Once upon a time there were many Indonesians who became independent developers overseas. Most of them worked for large companies although there are some who finally established big company like Sutardja family with their Marvell. So it’s interesting if there is a line of independent developers who live abroad and were established by Indonesian.
TheCrowdVoice is an application for BlackBerry platform to target users in Indonesia that are (at least up to now) still much addicted with the platform made by Research in Motion.
TheCrowdVoice is made by two brothers, Jonni and Hendrik Gani (Gani Software) who live in Australia. Although it’s little known in Indonesia, this application has gained recognition by winning The Mobile Monday Australia BlackBerry Messenger Developer Competition.
TheCrowdVoice is an Indonesian speaking forum where people discuss and share stories. The segmentation is particularly about football. There are subforums dedicated to popular European football clubs. In addition, of course, there are many other channels that allow users to chat about various topics. The interface itself reminds me of the social bookmarking like reddit. In general, the design is nice enough to entice people to linger in it.
Speaking about the forum in Indonesia, we can’t forget to talk about Kaskus. This largest forum in Indonesia may be identical with a gathering place for all Indonesian people on the Internet. For sure, Kaskus certainly can’t make everyone like every culture in it. Thus for that alternative type, TheCrowdVoice is present.
Two things are becoming problem for TheCrowdVoice. The first is how to keep the crowd in order them to keep using TheCrowdVoice. We have to admit that now BlackBerry is popular in Indonesia but we aren’t sure for the next five years. Gani Software reportedly will soon release the Android version and this is a good move. A note from me is, will the users (with the greater amount) continue to gather here. mig33 is a business model example enable to gather massive amounts of niche crowd. This could be a valuable lesson for TheCrowdVoice.
The second problem is monetization. Kaskus which has a similar business model seems to rely on advertising as their main revenue with a note that Kaskus has their own web version. What about TheCrowdVoice which has mobile version only? It still is a tricky thing. Facebook, with their enormous number of users, is still having trouble monetizing their market share in the mobile world. Unless they are able to managed users by leading them to purchase a variety of gift or emoticons with real money, it seems that TheCrowdVoice should explore the possibility of advertising.
However, as mentioned through interviews with the e27, it seems that Gani Software will attempt to seek funding from investors to enlarge the team and their business before ensuring the most effective monetization step.
