AmanzNetwork CEO Ikhwan Nazri. Photo taken from his blog.
On May 3, Ikhwan Nazri, who runs community blog OfficeKami and startup WeddingKami (a web-based wedding service), became the new CEO of AmanzNetwork, a Malaysian company that counts several tech sites under its network. The network publishes exclusively in Malay, the national language, which is used by the country’s population of 27 million.
AmanzNetwork was first started by Aman Firdaus under the name Amanz.net back in June 2005, but it was essentially a one-man blog. At the moment there’s only one full time writer, Aman, who is helped by several part-time and guest contributors.
The sites on the AmanzNetwork are Amanz.my, which covers general tech news;gajet.my, which covers gadget news; komputer.my, which covers hardware news, and linuxmalaya.com, which covers Linux and open-source news.
We caught up with Ikhwan to get his thoughts on his new role, as well as the burgeoning tech-blogging scene in Southeast Asia.
What’s your responsibility now as CEO? Do you have any immediate plans for the company’s future?
My job now is to further enhance what Amanz Network offers. One of (the) immediate plans is to multiply the delivery medium; at the moment, the information and content are just blogposts, and I’m looking at creating videocasts ala Diggnation, in BM (Bahasa Melayu, or Malay language). There would be no changes to be done as far as the editorial direction is concerned, but we might be creating a new blog for interesting and niche topics that are still related to technology or multimedia, with the hope of getting more visitors. The delivery medium for these new blogs would still be in BM.
As for funding, we’re open to it, and ever since the announcement, a few opportunities have popped up.
Recently there’s been a trend of websites covering technology popping in Southeast Asia. What do you think the prospects are for these sites in gaining readers and being monetized?
There’s indeed a huge potential for tech-based website in Southeast Asia. One of the key factors is our market; our readers seem much more connected. Indonesia has proven that they can easily break into the trending topics on Twitter. There’s a lot of digital natives around here that consume a lot of data from Facebook and tweet a lot.
What’s the readership like for Amanz now?
Generally AmanzNetwork readers are those aged between 17 – 35, and are interested to know tech news of the day. Most of our readers are male, and we get about 5,000 readers a day, not including RSS readers
What’s the reasoning behind producing a Malay-language techblog as opposed to an English-language one?
We want to cater to the non-urban crowd, those who aren’t familiar with the English language. I know that the government has taken the initiative to encourage the use of English (especially in science and maths in national schools). But where tech news is concerned, there’s indeed a language barrier because tech isn’t being learned at school – science and maths, yes, but that’s not tech.
That’s where AmanzNetwork comes in, to reduce the language gap between the technews and getting people to read and accept it. The other reason is that there are many tech blogs in English, and we’re filling the gap for various groups in this multi-lingual, multi-cultural country.
What are your thoughts on the Malaysian techspace – do you think there’s enough buzz and enthusiasm here to sustain a tech blog like Amanz?
The Malaysian techspace is definitely picking up; we can see how exciting the scene becomes when bigger companies open a local branch, and are more open to hiring Malaysian talent.
How will your new role affect your other projects with WeddingKami and OfficeKami? Weddingkami is a seasonal thing where I’ll only get superbusy during the wedding season. Officekami is just something that can be done any time. This new role as CEO enables me to learn on how to grow talent and in the same time, contribute even bigger things to the community. I feel like I’m playing Command & Conquer – but conquer what you may ask, let’s hold that answer for next year.
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