I find it sad that an over-populated developing country like Indonesia keep falling behind on online presence, especially in a business sense. Unlike other neighboring Country like China, Australia, Japan, Korea, and more, we still find it difficult to shop online for ANYTHING, people don’t really trust internet transactions, and Internet doesn’t seem to be utilized to the fullest extend by students, and especially lecturers. But I did saw quite a growth in the number of WWW businesses.
Let’s see, we have business in photo sharing and gift sites (Sharingfoto.com, kadounik.com, kura2terbang.com), file upload sites (GudangUpload, GigeUpload, IndoUpload, Gila Upload), social community sites (Live Connector, Lilo Friends, KapanLagi Face, AyoGaul.com) and I believe there are many more sites that I haven’t seen yet.
Yes, we can’t use PayPal for national online internet transaction, we don’t have a good ebay site, and definitely not Google 
But I believe it’s a start, a good one.
I talk to Satya last night about a blog discussing Indonesian only online business gearing towards Web 2.0: In short, Techcrunch for Indonesian Web 2.0 Businesses. We believe that online presence would grow and more sites would show up and the Big Guys would realize that the WWW is a big and very potential market. By creating the blog, we believe that we could help the growth and create a more conducive environment for the business.
What do you think 2.0?
Definition of Web 2.0 (according to Wikipedia)
Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O’Reilly Media in 2003[1] and popularized by the first Web 2.0 conference in 2004[2] , refers to a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.
I am Aria R. Masna, a web designer and developer living in Jakarta, Indonesia. I currently work at
July 5th, 2007 at 9:33 am
There should be one, and it might as well made by us practitioners, specifically you! hehe..
One of my points from last night was, while there is a growing number of social sites here, most are corporate sponsored, they are actually ads!
It’s not a bad thing that businesses are liking these user generated format, but they tend to die down after one year because the communities were created with the promise of prizes, etc, no real use, or real fun use, or real social incentive.
There are talent, but most still hang on sponsorships instead of being independent (or at least VC-backed) startups.
July 5th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
As I wrote in my blog about web 2.0 in Indonesia, the lack of incentive from VCs is driven from truth that Web 2.0 is not widely recognized. I mean we are IT people, we knew bout that, but what about the financial institution out there? I think they must be still unaware, or even worse, “what is web 2.0 anyway, some kind of scam maybe”?
I want the web 2.0 business to be highly growing here, but I must admit from what I see, I am still being skeptical rite now.
July 5th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Hehehe, the trouble of finding a VC in Indonesia is another problem. I never doubt Indonesian talents, but I doubt their guts and commitment to stay on with what they believe in health or sickness. Okay, that sounded like a marriage commitment but I guess it does take at least the same effort..
In the end, money talks, and money walks
July 5th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Yeah.. without money, the commitment will go nowhere. Google will never grow like this without any financial backups *hate to say this*
Btw, Ya.. have you finished reading my “Google Story”? I am still not committed continuing iCon
July 5th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
hahaa yes i’ve finish it. Sergey and Larry’s way is rather out of this world or rather PhD dignified solution. Not quite what I’m looking for.
Steve Jobs on the other hand goes for the innovation/design approach, in which very suitable for my company. So it’s not because I just love my pbook