Kaskus: Business and Community Loyalty

Many of you must’ve heard what happened to Kaskus recently, that 5 of their moderators submitted their resignation at the same time, all of the sudden. It happened shortly after the news that Kaskus and GDP Ventures announced their partnership in order to bring Kaskus to the new and higher level.

These two events happening the previous after the latter brings out rumor that the resignation was due to Kaskus’ management refusing to “pay” the voluntary moderators after receiving fund. Andrew Darwis, CTO and founder of Kaskus immediately clarified the news by saying that the resignation of the moderators has nothing to do with the rumor.

Shortly afterward the said moderators release their official statement basically confirming what Andrew stated, that they do not ask for anything financially from Kaskus. The problem was solved quickly but it seems some people used this rumor to ruin Kaskus’ reputation.

Kaskus is a unique community with diverse behavior and culture that is far different from other online community in Indonesia, or perhaps the world. Accessed by millions every day for 11 years after established, Kaskus become online home for many and that makes Kaskus as a separate “culture”. This kind of closeness is what creates total devotion from Kaskusers (Kaskus users), they defend Kaskus and even strike back when crackers attack Kaskus. This behavior defines what and how Kaskus is now. Maintaining such community becomes very difficult when it comes to business and monetizing. Put a wrong ad and thousands of users state their objection almost immediately, and this kind of sensitivity also needs to be treated in special ways.

Many Indonesia startups can learn from this case, on how Kaskus can drive sensitive community and prove that community based website, community can influence even in its business process. Just because we have plenty of members don’t mean that we can come up with any business model that will interrupt member experience in our website.

I mean take Twitter for example. It came up with business model known as “Dick Bar”, displaying trending topics (including paid topic) in Twitter mobile application. And what did they get? Millions of angry and insulting comments sent to CEO Dick Costolo. Twitter was forced to eliminate the veiled advertisement. Regardless, many of other Twitter users also criticized those who refuse Dick Bar, by saying that as Twitter’s loyal users, they certainly wish to see Twitter grow as a business and will support Dick Bar, we’ve been using Twitter for free anyway. Unfortunately, those who opposed are a lot greater in number than those who support.

Okay, i might be a biased, I love Kaskus but I think Kaskus is quite successful in driving its community to stay loyal and build Kaskus’ very own culture. But on the other side Kaskus still leads as a business organization. It will not be easy to find business model without disturbing member experience, but without community you can’t sell and when you can’t sell you’ll find it difficult to grow as an organization.

Disclosure: Kaskus and DailySocial both receive investments from the same company.

Translated by Nita Sellya.