Koprol has been tested since 10 months ago, but in just these last 2 weeks our membership increased by 40%. We didn't do any promoting so we think this was caused by the Yahoo! Open Hack Day, amazing press coverage, mentions in Twitter, mentions in BlackBerry community, and through word of mouth.

More than just new signups, we also saw increase in the stickiness and interactivity. Pageviews increased by 300% and comments increased by 400%. And the best is yet to come!

New Features

Twitter Geotagging

Whaddya know? Twitter finally goes location too! But you can't add geotagging from Twitter yet. You have to use other apps like Koprol. To add location in your tweets, just do these 2 things:

1. On Twitter, go to Account Settings and check 'Enable geotagging'
2. On Koprol, go to Settings > Sharing and connect to Twitter

No Hashtags

You can now crosspost without hashtags! We added an option for you to not include our location hashtags. Just go to Settings > Sharing, then under Twitter select "none". Now your Koprol tweets are clean.

Change Username

Hate that long ugly username you picked? No worries. You can now change your username by going to Settings . Just be careful! All your previous mentions will not link to your new profile page. And other people are allowed to takeover your old username. So think twice.

The best is yet to come

Expect our native BlackBerry app and our full-featured 'business account' to be available for testing in 2 months. Details coming soon.

Kemarin Rama menulis di Daily Social 'Koprol: Jual atau Tidak?'. Berhubung sudah lama tidak diberi kabar, isinya hanya tebakan. Sori banget, Ram! Perkenankan kami menyusulkan fakta:

1. Update

Daily Social: "Koprol belum menambahkan update apapun dalam beberapa bulan terakhir"

Koprol: Tiap bulan ada update, bahkan yang terakhir adalah yang paling berarti.

Kami perbaiki fitur atau bikin yang baru tiap minggu. Lalu di-release paling lama tiap bulan. Release yang terakhir (sehari sebelum Pesta Blogger) justru paling berarti, yaitu Koprol yang awalnya tempat percakapan / conversation, mulai menjadi panduan kota atau social city guide.

Dengan cara rating yang diperbaiki, cara tambah tempat yang dipermudah, search tempat menurut jarak, search tempat menurut rating, dan terutama 'Top Places Nearby' - daftar tempat di sekitar anda berdasarkan penilaian anggota lain, Koprol telah memanfaatkan 'wisdom of the crowd', 'social recommendation', 'crowdsourced hyperlocal directory',  'consumer-generated marketing' atau istilah lain yang sok asik.

Berkat update ini, Koprol makin ramai dan tiap saat ada review yang bermunculan. Mau lihat tempat favorit di sekitar kantor baru Rama? Silakan lihat di sebelah kanan. Urutannya bisa berubah tiap saat!

Update berikutnya? Sedang dikerjakan. Nantikan 2 minggu lagi.

2. Persepsi

Daily Social: "Calon investor bilang they don't know what they're doing"

Koprol: Outsiders are curious about our plans

Kami tidak bisa konfirmasi soal investor, tapi jelas banyak yang penasaran mengenai Koprol dan bukan sekedar sebagai user. Mereka yang sudah jadi beta tester bisa menangkap niat Koprol, bahkan sebelum diterangkan. Tapi mereka yang baru coba Koprol selama 1 menit atau hanya dengar dari pihak kedua atau ketiga umumnya salah sangka, terutama karena Koprol sering dideskripsikan sebagai 'Twitter Indonesia' padahal bukan.

Tapi tenang saja. Maupun selama ini kita sibuk sendiri dengan produk dan komunitas, kita juga mulai melayani orang luar. Tiap pihak yang ingin tahu, apakah marketer, operator, investor, sedang kami temui satu persatu. Sedangkan untuk para penonton lainnya, mungkin kita perlu bikin kampanye 'Koprol bukan sekedar microblog'?

3. Statistik

Daily Social: "Compete.com menunjukkan trend menurun"

Koprol: Google Analytics kami mengatakan jauh sebaliknya

Di atas adalah 2 grafik yang sama persis: monthly unique visitors since April. Lalu kenapa untuk bulan Agustus, Compete bilang jatuh menjadi 400 kemudian 250, sedangkan Google Analytics bilang naik menjadi 6000 lalu 8000 uniques? Karena Koprol tidak dibuka untuk tracker luar seperti Compete, jadi kayaknya Compete hanya hitung halaman login.

Memang, baik 250 maupun 8000 bukan angka besar, tapi yang penting aktivitas naik terus. Ini karena makin banyak anggota merasakan serunya Koprol. Mereka menambah dan menilai tempat tiap hari. Silakan lihat tempat favorit untuk pizza, sushi, soto, bakso, coffee, salon, pancake, dll.

4. Jualan

Daily Social: Jual atau tidak?

Koprol: Tidak!

Nanti dulu dong, Ram. Katanya mau lihat 'killer feature' dulu?

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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.

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

Lots of them has been using Koprol quite regularly, while some are more active than others. Reeeally active. Here are the top 5 and our take on them.

5. Raeku

Rhesya Agustine is in the top 5 for most comments made and comments received. Koprolling mostly from Lippo Village, she can make any post into a long interesting thread, be it about a martabak or a meeting with a girlfriend.

4. Ram

Rama Mamuaya is one of the top 5 posters, commenters, commented and photo uploaders. This is a big honor because actually he's a respected blogger. He's one of the first people to test Koprol, the first ever to blog about Koprol, and he has the most Koprol invitation. No wonder people mistakenly take him as part of Koprol (we don't mind).

3.  Vina

Koprolling mostly from Pejompongan, Adhytia Eka Martha Viana still finds the time to be the 2nd person to make the most posts and comments, even when busy with her Tugas Akhir (final assignment). Good luck, Vina!

2.  Della &  Dienw

Best photos! Della Witz & Dien Wong are both in the top 5 most photo uploaded, while Della is also one of the top reviewers and commenters. We're glad they came to support us at FreSh. We call them Koprol's 'best couple' because on top of being very active, they use Koprol the way we envision it to be - reporting their every movements within the city and sharing photos and tips on food & shopping.

1.  Sharon

Alderina Gracia easily takes our top spot since she is number 1 with the most posts, most comments made, and most comments received! She tops all 900 members despite also active on other microblogs and is actually in Sidoarjo, a city Koprol has not fully supported. She is also very supportive of us up to the point of sometimes defending us from friendly criticism and even brought krupuk (crackers) for the Koprol devteam.

@della, @satya, @sharon, @aadyta at Plaza Senayan

There you have it. Of course, outside of these people, all 900 members have been remarkably helpful. We thank you for your support and for building this community.

Hopefully after we open to public, people will start to realize the strength of our community. That we are not just another microblog for techies, but actually a friendly network of city dwellers and mall hoppers who love to eat, shop and just have fun while rolling around town.