Indonesia's online media has a new news portal called VivaNews that already launched its beta version yesterday. Owned by Bakrie Group (which was reported as another factor behind the Jakarta market's fall recently), the baby portal offers general news for Indonesian readers.

Of course, VivaNews has no long "honeymoon", but should prepare itself to fight against the country's leading news portal, Detik, and some other competitors like OkeZone and Inilah. And please don't forget, Indonesia's mainstream media also has strong online versions.



I won't discuss their design or content here, but will try to see it from another point of view: The user's perspective.

For me, this launch is quite interesting. It seems Indonesian media businessmen are still convinced about the news portal business. I think they should be aware of the landscape as well as readers' habits that have changed already.

As a result of the fast-growing social-networking and blogging services which were put to readers or users as their content generator, most of them prefer reading (and trusting) the news after these are pointed out or recommended by their friends. It means they are no longer visit the particular Web sites directly, but prefer to follow their friends' referrals.

What does it mean for the online media? Please try to think of creating and crafting a community and engaging them wisely. The media now needs "reader ambassadors" to gain more readers.

The time is now owned by the users: They love to share with and trust each other. They are not easily impressed by big names or big companies.

So I'm just wondering why the country's Internet players didn't want to target these exciting niches...

 

sandynata
Level:
Indonesia

amir101
Level:

yordansyah
Level:
Indonesia

thomasarie
Level:
Indonesia

fekimoki
Level:
Indonesia