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Indonesian netizens young, clinging to smartphones
(JP/Ricky Yudhistira)The chairman of the Indonesian ISPs Association (APJII), Semuel A
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(JP/Ricky Yudhistira)
The chairman of the Indonesian ISPs Association (APJII), Semuel A. Pangerapan, told The Jakarta Post that more workers have been using the Internet for their occupations.
He said that most people were more interested in using the network for useful purposes rather than to browse porn, online betting or entertainment.
“The main attraction for Indonesian Internet users are websites related to social media, e-commerce and news coverage,” he said.
Citing a survey by APJII in 42 cities last year, he said that there were 63 million Internet users in Indonesia, a sharp rise from only 1.8 million in the first decade of the century.
Several characteristics can be concluded from the survey. For example, about 65.7 percent of the users were accessing the Internet from smart phones while 58.4 percent of users were in the range of 12 to 34 years old.
Indonesia has been among the top five countries with the most Twitter and Facebook users. Although the number declined last year, the country remains on the top 10 list.
Semuel said that the survey was carried out by MarkPlus Insight with a method similar to the presidential election’s quick count. Respondents were strictly limited to those who used the Internet for an average of three hours per day.
He said that APJII chose to conduct a survey rather than to monitor directly the activities of IP addresses over a period of time.
“Many people use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol [DHCP], which means one IP address might be used by several clients to access the Internet. For example, the use of WiFi,” he said.
Semuel said in the first decade of the century there was little content using the Indonesian language on the Internet, contributing to the slow growth of early users.
“The [attempt to] reach out for more people will be widened by creating Indonesian-language content such as that pioneered by detik.com,” he said.
A new association named Klik Indonesia, launched on Dec. 12 last year, aims to increase local contents — websites, mobile apps — and captivate more people to use them.
Sapto Anggoro, an executive of the association, said that klikindonesia.or.id would be an aggregator of local websites that connect creators to investors.
“Currently the website is open to registration only. After all sources have been gathered, there will be a ranking system [based on traffic] similar to alexa.com,” he said.
Sapto said that many creators face difficulties in terms of valuing their creations. He said that several experts in various fields have pledged to support the movement.
“We’re going to hold training about ideas for creating websites and apps, in areas across the country. This [attempt] will be done to inspire a wider range of people to actively create content,” he said.
