Quora’s traffic spike spills over to Indonesia

In the last few weeks, sign-ups at hot Q&A site Quora, has skyrocketed in the US, and it has spilled over in Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia. While the reason for the overall rise is clear (it was heavily featured on TechCrunch, CNN, and Scoble’s blog), the cause for its sudden popularity among Indonesians is still unclear.

Some time on Wednesday afternoon when the rest of Twitter were still mesmerized by the #lessambitiousmovies meme, Indonesians began to talk about Quora massively. Invitation requests were filling up timelines and a local meme developed very quickly as the name Quora was easily turned into Bahasa Indonesia puns.

A number of people had mentioned on Twitter that their inboxes had become flooded by Quora follower notices in less than three hours, including myself. By midnight, I had gained in excess of 250% more followers; all except five were from Indonesia.

In no time at all, numerous Bahasa Indonesia questions on Quora had popped up against the site’s monoglot policy which states that questions on the site are to be asked in English. Many or perhaps, all of these, have either been rewritten in English or banished within hours. There are still plenty of comments and answers to questions relating to Indonesia written in Indonesian.

We all know how rapidly Indonesians can adopt social media but will Quora be as warmly and lovingly accepted? A quick survey among Indonesia’s digerati point to the negative.

Yahoo! Indonesia Country Editor Budi Putra is pessimistic. He says, “I think Quora will end up like FriendFeed in Indonesia. Praised by all Silicon Valley pundits but nobody uses it here.”

Another Yahoo! staffer, Abang Edwin, shares the sentiment. He thinks it’s too complicated for the masses to adopt.

Social media analyst Pitra Satvika thinks the majority will eventually ignore Quora the way they ignore Formspring. Formspring is popular among the younger population but older folks tend to avoid the site, mostly out of the perception that it’s too childish.

TEDx Jakarta volunteer Natalia Turangan offers a much more simplistic though no less valid reason, which is the lack of picture sharing ability. Indonesians love to share photos (look at Instagram) so online services that don’t offer this feature don’t get picked up as quickly or even at all.

Having seen the answers from many Indonesians on Quora, the site doesn’t seem to be a good fit for the average Indonesian user, who mostly offers casual answers and one-liners without offering much insight or rigor.

However, there are a few qualifications to this pessimistic outlook for Quora in Indonesia. If the site gets traction in the mainstream, non-tech crowd, and the developers figure out a way to accommodate non-English language communications, and mobile apps in Bahasa Indonesia become available, only then will it be more likely to gain greater popularity. It’s a long shot for Quora in Indonesia for now.

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