Tag: social

[Guest Post] Is Multiply Leaving the Social?

It was only last year that I wrote here about two factors for successful internet-based applications in Indonesia: mobile and social. Multiply, a social networking service, established its South East Asia office in Jakarta last year, after their move towards e-commerce business. This move caused Multiply to be a unique social networking site: “Sharing & Shopping with your Friends” (as written on its homepage).

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Harpoen Lets You Leave Digital Graffiti All Over the City

Jakarta has a new iPhone app and its name is Harpoen. What does it do and what’s the big deal? Harpoen lets you leave notes, photos, remarks, comments all over the city, virtually. This digital graffiti app lets you put up what the developer calls “harps” all over the city which can be placed permanently or temporarily, as you can set these harps to disappear after a particular length of time if you wish.

I’ve been playing with this app for a while and I can certainly see the novelty as well as potential functions for this app. This app can act as a public notice board or as a missed connections board where people would leave messages for others to discover.

Funnily enough this app reminds me of those toilet graffiti where people leave all sorts of messages on cubicle walls. You can really leave any kinds of notes anywhere all over the city using this app and if you have some artwork stored in your photos app, you can leave it for other people to see, as long as they use the app as well. I’ve seen people leave links to YouTube videos or SoundCloud recordings and it’s fun to discover the things that people scatter all around you. Continue reading Harpoen Lets You Leave Digital Graffiti All Over the City

Blibli Updated Their Site and Improve Their Social Features

Blibli is categorized as a new comer in Indonesian market place, but they have decided to renew their layout for the user’s convenience.

The new layout can accommodate popular social feature in which the recommendation from other’s customer is becoming an important reference. Blibli tries to help users to get reviews, inputs or even tips from the specialists and other vendors. Aside from that feature, Blibli has added 2 (two) new merchants, such as ‘The Executive and Mini Cooper’.

According to Ivan W Yudhayana, Head Marketing of Blibli.com in the press release, “All the efforts of developing layout, features or even the service that have been done by Blibli.com are designed to help customers becoming smart-shoppers thus in the end Blibli.com is becoming online mall which is able to do “assisting customers assisting customers”; This is where the customers that is becoming smart-shoppers can assist other customers to become other smart-shoppers, thus the shopper online community that is able to utilize all facilities of online shopping has offered for a better life is established .“

Continue reading Blibli Updated Their Site and Improve Their Social Features

Paying attention to the behaviors of mobile users

I spent half the day last Friday working from Yahoo’s Jakarta office and they showed me a very early mockup of what the iPhone app for Koprol is going to look like. At this stage there’s really no point in showing you what it looks like as the interface is still being worked on and there’s a good chance that the released product will look quite different. The reason for this post isn’t so much about leaking photos of the app as it is about understanding what your audience would do with the app.

Upon seeing the mockups, it occurred to me that there are so many things that a social site can offer that it’s entirely possible to have a number of different apps serving that single site. Take Facebook for example. TechCrunch revealed the other day that Facebook is working on a photo sharing app that may or may not be separate from its current mobile app. Facebook doesn’t need to release a separate app but apparently photo sharing seems to be the next hot app category on the internet so it’s something they’re likely to consider.

Continue reading Paying attention to the behaviors of mobile users

[Guest Post] Success in Indonesia: “Mobile” and “Social”

This guest post is written by Qonita Shahab, a researcher in UX who used to work in IT. Her interest in music and photography helps her in designing interactive system prototypes. Since she started research in the field of persuasive technology, Qonita studied more about social psychology and the communal use of technology.

The importance of understanding the geography of Indonesia in relation to the development of internet infrastructure caught my attention in 2003 when I met Korean IT infrastructure developers. At that time, the majority of (South) Korea was already interconnected through broadband, while in Indonesia home internet access (dial-up) was still expensive yet unreliable, resulting in many users accessing internet from their workplaces or internet cafes.

They said, “The only way to make Indonesia interconnected is by using wireless connections, because it’s too expensive to build wired connections across this country with thousands of islands spread across large area.” Even though it was a dark age for wireless technology because of the difficulty imposed by government regulation, I always remembered those words.

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[Guest Post] Sukses di Indonesia: “Mobile” dan “Social”

Guest post kali ini ditulis oleh Qonita Shahab, peneliti di bidang UX yang sebelumnya menekuni bidang IT. Hobi musik dan fotografi mendukungnya dalam merancang prototipe sistem interaktif. Sejak memulai riset dalam bidang teknologi persuasif, Qonita mempelajari lebih banyak tentang psikologi sosial dan penggunaan teknologi secara komunal.

Pentingnya memahami struktur geografis negara Indonesia sehubungan dengan perkembangan jaringan internet baru saya sadari ketika pada tahun 2003 saya bertemu dengan pekerja infrastruktur IT dari Korea. Saat itu, Korea (selatan) sudah sebagian besar saling terhubung melalui broadband, sementara di Indonesia akses internet dari rumah (dial-up) masih mahal pun tidak memadai, sehingga sebagian besar pengguna internet mengaksesnya dari warnet atau tempat kerja.

Kata mereka, “Satu-satunya jalan untuk membuat Indonesia saling terhubung adalah dengan wireless connection, karena terlalu mahal untuk membuat wired connection di negara kepulauan yang begitu luas ini.” Walaupun saat itu sedang masa suram teknologi wireless karena sulitnya perijinan dari pemerintah, saya terus mengingat kata-kata itu.

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SoMoLoCo!

One phrase I just heard in Global Mobile Internet Conference is SoMoLoCo. This can be said as the key of successful internet services in China, which I think the same globally.

What is SoMoLoCo?

Four factors playing main part in a service’s success is Social, Mobile, Local and Commercial, or SoMoLoCo. Actually these are not new points, but many often forget one of these points in their service. There are a lot of success stories from services that are able to synergize these four points to serve their users. Now let’s see what they are.

Continue reading SoMoLoCo!

Integrasi Twitter di LinkedIn, Kini Semakin Lengkap

LinkedIn memperkaya berbagai fitur integrasi Twitter pada aplikasi mereka, jika sebelumnya user bisa melakukan post di Twitter kemudian memunculkannya juga di LinkedIn, begitu pun sebaliknya, kini berbagai fitur lain bisa dinikmati dalam aplikasi Twitter di LinkedIn yang dinamakan aplikasi Tweets.

Seperti yang diumumkan di blog mereka, perkembangan aplikasi yang berhubungan dengan Twitter ini memungkinkan user yang mempunyai akun di LinkedIn untuk dengan mudah mencari, dan mendapatkan berbagai perkembangan informasi dari relasi user baik itu di LinkedIn maupun di Twitter.

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Google Reader: “Spring Cleaning!”

Google mengumumkan beberapa perkembangan atas layanan mereka, Google Reader. Mulai dari opsi untuk memberi komentar dari ‘shared items’ di Google Reader, menghentikan dukungan untuk browser ‘tua’, dan menghentikan akses offline Google Reader lewat Google Gears.

Perubahan pada opsi ‘shared items’, jika sebelumnya anda harus masuk dalam sharing group tertentu untuk bisa memberikan komentar pada sebuah konten atau ‘items’ di Reader, kini Google memberikan kemudahan bagi usernya. Asalkan anda bisa melihat konten yang dibagikan oleh user lain, maka anda bisa langsung memberi komentar pada ‘items’ tersebut.

Continue reading Google Reader: “Spring Cleaning!”