For many Indonesians Internet is ‘Fesbuk’ Friday, 03 February 2012 03:29

Jakarta: Indonesia, a developing Muslim nation which claims the world’s third-largest community of Facebook users, has become a showcase for the social networking site’s global power and reach.

Facebook has broken technological and social barriers to connect 40 million users in the sprawling Indonesian archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, some without even landline connections.

Its remarkable ascent has for many users rendered the rest of the Internet obsolete, as well as attracted allegations that it is responsible for encouraging pornography, premarital sex and adultery. With even cheap cell phones in Indonesia sold already bundled with Facebook applications, for many, “Fesbuk” -- as it is written in the national Bahasa language -- simply is the Internet.

“Since access to Facebook is made so easy by pressing one button on a mobile phone, many people who are not familiar with the Internet do not realise that Facebook is part of the Internet,” said Danny Oei Wirianto, co-founder of homegrown social networking site MindTalk.

Many don’t bother to do anything else on the Internet and are barely aware that they can use the browser button on their phone to go online, he explains.

Internet penetration via computers is low in Indonesia at less than 10 percent, but many have leapfrogged that technology by using wildly popular smartphones which have seen mobile Internet penetration reach 57 percent.

Their low cost and ease of access has enabled almost 17 percent of the population to use Facebook, making it a cheap past time in a country where the majority live on less than $2 a day.

The Internet “is the cheapest form of entertainment here,” said Daniel Tumiwa, country manager of Multiply, Facebook’s runner-up in Indonesia. AFP

| More...