The newsmaker of the day: Yahoo!
Posted on June 22, 2011 by Budi Putra in Business, Tech
Turns out today’s tech news is mostly discussing about Yahoo: from the “substantive and encouraging progress” on Alibaba’s ownership; a possible acquisition of the popular online video service Hulu; and even rumor on a possible replacement of Carol Bartz, the CEO.
A plenty of things to do, since the Sunnyvale-based company is expected to have a tougher second half of this year.
Yes, I am leaving Yahoo!
Posted on May 18, 2011 by Budi Putra in Personal
THERE ARE ALWAYS two questions are raised following someone’s departure: Why and where to? The following is my answer and explanations.
Why? I need more freedom to explore my thought and passion.
Where to?
- Basically, I want to return back to my ‘first love’: blogging! I will write to some tech blogs again, and run a blog-based media in Indonesia;
- I will help some startup companies as a consultant/advisor with a half-time basis;
- I will write a book on blogging and social media — yeah, this could be my 6th book!
I joined Yahoo! Southeast Asia for the first time on October 1, 2009 as Country Editor Yahoo! Indonesia. Working and living in Singapore for the first five months, my particular task is to build Indonesian Editorial Team. Returned back to Jakarta on February 2010, I started to hire some team member. At the same time, my fellow Yahoos, Country Manager Pontus Sonnerstedt and Country Head of Sales Brata Rafly, also started to build Sales and Marketing Team.
I am glad that I successfully bring Yahoo! News as one of the most top news sources in Indonesia; launch entertainment channel called Yahoo! Indonesia OMG!; Yahoo! Indonesia Travel and supporting contents for microsites like World Cup Edition, Year In Review 2010, Ramadhan Edition, StyleFactor, Weekend Edition and Paling Indonesia.
On blogging thing, I have engaged some bloggers to write regularly for OMG, News and Travel. Last but not least, I was also credited as someone who lead Yahoo to Koprol’s acquisition last year.
Yahoo! Indonesia Team are growing very fast. From a service office in GKBI Building, then move to another service office in One Pacific Place, SCBD, Purple Team just moved to a new office: Sentral Senayan II. But at the same time, my mission at Yahoo! has accomplished. My last day at Yahoo! Indonesia is June 9.
Now, it’s time for me to move forward (thanks my wife Elvi Susanti for fully supporting my decision!).
A friend of mine told me, “That’s your destiny to be a pioneer! ” Yeah, I’m flattered. But, at the same time, that’s a challenge for me.
Hello blogosphere, here I come!
[Photo credit: Bernard Chaniago]
Yahoo’s maneuver in Southeast Asia
Posted on November 10, 2010 by Budi Putra in Tech
THIS IS A MUST-READ PIECE from TechCrunch about Yahoo’s success in Southeast Asia. Understanding your market, that’s what we learn from Sarah Lacy‘s conversation with Michael ‘Smitty’ Smith, Yahoo‘s Director of Global Inisiatives. That’s an educational piece for those outside of Asia.
Silicon Valley and Wall Street both bash Yahoo a lot these days, but if there’s one place the company has excelled it’s in Asia. Its Alibaba investment alone is one of the best deals made in the Chinese Internet, and Yahoo Japan is propping up even more of Yahoo’s stock price. Yahoo also has local portal strongholds throughout Southeast Asia, including Indonesia where it has also been one of the most aggressive Valley companies – employing more local staff than competitors and even doing the first Valley-acquisition last spring with a location-based services company called Koprol.
[Disclosure: I am working at Yahoo!]
Time is flying. Today is my first anniversary at Yahoo!
Posted on October 1, 2010 by Budi Putra in Personal
October 1st 2009 is one of my milestones. That’s the day I started working at Yahoo! as Country Editor for Indonesia.
Based in Singapore for a couple of months while setting-up Indonesia office from there (thanks to Managing Editor Southeast Asia Alan Soon, Country Manager Indonesia Pontus Sonnerstedt who helped me in that phase), then move back to Indonesia as I have my team in place and office in Pacific Place Jakarta.
What I’ve learned in Year Zero at Yahoo? Content and community are everything! When you have a crowd, you can do what you want: testing new ideas, introducing new products, launching new services or even generating new revenue.
Time is flying. Many things happened since I joining the giant company –especially for Indonesian market: Content localization for Yahoo! News is growing, getting more content partnerships, editors started creating original contents, having more bloggers to write and engaging community and other stake-holders.
