Eat, pray, tweet

Social media in Indonesia
印度尼西亚的社交网

Eat, pray, tweet
美食，祈祷，推特

Social-networking sites have taken off in Indonesia. Who will profit?
印度尼西亚的社交网站发展起来了，谁将获益？

Jan 6th 2011 | JAKARTA | from PRINT EDITION


My avatar is much funkier
我的头像更特别

WHAT does the most populous Muslim nation do in its spare time? Increasingly, it swaps gossip online. Indonesia is now the world's second-largest market for Facebook and the third-largest for Twitter, according to several web research firms. For industry insiders, however, the most exciting statistic is not how many Indonesians use social media, but how many still don't. Of 230m or so Indonesians, fewer than 20% are connected to the internet.

穆斯林国家的人空闲时最爱干什么？他们中越来越多的人开始上网聊天。据多家网络研究公司调查显示，印度尼西亚是脸谱网在全球的第二大市场，是推特的第三大市场。另业界人士兴奋的统计数字不是有多少印度尼西亚人上社交网，而是有多少人还没上过。在2.3亿左右的印度尼西亚人中，只有不足20%的人能上网。

Foreign firms see untapped potential. Facebook doesn't even have an office in Indonesia, yet it has grown like crazy, to 30m users. In May last year Yahoo! ventured into this fizzing market by buying Koprol, a location-based social network. Indonesian culture seems particularly receptive to online socialising. People love publicity, don't fret much about privacy and gleefully follow trends. "Everything is about friends and location," says Andy Zain, the founder of MobileMonday Indonesia, a networking forum.

外国公司看到了其未发掘的潜力。脸谱网在印度尼西亚甚至都没有办公场所，但它的用户增长的速度几近疯狂，已经有三千万用户。去年五月，雅虎通过收购当地的社交网Koprol开始对这个越发活跃的市场进行风险投资。印度尼西亚的文化似乎特别容易接纳这种网络社交。人们热爱社交，不会过多的烦恼隐私问题，很乐意跟随这股潮流。印度尼西亚网络论坛"移动星期一"的创始人Andy Zain说："一切都是关于朋友和场所。"

The biggest question for everyone is how to make money from Indonesians' interest in connecting with one another. Michael Smith, who led Yahoo!'s acquisition of Koprol, says the payoff will take time: "I always tell people that the volumes and willingness of customers to pay in Indonesia [are] so low that you can't expect gargantuan revenues from it today."

人们心头最大的问题是，如何利用印度尼西亚人喜欢网聊的特点赚钱呢？领导雅虎收购Koprol的Michael Smith说想要获得收益需要时间:" 我经常跟人们说在印度尼西亚，用户们付钱的意愿不高金额也不大，所以你不能指望今天就能赚钱。"

Western firms are only just beginning to grasp the eccentricities of the Indonesian social-media market. Thanks to years of price wars between Indonesia's three major telecommunications companies, mobile contracts in the country are dirt-cheap. For Indonesians living in North America, it is often cheaper to buy an Indonesian SIM card and roam with it than it is to sign up for a local plan.

西方公司才刚开始了解到印度尼西亚社交网络市场的怪异。印度尼西亚三大电信公司这几年的价格战使国内手机套餐合同的价格很低廉。对生活在北美的印度尼西亚人来说，在国内买的手机SIM卡就算用了漫游，通常也比在北美参加当地的套餐活动要便宜得多。

Phones are cheap, too: the country is flooded with Chinese handsets costing only $30-40. Indonesia is also one of the largest markets for Research In Motion (RIM), the maker of BlackBerrys. Indonesians typically connect with each other via mobile devices, not personal computers.

印度尼西亚的电话也很便宜：国内到处是仅售30-40美元的中国手机，印度尼西亚也是RIM（动态研究）最大的市场之一。RIM是黑莓的制造商。通常,印度尼西亚人用手机同他人联系，而不是私人电脑。

Facebook and Google make money in North America and Europe from display advertising, but this is much harder in Indonesia. Few locals have credit cards or bank accounts, making it hard for them to click on a link and buy something. For large purchases online, payment is generally made by bank transfer. Social-media firms are investigating whether they can tap the microtransactions market―say, by offering virtual currencies or goods that users can use as barter―though forced partnerships with local telecoms firms threaten the profitability of such schemes.

脸谱网和谷哥通过在北美和欧洲发布广告而赚钱，但在印度尼西亚这种做法并不奏效。当地人大多没有信用卡或银行账户，所以他们要在网上轻点鼠标就能付款买东西是非常困难的。大型在线购物网一般都要银行转账付款。社交网络公司正在研究开发小额交易市场是否可行――比方说，通过为用户提供虚拟货币或商品，用户可以用来实物交易――尽管这种方法由于需要跟当地的电信公司合作可能会影响收益率。

So far, only one firm has cracked the payments nut. Inspired by China's QQ and Grameen Phone of Bangladesh, Mig33, a firm whose main product is a mobile social-networking application, has set up a virtual economy. Some 4,000 merchants in 150 countries sell "credits" to users, who then can spend them online: sending messages to friends, playing games, or sending virtual gifts. The firm has raised $34m in funding since its inception in 2005. Its founder, Steven Goh, says it will post profits this year. Indonesia is its largest market.

到目前为止，只有一家公司打破了付款这个难题。Mig33，一家以手机社交网络设备为主要产品的公司，受到中国qq和孟加拉国的格拉明电话的灵感启发成立了虚拟经济体。150个国家的4000家商户出售"信用"给用户，然后用户们即可在网上消费这些"信用"：发信息给朋友，玩游戏或者送虚拟的礼物给朋友。自2005年成立以来，该公司已筹集资金达3400万。创始人Steven Goh说今年他会公布公司利润。印度尼西亚是该公司最大的市场。

When hobnobbing in cyberspace, Indonesians are especially likely to use avatars rather than real pictures of themselves, says Mr Goh. "Indonesia is a moderate Muslim country where people are creating new virtual identities completely different [from] their real identities," he explains. Users with black eyes and black hair, say, may create virtual personae with grey eyes and blond hair.

印度尼西亚人在网上聊天时，特别可能用假的头像而不是自己的真实照片，Goh解释说:"印度尼西亚是个温和的穆斯林国家，这儿的人们创造的虚拟新身份跟自己的真实身份完全不同，"比方说，黑眼睛黑头发的用户很可能把自己创造成金头发灰眼睛的虚拟形象。

This is common elsewhere in East Asia and in the Middle East, too. But Indonesia is a special case, reckons Mr Goh: its social networks freely integrate both real and imagined selves. The archipelago could prove a useful test market for tech firms seeking to enter the wide-open and barely understood social-networking markets of the rest of Asia.

这在东亚和中东也很普遍。但Goh认为印度尼西亚是个特例：其社交网络将真实和想象出来的自己自由的结合成一体。对于那些科技公司――想要探索亚洲其余完全公开但却知只甚少的社交网络市场――印度尼西亚群岛保准是个有用的测试市场。

from PRINT EDITION | Business