others say that social media’s ROI is noticeable when the level of customer’s satisfaction moves up due to the activity of online community. And there are many more explanations about ROI in social media.

While those answers come up, the thing that can be confusing and convincing at the same time is you will still find it difficult to answer the questions from your business partner or client who demands answers in a reasonable business perspective.

Those are the things that sometimes make us sceptical about social media, things that seem to have no clarity in structure and flow. Why you should look for something that was not even measureable? And how do you track and collect the data with the right tool? How can you control the mistakes that often happen? How to articulate the business cases for social media?

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[Music Monday] Revisiting Indonesia’s Copyright Law

Indonesia is a democratic country, at least by principle. Well, at least, the word “democratic” doesn’t come with quote marks anymore, as it did during the time of the New Order. Now, a democracy will either vote or discuss on everything, or appoint representatives to do all the voting and discussing, and thus deciding on whatever is going to be enacted into law, to be followed and safeguarded by the executive branch (just to remind you, this means the President and his government). Now what does this have to do with the digital music business? The law, that’s what.

Being basically a content-based business, the music industry is highly influenced by copyright laws – how the government sees the issue regarding copyright and how it thinks it is best implemented. And of the million things that need regulation in the country, Indonesia’s most recent copyright law was signed into law in 2002, under President Megawati Soekarnoputri. Albeit according to some still lacking in some areas, the upgraded legislation added some much-needed law protection for works of cinematography to computer programs, as the earlier version of the copyright law was signed into law in 1979.

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[Simply Business] Startups That I Would Love to See More in Indonesia

Indonesia is unique, we are a nation comprised of thousands of islands, 70% of us still use feature phones and only about 9% percent of us have credit cards. More than 50% of Indonesians don’t live in cities so it makes sense that smartphone users are only 8.7% among 200 million mobile phone users.

Based on those facts alone, it should be obvious that Indonesia is different. We can’t just blatantly apply the same rules of startups like the Silicon Valley players or carbon copy the successful startups out there. Indonesia needs different or more customized startups, better suited for our unique environment.

Everybody will have their own opinion on this but here’s my version of what startups I would love to see more in Indonesia:

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[Dailyssimo] The Power of Conversation in the Virtual World

The conversation in virtual world usually happens in places that allowd people to post something. We see what is happening in Twitter, Facebook timeline and on the comment box of a blog. Principally, the Web 2.0 introduced by Tim O’Reilly focuses on two way communication, which means every media is designed for conversations.

What do I want to discuss with the title above? It’s related to the power of conversation happening in the process of socializing in the online world which will directly affect the owner of the identity. I once wrote about how a buzzer keeps their ‘asset’, and then I also wrote about how someone can stand out among other personas. The bottom line of those discussions is about the fundamental of a conversation with limitations in the virtual world, which could lead you to a way you’d never imagine if you can’t control it.

Many believe that the appearance of oneself in the virtual world is one’s individual right…. nothing can argue with that. So, when brought to that personal aisle, the responsibility seems insignificant. But the thing with social media or the internet is the world with “open” standard. With that awareness, the option for those who are sensitive to such wide openness is not to use it, so it seems to end in self alienating behavior. Imagine, you’d be surprised if you see someone not using a cell phone nowadays. The world has changed, the behavior changed, standard is shifting. So like it or not, we are suddenly in the pit of social media and internet, together with almost everybody we know.

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[Music Monday] Constructing The New Digital Music Ecosystem

The need to create something ‘new’ usually comes with the thought that the thing that came before it, something ‘old’, did not work, isn’t working anymore, or is simply too old to use. Many companies the world over, recently founded or has been in years of business, startup or established, have at some point changed their tack – or pivoted, in startup-speak – in pursuit of more lucrative businesses, mostly because their previous direction was losing business sustainability.

The recorded music industry was always an industry that relied on content to make its money, and thus tightly controlling the amount of recorded music copies that went out as a sale. The thing about the entertainment industry is that people get bored, so these industries always have to “pivot” to find something creatively new to sell to the market.

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