I must say that I am arriving at Yahoo! in a very challeging and exciting time. A lot of things to do. I am lucky to have a chance to work with smart people and great technology like Yahoo!
I love Purple!
[Photos: Courtessy of Jimmi Kembaren]
Visiting Yahoo! Indonesia OMG partners
Posted on June 29, 2010 by Budi Putra in Media
I am and my colleague Jimmi Kembaren having business trip in Surabaya, East Java. Yesterday, we visitted AsianPlus office. AsianPlus is a weekly entertaintment tabloid focuses on Korean, Japanese, Chinese celebrities news and gossip. AsianPlus is one of our content partners for Yahoo! Indonesia OMG! – entertainment channel that’s just launched on June 9.
Today, we plan to visit another partner: KapanLagi in Malang. AsianPlus and KapanLagi are the only partners office located outside Jakarta. Other partners including Vivanews, Okezone, Cek & Ricek, Antara and Tempo Interaktif.
OMG (http://omg.yahoo.com) is Yahoo! Entertaintment channel, originally launched on U.S. market. Yahoo! Indonesia OMG! offers entertainment and celebrity news, photos and blogs. For its international celebrity news, Yahoo! Indonesia OMG tries to emphasize on Asian stars news, photos and gossip.
News portals are top online news sources
Posted on March 15, 2010 by Budi Putra in Media
A recent study found that people prefer news portals —like Yahoo News, Google News, AOL — as their main online news sources rather than the online edition of major news outlets like CNN, CBS, and the New York Times.
[via Search Engine Land]
Video: Happy 15th birthday, Yahoo!
Posted on March 2, 2010 by Budi Putra in Tech
Check out this studio jingle for Yahoo!’s 15th anniversary from www.lovejingles.com [via YPH]
Breaking: Yahoo partners with Twitter!
Posted on February 24, 2010 by Budi Putra in Tech
This is Yahoo!’s latest move into social media landscape. You’ll see real-time public Twitter updates on Yahoo! News, Finance, Entertainment as well as Search. Cool.
Not to be left out of the Twitter partnership spree, Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is set to announce a deal with Twitter this evening to integrate the microblogging service across its properties worldwide. Yahoo users will now be able to access their personal Twitter feeds and update their Twitter status on Yahoo sites, including the home page (which already allowed users to edit their status on social networks including MySpace and Facebook). In addition, Yahoo says that all of its properties—including News, Finance, Entertainment and Sports—will soon feature “real-time public Twitter updates.” And like Microsoft’s Bing and Google, Yahoo will also add real-time Twitter results to its search engine.
[via PaidContent | image credit | Disclosure: I'm working at Yahoo!]
Google launching Twitter-killer!
Posted on February 9, 2010 by Budi Putra in Tech
Following the launch of Yahoo’s “status-casting” for its email service back in August 2009, Google will also allow its email users to their update status. Google could announce “the Twitter-killer” as soon as this week, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The prompt reads, “let people know what you’re up to, or share links to photos, videos, and Web pages.” But every time a user updates their status, the previous update disappears into the ether.
The WSJ says the new feature will “allow Gmail users to view a stream of status updates from people they choose to connect with.” It will be tightly integrated with Google’s video-sharing site YouTube and its photo-sharing site Picasa.
[via Business Insider]
Facebook email? No, thanks!
Posted on February 7, 2010 by Budi Putra in Tech
When it comes to the online activity, the following is my daily habit in the morning: checking my emails, Twitter and blog’s Dashboard.
Frankly speaking, even having two email accounts are too many for me. But those [Yahoo! Mail and Gmail] really help in term of personal email management. I am using Yahoo! Mail for all services’ subscriptions and Gmail for self-hosted domain name’s mail. I even often Twitter’s private messages (called DM) to ping some friends.
Getting notice recently that Facebook is now planning to launch its own webmail service, I am a bit surprised. Do we need a new [web-based] email? Oh wait. Might be Facebook is not targeting user like me. If Facebook is eyeing common users, instead of a user like me, so it does make sense. Why? Because Facebook is becoming less relevant for me. I refuse to even use Facebook for message things.Yahoo, Bing better than Google for #iPad image search reveals
Posted on February 5, 2010 by Budi Putra in Tech
With so much excitement around the device, the disappointing part is that though a week has passed since we saw the first iPad unit, Google Images still has no clue about the existence of this Apple device.
