Kaskus to Acquire Four New Subsidiaries for Content Development

Kaskus will invest in four startups to support its effort on content production as it wants to stay relevant. The investment process is currently on due diligence stage and to be announced soon.

"We're not a new startup founded only 2-3 years ago. We've sustained and will be standing still. The strategy is to invest in ourselves and subsidiaries. I can't mention any name yet, but it's in progress. There are four startups we want to invest in, they are companies with [business] alignment in Kaskus," Edi Taslim, Kaskus' new CEO, said (4/9).

The fresh investment will increase Kaskus' subsidiaries portfolio. Garasi.id is one of the spin-off, engaged in automotive marketplace and launched in August 2017. It provides a comprehensive solution for online secondhand car sales and closely integrated with Kaskus Forum.

Taslim expects the strategy can work along the ambition to produce original and curated content, whether in a text, photo, or video. Although, the main focus remains to produce UGC (User Generated Content).

"Some new program to be launched, such as video-based program. Furthermore, there will be more live streaming, talk show, and others. Previously, all contents are fully user-generated, now we're going to make original one."

He said the biggest challenge for Kaskus is not to change the business model. The company focus to enhance its services as a community platform and should be able to attract people with similar interests.

Andrew Darwis, Kaskus' Founder added, the users are getting less interested to produce content. Currently, Kaskus Kreator has 11,000 registered users.

"Therefore, we create Kaskus Kreator last year to 'incentivize' creators to write articles and get rewarded by the views they get. Per 1 view is Rp1. Last month, Rp30 million was redeemed to all creators," Darwis explained.

Reducing hoax with AI

Content policies will be improved along with UGC. There will be no space for hate speech, pornography, and other contents violating the law. AI technology will be used by the moderator to filter content.

Darwis continued, in practical, AI machine will cross-check every content Kaskus received by referring it to the trusted media, whether it's a fake news or duplicate. Moderator will process after the result came out.

"The AI is available only for internals, not users. We've been using it since last year, under Mr. On Lee leadership [Kaskus' previous CEO]."

Taslim added, the content policy affirmation is Kaskus' form of anticipation entering this political year. The company wants to moderate conversation to be more positive.

"We've been easy all this time. We want to assure that we won't turn a blind eye for content violation. We're gathering with moderators to direct the conversation to be more positive," he said.

– Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian