Does the Philippines need a Koprol?

I’m still amazed at how this Indonesian site, Koprol, could get bought by a global internet giant like Yahoo! but every time I talk people who had some inside knowledge about the deal, it becomes clearer to me.

koprol I think we also need something like Koprol in the Philippines. A lot of people are already using either FourSquare or Gowalla aside from the usual services like Twitter and Facebook but a home-brewed social networking site should give the Philippines some air-time in the global internet scene (like how Indonesia got its 15 minutes of the spotlight with Koprol).

From what a several people told me, Koprol is a fairly new and has about 100,000 users. Might sound like a big number in the Philippines but for a country such as Indonesia that has 227 million people, that’s just 0.04%. Still, it managed to surpass FourSquare in the country and be the number one LBS site used there.

According to a source, Yahoo! bought Koprol for $5PHP 293INR 424EUR 5CNY 36 million in cash. Spare change for Yahoo! but huge payback to the founders/developers of the site. Yahoo! is allegedly planning to roll-out the service across South East Asia, including the Philippines. (My guess is that it will be under a local name.)

I’ve personally met with several independent developers in the past and have seen some of their projects specific to the Philippines. A number of them are promising but because of limited resources and time constraints (they still have day jobs), these projects might not get all the needed attention to see it off.

There’s Sulit, which is already a success story in itself; then there’s TipidPC and probably MunchPunch too (ClicktheCity can transform itself into a more social site) but I think we need something new and fresh — something hip and social — and location-aware. In a way, I think Koprol showed us that there’s still hope for smaller developers to innovate, compete with big players and get the pay-off they deserve.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

28 Comments

Jon says:

15 years ago

If Yahoo is doing this, I suggest they rename it to something else. Mabantot eh. LOL.
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Andre Marcelo-Tanner says:

15 years ago

hip, new, blah, sure its a trend but what someone here should do instead of copying ideas is to make something profitable that works here in the market locally. Yes we can make a foursquare. Will it make any money? Probably not.

Do something that has a good business plan and makes good money and you will be worth getting bought out by Yahoo and many other companies.
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Abe Olandres says:

15 years ago

@andre – Flickr still does not make money for Yahoo! but it’s one of its most prized acquisition.
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Andre Marcelo-Tanner says:

15 years ago

thats called a money hole :)
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Abe Olandres says:

15 years ago

@andre – I call it user-retention cost.

kim tanga says:

15 years ago

Andre is right. At the end of the day, it about monetizing the biz. No wonder Yahoo! is in deep shit.

They don’t know what they are and they can’t monetize.
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Teknisyan says:

15 years ago

Yeah.. large internet company like yahoo.. will worry about the revenue later.. What’s importantbis that people uses their brand/products. classic eample of this youtube being bought by google for atleast 5 billion (someone correct me if I’m wrong), then there’s the broadcast.com that bought again by yahoo for 2 billion from mark cuban… and then there’s twitter though which is rumored as for sale…. these company before being bought by large company does not have revenue generator but has alot of user either visitors or people who actually use their service… sorry in reality.. big company are not just buying the company but the user’ themselves as well.

if Koprol have a few million active users… the price tag would have been much higher.
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Teknisyan says:

15 years ago

My english sux today.. still getting use to this whole mobile internet thingy…
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Leo says:

15 years ago

sounds like kapural… hehe
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mark says:

15 years ago

sounds like Calpol, a Baby & child pain and fever medicine…
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Herce says:

15 years ago

The problem of us coming up with something like this is lack of access. Hosting prices are too expensive here because of bandwidth prices and our lack of regulation in telecom. Koprol is Indonesian because its actually in Indoesia.

You realize that you are advocating a Filipino business idea on an American site Yuga? You are hosted in the US and would be considered a US site by a Yahoo acquisition Team.

That is correct, you choose to host in the US because its so much cheaper than doing it locally. Actually, if you shop, you would find better prices and better connect times to your site from you Filipino visitors in HK.

My point is, successful Internet business arise 1 in a million as the saying goes. For every Koprol, there are 100k+ other Indonesian sites that failed.

How can we hope to have hundred of thousands of Filipino internet entrepreneurs when access costs are so high and poor?

This goes back to your article many months ago on broadband speed. I believe many commentators said something likg they were ok with the low speeds for high prices we have.

I disagreed and said we needed faster, lower cots quality broadband, both in personal and professional markets to catch up with our neighbors.

This is a perfect example of my argument. Think big picture people, not in terms of selfish “ok for me”.
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