On BlackBerries and the Facebook Factor

Moms waiting to pick up their kids to school, teenagers hanging out with friends in a cafe, drivers waiting for their masters to finish work, businessmen in office elevators. What do they all have in common?

You would be surprised to know that Facebook and the BlackBerry are the two common denominators that brought these diverse groups together in Jakarta.

“If my maid sends a friend request to my Facebook account, should I accept?” asks Adjie, a tax advisor for an oil and gas company, to a group of friends recently. Laughter was what he got for an answer, but the problem is real enough.

Observe Faizal, since his in-laws registered to Facebook and added him as a connection, he no longer dares to make wild comments on this status, or post photos that would depict him other than a loving husband and father.

Three years ago all this would have been unthinkable. Today, it is not uncommon to see stay-at-home moms updating their facebook status on her BlackBerry Curve 8900.

Facebook has been touted to sparking the trend for reunions in Indonesia, and especially Jakarta. Old school friends connect, share stories, photographs, and organize meet-ups all because of the social networking site. It has also, undoubtedly, become one of the driving forces behind the popularity and ubiquity of the BlackBerry in Jakarta.

BlackBerries are nothing new, even in Indonesia. It was first introduced here in December 2004 by telecommunication operator Indosat and Starhub (Source) targeting the business executive market.

“BlackBerry is already the ‘must-have’ business tool for CEOs, executives, managers, employees and celebrities around the globe,” then Indosat Cellular Marketing Director, Hasnul Suhaimi, said in a press release dated Dec. 2, 2004. “We expect BlackBerry will be very popular with Indonesian companies and individuals, and will provide them with substantial productivity gains.”

But its exponential growth only started several years ago when its maker – Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM) – introduced popular instant messaging Yahoo! Messenger in 2005 (Source), then Facebook in 2007 (Source). With only 2 million users on its 20th anniversary in 2004 (Source) – which it doubled the following year – RIM now boasts a strong 28.5 million subscribers worldwide (Source).

In Indonesia, BlackBerry users have increased more than 500% within the past year. With 300 to 400,000 users to date, BlackBerry users is expected to reach more than 1 million people by the end of the year (Source).

Now, BlackBerry services are not only available to post-paid mobile phone customers, but also to pre-paid customers. And further increasing its customer base in Indonesia, RIM reportedly will soon introduce the service to CDMA customers as well.

Computer whizzes zip around PCs

The Jakarta Post, Thursday, June 7, 2006

There was plenty of time to go, but while other contestants were still struggling to finish assembling their computers, 21-year-old Pinta Rame breathed a sigh of relief as he noticed his finishing time of five minutes 38 seconds.

“The front panel is what makes it difficult, each casing has different panels and you have to know that to be able to assemble the components quickly,” the Gunadarma student from the class of 2002 told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

Some 37 students from various universities across Greater Jakarta competed for the best time Tuesday at the computer assembling competition, which was organized by Gunadarma University’s computer technology student group and the Gunadarma Hardware Computer Club.

Coming from universities such as the Prof. Dr. Hamka Muhammadiyah University, the Universitas Islam 45 (Unisma) Bekasi, the Institute of Social and Political Sciences (IISIP), Bina Sarana Informatika and the State Islamic University, the competitors will vie for a total of Rp 10 million (about US$1,077) in prizes.

“We’re going to take 10 people with the best times and get them to compete again tomorrow. From those 10, five people with the fastest times will win prizes,” committee chairman Tampan Nurul Akbar said.

Each contestant has 15 minutes to assemble components such as the computer’s random access memory (RAM), hard disk, CD-ROM and cables.

Pinta said that lots of practice was the key to achieving a fast assembling time.

“It took me two days to practice the best position for holding a screwdriver so I could assemble components quickly”.

Lack of practice caused Syafiq Said, a contestant from the School of Management, Information and Technology and Computers (Stimik) Perbanas, to be disqualified from the competition for going beyond the allotted time.

Although he was no stranger at assembling his own computer components, Syafiq said that it was more difficult when he had to race against time.

“There wasn’t time to practice connecting the small wires, which proved the most difficult to do,” he told the Post, expressing his disappointment.

“Assembling PCs has become a basic skill of students, especially those studying computer systems,” Ati Harmoni, deputy dean at Gunadarma University’s School of Computer Sciences and Information Technology, said.

She said the university had established itself as one of the country’s best schools for computer science and IT since 1981, when it was still a school for IT and computer sciences.

“Competitions like this have become routine events for student organizations, and we, the faculty, will always support such activities,” Ati said.