The Story of Indonesia’s Largest Online Community
My interest in Indonesian startups has not waned yet. Even after being back from Jakarta for over a month, I am still enthralled by the simplicity and functionality of Indonesian web startup companies and the sheer number of users they have. As part of a series of posts by Rama Mamuaya and myself, we would like to share with you the story of Kaskus, the largest online community in Indonesia.
Craigslist and Kaskus
I chanced upon a picture of Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist – the world’s biggest online classifieds ads, wearing a tight white t-shirt with the logo of Kaskus. What is Kaskus? And how did they get Craig Newmark to wear a t-shirt with their company logo on them?
The Kaskus Story
Kaskus is the biggest online community in Indonesia. It is basically a forum, started by college students- Andrew Darwis and his friends, while they were studying in the US. The year was 1999 and it was the days of dot com boom, especially in Indonesia where early adopters were starting their journey in the online world. The Kaskus, short for Kasak-kusuk (means chit-chat) was a side project, and was maintained by Andrew, Ronald and Budi Untuk. The last two people left Kaskus because they thought it was a waste of time and money. Kaskus wasn’t making any money back then and Andrew was left all alone, striving, saving money for hosting + domain cost for 8 years straight. Typical early stage web startup story.
Ken Dean Lawadinata, Andrew’s cousin who flew to the US to visit him, told him that Kaskus was gaining popularity in Indonesia, simply because it gave the users freedom to post anything. And this was a serious case of “anything” because users could literally post stuff pertaining to porn, pirated software, hobbies, news etc. There was even a sub-forum called “Fighting Club” which allowed users to debate about sensitive topics like race and religion. This usually ended up in insults and spates between users, hence the term “Fighting Club”.
The Business Opportunity
Ken saw Kaskus as a huge business opportunity and as an online community, it could potentially generate serious money. He decided to help Andrew to further develop Kaskus. Today, Ken sits as the CEO of Kaskus, Danny Wirianto is the CMO and Andrew serves as the CTO. Fast forward to today, 10 years after Kaskus first went online, they have over 1 million users and are considered as one of the most active forums in the world. Kaskus serves as a great inspiration and role model to other fledging Indonesian web startups. While their revenue is mostly generated from ads and other side projects, they do acknowledge that without their users, none of this would have happened. In fact, their community connection is so good that Andrew, the chief of the Kaskus tribe, has been able to develop a unique culture with the Kaskus community that includes their own unique jargons, terms and behaviors.
Things took a turn in 2007 when the Indonesian government released a law against porn websites putting Kaskus in a potential lawsuit against one of their sub-forum BB17. After long consideration, Kaskus decided to shut down the porn sub-forum leaving angry users expressing rage against Kaskus’ decision. A lot of users initially left Kaskus, only to return a few months later helping to double Kaskus’ traffic, proving how good a community it was.
Buying and Selling on Kaskus
Kaskus is not just for mindless chatter. Transactions take place there as well. FJB (sub forum for marketplace) is definitely one of their most popular sub-forum on Kaskus with thousands of posts per day only on that sub-forum. Online sellers and buyers gather to negotiate and transact on all sorts of products ranging from cellphones, books, clothes, bikes, spareparts, even homes and properties. Interestingly, Kaskus does not get anything from the transactions, which is great for the users. It’s not all rosy in the online space. The bustling community is used by criminals and frauds to find gullible victims and at least one user falls victim every single day. This was a growing concern for the Kaskus team and hence in November 2009, Kaskus came up with their own payment solution called Kaspay (now in early beta).
API and Social Features
Not satisfied with their current million user base, Kaskus decided to add Facebook Connect and Twitter Connect to their platform, with an effort to boost their new member sign-ups by making it easier to register. This is a great starting point for Kaskus before releasing their API. Yes, Kaskus is a forum with an API. The aim for them is that with such a substantial amount of users, they intend to invite developers to develop on top of the Kaskus platfrom, just like what Facebook did. While critics are quick to dismiss this move, users are avidly looking forward to this.
The year 2010 should be an interesting year for Kaskus, amazing how they managed to gain users, maintain users, keep them coming back and now with their soon to be released API, their traffic is bound to head skywards. What’s happening after that? Well, lets keep guessing and hoping for many great things to come.
This post was co-written by Rama Mamuaya and myself
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