Fajar Budiprasetyo, Daniel Armanto, Didit, Pontus Sonnerstedt, and Satya Witoelar celebrate Koprol's millionth user
There was big news last Friday morning about Koprol and it went right under our noses though apparently under Yahoo’s own Smitty’s nose as well. The Indonesia-based social network just hit one million users. That’s one with six zeroes behind it.
By comparison, Twitter took two years to reach one million users while Foursquare too one year, both without having sold the companies but also with extremely strong funding relative to Koprol’s startup days. Two years after Twitter hit that mark, it had 100 million users.
It was only two months ago almost to the day that Koprol notched its 500 millionth user when it ran a promotional campaign on Twitter to celebrate the milestone. Surprisingly there is absolutely nothing to mark the occasion this time (at least none that we know of) apart from a single blog post and a private in-house celebration, unlike a certain US-based network that just had a movie released about it.
The million mark was also celebrated with the news that comScore’s numbers had put Koprol as the number three social network site behind Facebook and Twitter in Indonesia in terms of page views. As the blog entry puts it, “the new kid is playing with the big boys!”
The acquisition by Yahoo in May clearly drove the popularity of Koprol in the country but it was its advertising effort on television, on print, as well as across the web that seriously hit the homeruns for the former startup. From 75,000 users in May to one million by mid November, that’s one hell of a growth and it achieved this just a few weeks short of its two year anniversary which will come in January next year.
For the moment, Koprol’s growth has been driven mostly without apps. The majority of access has been through its mobile site. This allows Koprol to be accessible from just about every kind of mobile device with internet access. It may not be ideal for smartphone users but as it turns out, Opera mini is the most popular way to access Koprol according to co-founder Satya Witoelar.
It has a BlackBerry app but none for iPhone or Android, although fellow co-founder Daniel Armanto said recently that they are currently working on those and hope to have something to announce soon.
He further said that while currently their focus is to release an Android app first, the iPhone app shouldn’t be too far behind. The core of the apps would be the same and the interface would be similar, so he expects that it’s a only matter of making the necessary changes to turn it into an iPhone app.
As Koprol spreads its wings to the rest of the region, Yahoo had sent down one of its product managers from Sunnyvale prior to SparxUp earlier this month to discuss with the Koprol team about expanding beyond the region.
Word is they’re planning to market Koprol to the South American region. As to when the international roll out will happen is still up in the air but with one million users, Koprol surely will be on more people’s radar from now on.
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