Top 20 Indonesian Websites - May 2011

All the most popular Indonesian websites in the most booming emerging markets in the world. Compiled in a Top 20 by SangatPedas, the most authoritative source in Indonesia, or even in the world!

Indonesia is home to 240 mln people, making it one of the most attractive emerging markets in the Internet industry. Guesstimates tell us there are 15 mln people connecting to the Internet through fixed connections and another 25 mln. access the Internet through their mobile. Indonesia is the country where Internet is sold under the name “Facebook” and many people still don’t know that when they have access to Facebook they have access to the whole Internet.

Now don’t start laughing because Facebook is probably the best thing that happened to the Indonesian Internet market as it woke up a sleeping giant and really sky rocketed the Internet in Indonesia. Currently we see Indonesia catching up with the developed world in an unprecedented pace. Startup communities are no longer the privilege solely for the metropole Jakarta but are popping up all over Indonesia. In the country where open-source software is embraced like nowhere else and where infrastructure and  scalability some of the the main challenge.

Since we believe that a lot of the real players are left out in the news reported by some “authoritative” (read: heavily sponsored) sources or the tiny players are positioned as giants, we thought it would be nice make a top 20 of the local websites in the market based on traffic. In this case local is defined by locally founded, not a roll out from platforms that have been launched in other countries before entering the Indonesian market.

Now I know, lists are always challenged on their reliability and I would be dissappointed if no one would challenge this one. But, the advanced SP algorithm (AlexaReach*AlexaPageviews*AdplannerReach*AdplannerPV*ALot) uses two well established external sources: Alexa and Google Adplanner so don’t complain to us, just write them a letter. And of course, measuring the success of any platform solely based on traffic is not the most sophisticated way but it steers peoples minds so it will have to do.

Just so you know, we’ve taken the liberty to filter out advertisement platforms, published ads are not pageviews of their originating platform.

Congratulations to everyone who has made it into this most prestigious top 20 in Indonesia ever, whatever my opinion might be, whatever the future, this list you can bring home to your family and friends! To anyone else, just try harder or maybe you will be in one of our other (less but still enormous prestigious) upcoming Top X lists.

Endorsements officially won’t help but don’t hesitate to give it a try.

Top 20 Indonesian Websites

[table "1" not found /]

Kaskus.us
Kaskus is created on November 6th 1999 by three students from Indonesia, Andrew Darwis, Ronald, and Budi, in Seattle, USA. Kaskus was originally intended as an informal forum of Indonesian students abroad. Kaskus has managed to transform the site from a pretty much pron driven site to the most popular Indonesian forum. Indonesian sigarette manufacturer Djarum recently increased their share in Kaskus to reportedly (rumor) 60% based on a total valuation of Kaskus of $70mln. I guess this must be the best investment in a VBulletin script ever. Kaskus now seems to move in other areas like ecommerce and payments but so far their loyal community seems to be by far their biggest asset and doesn’t seem to stop growing. A rough estimate shows Kaskus has more than 400mln pageviews per month making it the giant in the Indonesian market. For anyone else trying to replicate their success, here some nice info on how to sell your forum.

Detik.com
In 1995 2 seasoned journalists and 1 engineer launched detik.com, in 1998 Detikcom is Indonesia’s number one Internet destination. Driven by entrepreneurship and enthusiasm for technology, it quickly grows from a simple news site to a full fledged new media company. Detik is owned by PT Agranet Multicitra Siberkom of which Abdul Rahman is the long time CEO. Detik is probably the first Internet company with a really successful monetizing strategy based on advertising. Currently the growth of Detik seems to have halted and relative to the market there seems to be a decrease in terms of reach and pageviews due to stiffer competition.

Vivanews.com
This relative newcomer is owned by PT Visi Media Asia which is owned by Bakrie & Brothers. The group also owns TV stations ANTV and AFP and is run by CEO Anindya Bakrie. TIn the last two years Vivanews has made an impressive run and even managed to surpass Detik in terms of pageviews.

Kompas.com
Kompas.com is part of the Kompas Gramedia group, an offline media giant who’s also publishing numerous magazines like Chip and National Geographicand even owns several hotel chains. Being launched in 1998, Kompas.com showed a steady growth in the last 13 years but are now engaged in a battle with Detik and Vivanews to become market leader.

KlikBCA.com
KlikBCA is the Internet Portal of Bank Central Asia which allows people to handle their banking affairs through the Internet. The fact that KlikBCA is scoring so high on this list definitely shows Indonesia is more and more embracing digital payment & banking solutions.

