Yahoo Celebrates Indonesian Independence Day with #Indonesia17

If you are following the Yahoo Indonesia Twitter account (@Yahoo_ID) or if you love to browse the Yahoo homepage, you might have come across #Indonesia17 recently. There are two days left before Independence Day, and #Indonesia17 is Yahoo’s way of celebrating the occasion online.

To learn more about the initiative, I spoke with Dellawati Wijaya, the community manager at Yahoo Indonesia.

1. What is #Indonesia17?

Yahoo has launched ID 17 – the first such campaign for Yahoo Indonesia that will recognize the valuable contributions of eight distinguished Indonesians in various fields across eight categories: language and journalism, art and culture, sports, business, green, internet, science, and education.

Inspired by and in reference to August 17, Indonesia’s National Day, the campaign is aimed at nurturing the pride of Indonesians and fellow residents by acknowledging the tireless service each of the leaders in the respective categories in the country over the last year.

Tied to the theme of nationalism and Ramadan, we are celebrating our Independence Day together with our audience and breaking fast along with them for Ramadan – we will do this on the night before (August 16) as this year we are celebrating together with Ramadan. We are planning to do community offline meet-ups (breaking fast) together in 30 different locations, and 25 different cities (17+). We are picking places with wifi Internet connections so that we can do Yahoo Messenger conference/video chat. We are confident that we can do this again, [building on] last year’s success story (celebrating breaking fast together with 500+ Koprollers , in 16 different cities). Coverage of that can be found here.

2. After the successful Kopfest (Koprol Festival), what is your expectation this time? What is the definition of success for this event?

Yahoo Indonesia expects to engage our community in different cities, not only those in big cities like Jakarta, Bandung, or Surabaya; we are trying to reach out to second tier cities and our audience in the smaller cities and remote areas across the nation. We want to integrate communities across Indonesia, to be a part of the overall Indonesian fabric.

The definition of the success is the participation of the audiences, their commitment and willingness to organize a set of activities in their city.

The willingness to meet [and interact with] peers offline showcases the level of engagement by various communities and marks the success of the event for Yahoo.

3. In a short span of time, Yahoo Indonesia has gained people’s attention again and again. Is there some ‘secret’ to engaging the community?

There is no single recipe for the success behind this; support from our editorial, audience and social community team – as well as good collaboration with the product team – has made this happen.

4. How can Yahoo Indonesia benefit from the attention the country is getting these days?

Yahoo is investing in growth in emerging markets and capturing the next wave of new-to-net users during a time of rapid expansion. [We] will continue to invest in leading technologies and the Indonesian community to deliver the best value proposition to our customers and be at the forefront of innovation. This is part of the Yahoo vision . . . with a focus on comprehensive and personally relevant internet experiences. The investments are in content, communities and the Yahoo brand in Indonesia.