Pulkam Makes Use of Waze App to Help Indonesians Return Home

@Pulkam, the Twitter account in which travellers can share their pulkam or mudik experience and discover new places to eat, is making use of the social traffic app Waze to help it in tracking the holiday traffic jams. Although it’s still 29 days (or 28 days if you have a different start time) before Ramadhan is over, the Pulkam team is starting to prepare for the upcoming holiday.

The way you can use Waze’s service is to invite people to use the Waze app, join the “pulkam” group, and then whoever has joined the group will automatically be broadcasting info to the @pulkamMC Twitter account. That Twitter page will act as a data bank which can be organized and retweeted by the main @pulkam account. The best thing is how it creates a map on the web at Waze, so we can see the location of commuters. Founded in 2009, Israel-based Waze has doubled its user numbers to 20 million in the last six months, and has also raised $30 million from Kleiner Perkins and Li Ka-shing. This convinced the team over at Pulkam to make use of the app.

Pinot, one of the Pulkam team members, explains to TiA:

Basically at Pulkam […] we always love to experiment with new online technology that can help people to commute faster and safer. As in previous years, Pulkam will be a community hub that helps commuters and then helps to share any Ramadan activities in their hometown. Three main things that we do is traffic info, travel info, and culinary info.

Social media has been changing our daily activities, and this is just another great example of a neat use of social media – especially in Indonesia. It not only helps commuters during Ramadhan, the busiest time of year for travelling, but also this account helps people to explore local travel destinations and culinary treats. Tech in Asia sends out our best wishes to all of you who celebrate the holy month!

Get the Waze app for BlackBerry, iOS, Android, or Symbian from its homepage.