Koprol to invade the Philippines

After the acquisition, Koprol has made an astounding progress with their location based social network service in Indonesia. Monetization aside, Koprol has grow their company under Yahoo's flagship with currently more than 1 million users and the biggest local social network  in Indonesia.

And that being said, It's just common sense for Koprol to explore even more and assessing the possibility to go abroad to foreign country where Yahoo! still have a strong connection and a good brand image as an internet community company. So based on what we've heard from a close source, Koprol is currently probing Philippines as their next target to deploy their service. But our source also state that, Yahoo-Koprol is clueless about how they should start to penetrate the country with almost 30 million people online. Our source also said that it is most likely that the Philippino version of Koprol will have a new name, more Yahoo-ish, as our source put it.

Yahoo has been active in Philippines for quite a while, so they should know what they're supposed to do right? Nope. Apparently Yahoo's activity in PH is not as active as they do in Indonesia, giving them a hard time to understand the market other that the fact that everyone is already using Foursquare there. In Indonesia, Koprol is local and exist before 4sq. In Philippines, Koprol is NOT local and comes after the raising popularity of 4sq. It's a tough deal for Yahoo!-Koprol, but it makes total sense.

So i asked Satya Witoelar from Koprol about this rumor, and he said that Koprol users are already growing in Philippine so it comes naturally for Koprol to do something about the country. Both Philippines and Indonesia have a few key things in common. First, Yahoo is big in both countries. Second, both countries have a huge social media audience on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. Third, the mobile adoption is INSANE in both countries. And last, none of the other big internet players other than Yahoo! had done anything significant with both countries. Both countries have a good future in terms of mobile and internet adoption, and even though the culture is very different, it's easier to penetrate Philippines rather than countries like Malaysia, Thailand or Vietnam.