Koprol gets friendly with Flickr and adds new features

Earlier today Yahoo! announced a slew of new features in Koprol that among other things solidifies the social network's position not only as a Yahoo! property but also in the checkin services scene. Yahoo!'s Indonesian property has been relatively busy at the start of the year having introduced Koprol for Business several weeks ago and currently working on native apps for Android, Bada, and iOS.

Two of the most awaited features introduced today are the ability to post photos to Flickr and to create and add widgets to a blog. Koprol also recently has improved the way venue or location submissions are being handled and added notifications for nearby friends.

Flickr photos Koprol users who are also registered to Flickr can now link their two accounts and authorize Koprol to send photos posted to Koprol straight to their Flickr accounts. This ability pushes Koprol ahead of other social networks or location services as far as photo-sharing is concerned.

Flickr is already an established destination for photo-sharing and has a strong community flavor. With more than 80 communities already formed in Koprol and taking into account a number of photo-oriented communities among those, this will likely boost members' participation and adds a great value to being a member of Koprol.

While comments and messages aren't yet being integrated across the two services, this provides a bridging platform between Koprol and Flickr when it comes to sharing photographs.

WidgetsMany Koprol users are also bloggers and site owners and with the introduction of Koprol for Business, commercial entities are also beginning to embrace Koprol as their communication platform with their customers. With the introduction of embeddable widgets, members can now easily show what they're saying on Koprol on their websites.

Koprol introduced two widgets, a Profile widget and a Place widget. Profile widget is likely going to be more popular with individual members as it shows the most recent Koprol messages by a particular user. Place widget shows messages posted on Koprol near a particular location. This second type is aimed at businesses as it displays check-ins and messages by Koprol users who checked in at or near a venue. This is going to be popular at events.

Ping Score one for the overuse of a name for a notification feature. Ping lets Koprol members receive notifications through email informing them of friends who checked in at the same or nearby location. Off by default, Ping only works for people you follow and can only be activated from the full website. Works better for users who have push notification enabled on their mobile devices. Rumor has it they rejected the name Stalk in favor of Ping.

Location submissionThis update is perhaps the more elaborate of the four. Location submission is arguably one of the most debated issue on any location-based service. While Koprol began with a large number of locations already provided within the system, it can only grow with additional venues or locations added by members.

User generated content generally spirals out of control like the cesspool of venue listings we've seen on Foursquare and Facebook Places. Koprol tries to prevent this by introducing and enforcing Kurators whose task essentially is to police and administer location submissions by the general Koprol population.

Kurators are selected by Koprol's team and up to now are not generally rewarded for their hard work in deciding whether to approve or reject a submission. The submission process itself is rather harsh. If it's rejected by enough Kurators, a venue must be resubmitted with the correct details. Kurators cannot correct or amend a submission with incorrect details. This new update however aims to rectify that.

The new process works in two steps. Kurators first have to decide the validity of a location regardless of its details, then, if there is any correction to be made, they can include those before hitting the "Approve" button.

Members who submit a location can also include a photograph of the location to validate the entry and improve the chances of getting the submission approved.

With these improvements, Koprol is gearing up to be a more mainstream service and is working to address issues before it becomes even more popular. As far as the service goes, it seems ready to go international but it looks like the team is making sure it can stand up properly before learning to fly. Oh and maybe they might want to take a good look at the design too.