Google+ in Indonesia: A Talk With Two Power Users [INTERVIEW]

We have all read about the rapid growth of Google+, already 25 million users strong and often touted as a potential Facebook or Twitter killer. It is a powerful tool, but how will it fare in Indonesia? As a social media nation, I expect it should do quite well.

Driven by early adopters, the current number one user (in terms of being followed) is +Alderina Gracia with more than 3,500 followers, according to CircleCount. Most casual users are still learning how to use circles and maximize Google+.

In an effort to learn more about how the network is catching on in Indonesia, I interviewed two ‘power’ users: Diki Andeas of ChickenStrip and Enda Nasution from SalingSilang.

Diki Andeas

1. From CircleCount, I saw that you were tops among Indonesia Google+ users in term of ‘followers.’ What’s your trick?

I’m sure that there are more Indonesian users that have more followers because not everyone put their location info in their Google+ profile, and I think Google+ statistics by third parties (like CircleCount) are not fully completed (i.e. they have not crawled all the Google+ users).

There is no trick at all! I use Google+ like other social media, as a place to share and [as a] content distribution channel (in my case, a web comic) that has interactions. If you said that the growth of my Google+ followers is faster (3,000 folowers in three years on Twitter vs 3,000 followers in 3 weeks on Google+) maybe its because of the Google+ euphoria (it’s Google afterall!). I also used what is being talked by people so it can spread quickly through Google+, for example “Facebook vs Google+,” Circle jokes, etc.

2. You also have three thousand followers on Twitter. Are most of your followers also following you on Google+?

I haven’t found any accurate ways to compare my Twitter followers and Google+ followers, but for me as a content producer (web comic) sometimes I do a little research everytime a social media platform is released. In this case, I published several specific contents in Google+ and not every Twitter followers knew there was an update of my comicstrip in Google+. They are still loving it when I posted a week later on Twitter and on the blog.

Circle joke - ChickenStrip by Diki Andeas

3. You own a blog famously followed for its funny chicken strip. Has Google+ affected the traffic? Is traffic from Google+ higher than when you tweet a link?