Archive for May, 2009

Detikcom at SkyEight for Ruby gathering

Monday, May 25th, 2009

Last month Koprol visited Detikcom. This month Detikcom guys visit Koprol.

SkyEight, the parent company of Koprol, hosted this month's Jakarta.rb on Saturday, May 23, 2009. Several people, including top developers from Detikcom, came and shared various topics in this monthly Indonesian Ruby developers gathering.

Rafeequl started with a presentation on Yahoo! Mobile platform and his experience integrating it with Ruby on Rails. And then Arie Keren from Detikcom presented Scrum, an interesting project management technique.

vcool ariekeren
Rafeequl & Arie Keren

We also had some pizza and compared inside information between Koprol dan Detikcom such as its work environment and direction of innovation. You're all welcomed to join when we host another one in the future.

id-ruby at skyeight
Jakarta.rb at SkyEight (May 2009)

Detikcom
Jakarta.rb at Detikcom (April 2009)

Koprol in Femina! All the ladies, let’s Koprol

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

FeminaFemina is one of the most circulated magazine in the country. So we're pretty stoked that Koprol is profiled in this week's issue (23-29 May 2009), along with Twitter and Plurk in a feature on Microblogging.

The 3-page article explained the worldwide rise of Twitter, the dominance of Plurk in Indonesia, and introduced Koprol as the local newcomer. There's also a nice testimony from Ndoro Kakung and Kappachan!

Femina: Microblogging

We'd probably correct some details about Koprol. Like that we've opened to public earlier this week instead of later this year; that we support more than 30 cities instead of just 4 cities; or that we're not just a microblog but actually a whole social network with comments, messaging, friend lists, photos, places, maps, reviews, etc, but hey...

The important thing is that Koprol is mentioned in the most mainstream women's magazine. So we hope all the ladies and their moms and grandma will soon join Koprol!

Thanks, @jolly! :D

Koprol opens to the public!

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

Koprol goes into public beta today (May 19th, 2009). After testing it under private beta for 3 months and gathering more than 1400 beta testers, we are ready to welcome more people to Indonesia's own mobile social network.

Koprol Logo

What's Koprol?

Koprol is a mobile social networking site that connects you with people around you. Koprol allows you to share your short postings, location, photos, reviews, with your friends and also other people nearby. With Koprol you'll know where your friends are and what's happening around you.

What's the difference?

While most social networks make you stay in front of the computer, Koprol goes with you as you roll around town and find friends to meet in real life.

How it works: Wherever you go, you can 'check in' to a place (like 'Pacific Place' or 'Bintaro'), and type what you are doing (like 'having the best pancakes' or 'shopping for sandals'), then all your friends in Koprol as well as on Facebook know where you are and what you're doing.

What's more fun, you can see who else is in your area and what's happening around you. You can interact with them by writing short comments and maybe even meet up! Also, you can post pictures, write restaurant reviews, view the map, all from your mobile phone. Koprol is very easy to use, works on any phone browser and doesn't require GPS.

Koprol is designed for Indonesian cities. We started with Jakarta and expanding to other cities and regions based on real usage, like  Bali, Bandung, Surabaya, Surakarta, Sidoarjo, Yogyakarta, Semarang, Surakarta, Bengkulu, Medan, Banda Aceh, Palembang, Makassar, Balikpapan, Cirebon, Papua, Singapore, Houston, Indianapolis.

Koprol public beta

Beta

During this public beta phase, we will regularly add new features. We are already working on features like BlackBerry application, find restaurants nearby, find friends in the map, etc. But what excites us is the positive feedback we've got saying Koprol is easy to use and goes well with people's daily activities. Everywhere you go, you can share recommendations on dining and shopping from local people through Koprol.

So please try it out now at koprol.com and send us your feedback :)

Koprol was founded by SkyEight, a software company based in Kebayoran Baru, and Tulakom, a web design service.

Yahoo! Mobile Developer Awards: Koprol’s Rafeequl wins 1st place!

Sunday, May 17th, 2009

A proud day for Koprol. Our very own Rafeequl Rahman aka. vcool won the $20,000 grand prize at the first YMDA in Indonesia, yesterday (May 16th, 2009) at Plaza Senayan.

Yahoo Mobile Developer Awards

YMDA is Yahoo!'s effort to promote their mobile application platform. They invited developers to compete in 5 categories by building a Yahoo! mobile application for 5 award sponsors. Winner of each category gets $10,000. Then the judges select one of those 5 winners as 'Best in Show' to receive another $10,000. Rafeequl, who entered alone, won the whole thing over teams of Indonesia's best developers.

Lapangan HijauThe application Rafeeq developed, called Lapangan Hijau, allows people to follow the national soccer league from their mobile phones. It provides schedule, live scores, even SMS reminders and account connection to Facebook.

