1. Jakarta is leading Instagram Story tags – globally

Jakarta is the most geo-tagged city on Instagram Story, demonstrating the huge social media engagement in this thriving city.
Two years and four months ago Instagram officially launched its Stories feature. Initially criticized as a Snapchat rip-off, it soon overtook Snap Inc. in such a manner that they even stopped releasing their engagement data. Jakarta was an early indicator of this rise. Already in mid-2017 Vogue reported the city’s skyrocketing engagement.

2. Tech startups reigning over Asia’s digital development

Indonesia is an archipelago with well-known flora and fauna, though recently more and more unicorns have been spotted. Indonesia is home to more than five mostly-tech startups worth $1 billion or more, or that will be by 2019.
Traveloka (travel), Tokopedia, JD.id, Bukalapak (e-commerce market place) and Go-jek (transportation) are just the forerunners of many more that will follow.
Indonesia’s tech and app industry is developing fast and the West Jakarta tech district, Slipi, gets called ‘Slipicon Valley’ for good reason as well as for humour.
The infrastructure and investment environments are shifting more and more into pole position, and entering Indonesia’s digital economy is now well and truly worth it.
As Indonesia’s Minister of Communication and Information Technology said, reported by Reuters, “In ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) there are seven unicorns and, out of seven, four are from Indonesia”.

3. Regional digital growth rates

The amount of active social media users in Indonesia grew by 23%, or 23 million people, from 2017 to 2018, and during 2018, growth in the number of internet users peaked. Also, 2 million people went from using mainly their mobile phone for social media, to using only their mobile phone. Furthermore, McKinsey expects the e-commerce market in Indonesia to reach USD $55-$65 billion in total trade by 2022. Mainly responsible for this growth is one particular aspect of Indonesia: its people, who love to engage, to try new things and to grow. One could look at Indonsia as a test site for the whole of Asia, or even the world.

4. Credit: Hootsuite/We are Social

The space is ‘merah putih’
Though growth in the number of people using only mobile internet was small from January 2017 to January 2018, it is now set to grow massively.
Why? In August 2018 Elon Musk’s Space X Falcon 9 lifted a new communications satellite into the sky. It is called ‘Merah Putih’ by the state-owned telecommunications market leader Telkomsel, symbolizing the red and white colors of the Indonesian flag. It carries new broadband service technology that will support Indonesia’s digital growth even further.

Credit: Space X
By FAN