Detiknews.com
Part of the Detik group of websites.

Tokobagus.com
Created in 2006  by Arno Egg and myself, Tokobagus was one of the first Indonesian online classifieds. During the past years Tokobagus has undergone various redesigns and has become famous for it’s marketing approach which is dominating the Indonesian Internet. Due to the fast growth medio january 2011 Tokobagus moved its office from holiday paradise Bali to Jakarta after which it launched a full scale TV campaign resulting in a strong leading position in the classifieds market.

Detiksport.com
Part of the Detik group of websites

Kapanlagi.com
“It all started with a big dream” according to the Bio of Kapanlagi, which loosely translated means “If not now when then?”. Kapanlagi was founded in 2003 by businessman Eka Wiharto and developer Steve Christian who to their own saying had no knowledge of journalism but wanted to follow their dream to start a portal that matters in Indonesia. With a number 9 position in this list it’s obvious they succeeded creating a portal that’s pretty popular in Indonesia.

Okezone.com
Another portal focussing on entertainment news and a direct competitor of Kapanlagi. Okezone was established in 2007 and is owned by the Indonesian media giant MNC who also owns the TV channels MNCTV, RCTI and Global TV and publishes “Seputar Indonesia” one of the biggest newspapers in Indonesia. Probably one of the success factors of Okezone is the fact that MNC gives them access to TV where they advertise pretty regularly. For MNC the Internet has become a strategic area they take really serious. Recently MNC setup a joint venture with Rakuten from Japan which resulted in the launch of the Indonesian version of Rakuten.

Detikhot.com
The entertainment part of the Detik group of websites.

Bank Mandiri
Another banking giant, like BCA, in Indonesia who offers Internet banking facilities to their clients.

Indowebster.com
Founded in 15 April 2007, Indowebster is the leader in online file, video and image hosting, one of the biggest and fastest file hosts in Indonesia. However, the popularity of Youtube and even Facebook have resulted in a downwards trend for Indowebster in 2010 and it will be interesting to see if and how they manage to turn things around.

Indonetwork.co.id
Probably one of the first ecommerce sites in Indonesia who were there already before Tokobagus launched. It’s a family owned and managed business that pretty much flies under the radar. Indonetwork can best be compared with Alibaba, a B2B classifieds site allowing businesses to advertise their products and services to local and foreign companies. With hardly any online marketing they manage to maintain a steady growth and stay ahead of some of the big spenders in the classifieds market like Berniaga.

Stafaband.info
A highly SEO driven (illegal) download site for music through aggregating content from the bigger file sharing sites like 4Shared.com. The site originally started out as a showcase for the Stafa Band, which as far as I know is not a famous band but they managed to put their site on the map and are still growing. Thanks to the big advertisers like Tokobagus and Groupon I’m sure they make a nice salary on advertising.

LintasBerita.com
Don’t be fooled by the literal translation, LintasBerita is not a traffic news site but in fact the Indonesian Digg clone. Lintasberita is currently part of PT Global Digital Prima, owned by local sigarette giant PT Djarum and recently acquired a significant amount of shares in Kaskus. 2010 has been a great year for Lintas Berita in which it probably saw their traffic tripled or even more. However, according to Alexa the trend reversed in Q4 of 2010 maybe due to algorithm changes by Google, changes in design or just a result of the declining popularity of bookmarking sites. However, don’t count Lintasberita out yet, the guys know their business.

Inilah.com
Self-proclaimed new portal innovators and another contender in the already heavily fought over news market. Based on the last two years it doesn’t look very promising for Inilah and pretty sure that their income from advertising will hardly be enough to give the same quality content as their bigger competitors.

Gudanglagu.com
Another music download site like Stafaband.info by aggregating content from the file sharing giants. With the addition of lyrics and videoclips they offer somewhat more than Stafaband. Not much else to tell besides that it’s like morst sites in this top 20 a site that only uses advertising as source of income.

DetikInet.com
The digital news portal of the Detik group of websites.

TempoInteraktif.com
Yet another contender in the news market, part of the Tempo group that also publishes a paper, magazine and others. Apparently there’s room for a lot of news sites in Indonesia and looking at the growth rate of the Internet penetration and the total population one can say “why not?”.  With a nice clean attractive layout Tempo has managed to become one of the smaller contenders and while everyone is looking at the battle in the ecommerce market it’s definitely interesting to see how the news market will develop.