By his own admission, Rafeeq did not expect to be named as winner at all. He came to the final event just to meet other contestants and to see who would win. He didn't know how he won, but based on what an insider told him, the judges saw the 'passion' in his craft. And yes, Rafeeq did design Lapangan Hijau based on his own needs as an avid soccer fan.

Rafeeq credited his experience working at SkyEight and developing Koprol to be very helpful. He got familiar with Ruby on Rails, JavaScript frameworks, and plugins while developing Koprol. In fact, he built Lapangan Hijau with Ruby on Rails. He also thanks all his Koprol friends for inspiring and supporting him. From us here at Koprol, we can testify that Rafeeq is a very humble genius and we couldn't be prouder. Go vcool! :D

Related news:

Which of these 5 new features caused Koprol traffic to skyrocket?

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

Koprol Stats

As you can see in the chart above, yesterday our traffic spiked dramatically. Let's see which of our new features caused our unique visitors to multiply:

Could it be the Auto Check-in?

This is a neat feature, especially when you're on mobile. You can make a post that at the same time checks you in to a place. To do this, start your post with the name of your Favorite between hash characters and follow with your message. For example:

#my campus# going to class!

This checks you in the place that you favorited as 'my campus' and the post will be put in that place. This shortcut feature made it that much easier for people to post right away upon arriving. People have been using it and calling it 'jumper', 'teleport', 'zap!', all sorts of nicknames.

Could it be the Messages?

DM is here! Now you can send direct messages by starting a post with 'to:' followed by the recipient's username. You can also send a message to a set of friends which we call 'entourage', by starting a post with 'ent:' followed by the entourage name. You can create entourage by going to Friends > Entourage. This caused people to send private stuff among their friends that they don't usually share in public.

Koprol navigation

Could it be the new navigation?

With the new Messages feature, we restructured the navigation. We combined 'Commented' and 'Mentioned' into 'Me & My Friends' and put the Unread link in front. Now you don't have to go to Commented then click Unread, because you can click Unread right from the homepage. This easier access caused people to keep on replying each other and made conversations longer than usual.

Could it be the new mobile features?

We added stuff that wasn't on mobile before, like Alerts so you can approve friends on the go, People search, plus like in the full site the navigation is now simpler with 'Unread' more exposed. More fun on mobile mean more reason to check back while on the road.

Could it be the Email notifications?

This must be it. Now people are notified by email when their friends find them on Koprol. This is a common feature, but we just implemented it and so most members just realized that apparently lots of their friends are already on Koprol. Now that they found each other, it's much more fun to keep testing this beta product.

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So more of our 1300 beta testers are now active on Koprol. We can't wait to show you more stuff that are being prepared in our kitchen right now. Meanwhile have you seen our public homepage design for next week? It was leaked by Daily Social ;)

djakarta! magazine: MengKoprolkan Jakarta

Monday, May 11th, 2009

djakarta! MengKoprolkan Jakarta

Double yay! Koprol was profiled twice by djakarta! magazine in their 'digital relationship' edition (No. 199, 21 April 2009). One is a full-page exclusive interview in their "One of Us" section, and the other is in the "Weh Weh Weh" section along with other cool sites.

You can still find a copy at your nearest coffee shop. Go get 'em!

Thank you, @diniwiradinata & @tiarakizza :D

14 Blog Reviews of Koprol

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

Blogs

Sure we've made it to the press, but what do bloggers think about Koprol? We searched the blogosphere and this is what some of our beta testers had to say about Koprol:

1. Daily Social: "Saya sempat mencobanya dan langsung kagum"

Di Koprol ini, anda bisa check-in di lokasi tertentu (mis:Klender) lalu anda bisa melakukan posting status dan posting foto di lokasi anda tersebut. Yang menarik adalah melalui Koprol ini, anda dapat melihat siapa saja pengguna koprol yang juga sedang check-in di daerah yang sama dengan anda, sisanya ya terserah anda

2. Media Ide: "mengambil apa yang bagus dan mengadaptasinya"

Dari sisi desain, Koprol sungguh menarik. Unsur desain tetap menjadi hal utama untuk menarik pengunjung untuk betah mencoba-coba. Sesuatu yang tidak berhasil didapat oleh layanan microblog Ngecap buatan Detik. Terus terang, dulu begitu mencoba Ngecap, langsung malas, karena desainnya tidak menarik sama sekali.

3. Alderina: "Sudah lama banget aku pengen ada layanan model gini"

Koprol.com sungguh membanggakan. Itu ya gabungan dari Brightkite, Twitter dan Plurk. Brigthkite dari sistem check in. Twitter dari sistem update status. Plurk dari sistem komentar. Sudah lama banget aku pengen ada layanan model gini. Terutama karena iri sama temen-temen yang hidup di luar negeri terus mudah sekali rasanya update lokasi pake brightkite. Koprol membanggakan karena yang bikin aseli anak Indonesia

4.  Raiderhost: "layanan lifestreaming ini ternyata menyenangkan"

Walaupun masih dalam tahap beta layanan lifestreaming ini ternyata menyenangkan. Terutama dari segi design tampilan web yang interaktif dan user friendly jika dibanding dengan layanan microblogging yang pernah saya ikuti sebelumnya.

5. Cempluk: "mampu menarik perhatian pengguna internet"

Berkat kerja kerasnya dan tim, maka jejaring sosialmade in Indonesia ini mampu menarik perhatian pengguna internet di Indonesia. Pengguna bisa melakukan posting status, berkirim komentar, berbagi foto dan video, dan bisa melihat percakapan antar Koprol pada lokasi yang sama.

6. Dhodie: "koprol bisa jadi sarana kopdar yang lebih spontan"

Koprol punya peluang yang cerah untuk dicintai blogger, plurker atau twitter yang ingin mencoba mikroblog buatan anak-anak bangsa. Apalagi buat user yang aktivitas sehari-harinya senantiasa mobile dan berhubungan dengan banyak orang, koprol bisa jadi sarana kopdar yang lebih spontan dan tidak terduga.

7. Sagad: "langkah yang diambil udah bagus banget"

Baru aja ngerasain design barunya Facebook, dan bisa dibilang sama dengan design lamanya Koprol, salut untuk temen2 yang di koprol dalam mendesign halaman homenya, berarti langkah yang diambil udah bagus banget, terbukti dengan langkah yang diambil Facebook ternyata konsep penampilannya sama denganKoprol, dengan feature yang berbeda tentunya

8. Mbot: "bisa nongkrong di slotnya dan saling nimpalin"

Yang bikin situs ini rada beda dengan para pendahulunya dari luar negeri adalah tersedianya slot-slot lokasi berdasarkan kota-kota di Indonesia. Jadi ada Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, dsb. Jadi buat para penduduk kota tersebut bisa nongkrong di slotnya dan saling nimpalin nggak penting dengan posting2 pendek.

9. Didut: "berinteraksi berdasarkan lokasi dimana kita tinggal"

Bedanya dengan Plurk dan Twitter adalah kita bisa berinteraksi berdasarkan lokasi dimana kita tinggal, contohnya Semarang. Selain itu bentuk tampilannya yang sederhana dan mudah untuk digunakan menjadi daya tarik yang lain. Mari kita ramaikan Semarang !!

10. Navinot: "Jangan menyesal kalau ketinggalan momen ya"

Indeed, koprol mungkin tidak akan bisa memuaskan setiap orang. Beberapa mungkin bilang it’s just another microblogging. Tapi time will tellkarena Koprol punya karakteristik tersendiri. Seiring dengan bertambahnya pengguna plus inovasi dan strategi Koprol, masa depan Koprol akan terungkap perlahan.

11. Adi WP: "keunggulan koprol dibanding twitter dan plurk"

jika sudah menemukan tempat/posisi kita berada, lalu klik check-in maka terlihatlah siapa saja yang baru check-in di PIM. Ada google mapsnya pula. Wuih… buat yang belum tau PIM ada bisa langsung ke TKP karena bisa liat peta dan semoga ga nyasar lagi

12. Neutrino: "oh saya lebih menyukai koprol daripada plurk"

oh saya lebih menyukai koprol daripada plurk karena, secara teknis koprol teroptimasi dg baik untuk versi m (mobile/musafir/whatever). berbeda dg plurk m yg stream unreadnya berantakan, sejak lama, dan nggak diperbaiki. informasi lokasi di koprol juga saya pikir adalah feature yg patoet dipoedjiken, hihi

13. Ramadoni: "ide untuk mengadaptasi ini bisa dikatakan brilian"

...layak untuk dicoba bagi para pembaca yang sangat hobby microblogging, karena produk lokal ini memadukan Plurk (fitur komentar dan kirim-kirim gambar), Twitter (design minimalis namun elegan), dan Brightkite (penunjuk lokasi keberadaan sang user) belum lagi di koprol.com ini juga ada fitur tambahan lho, yaitu kita bisa memberikan ulasan mengenai tempat yang kita kunjungi saat itu.

14. Kappachan: "gue bakal ngira Koprol ini produk luar negeri"

Waktu saya ditanya, "Kap, menurut lu Koprol itu gimana?"
Saya jawab: "Kalo tadi mas Satya ga bilang kalo dia itu salah satu pendiri Koprol, gue bakal ngira Koprol ini produk luar negeri."
Hahaha, emang sih ada yang bilang saya lebay, tapi serius buat saya. Kesan pertama yang saya liat itu, "AJIB, LAYOUTNYA CLING NIAN."

Thank you, guys! We're truly overwhelmed :)