As we all know, the dying social networking site Friendster got acquired by Malaysia-based MOL (Money Online) and now revived as an online gaming portal. After a while, finally MOL decided to enter Indonesian market by establishing a company PT. MOL AccessPortal and apparently has a dedicated man running the country operations since September last year.
Dailysocial have a great discussion with Patrick Setiawan, MOL Indonesia’s Country Manager and we talked about MOL as a company, Friendster, the gaming industry in Indonesia and digital money as a way for platform like Friendster making money from markets like Indonesia.
Check out interview with Patrick below :
Can you give us a bit detail about yourself, your background and how you end up at MOL?
Before joining MOL, I was doing online games publishing. I was lucky enough to see and learn about the growing online game market in this country. The payment business got my attention and after I quit the publishing industry, I met some of my friends from MOL and learned that they were opening an office in Indonesia and the rest is history.
MOL is a global company, how do you see MOL positioned themselves compared to other competitors?
MOL does not position ourselves as competitors to any brands but as potential business partners to grow and provide consumers with more value-added services. We are an internet company which provides an array of services and products, for example, MOL is an electronic payment service provider for online games and payments, whilst Friendster is a platform for social games enthusiasts to meet and interact. MOL has a family of sub products such as MOLPoints, MOL Reload, MOL Cards and MOLPay. Today, MOL has over 600,000 physical payment channels across 75 countries worldwide and handles over 5,000,000 transactions a month.
As a Malaysia-based company, what are the negative and positive impact you can share?
I think I can say that there are more positive than negative. Instead of looking at MOL as a Malaysian-based company, I see MOL as a global company. Having offices in 6 Asian countries and its products being available in many more, as well as Friendster that serves as a social games platform really put MOL in a position where we provide complete solutions to the market. I guess being a foreign newcomer in a new country, there will always be challenges, but MOL is a dynamic company and with the support of the local team, I’m sure MOL will settle very quickly.
You guys bought Friendster not too long ago, what is the future for Friendster you have in plan?
The acquisition and restructuring of Friendster is in line with our commitment in bringing world-class social games whilst providing a social networking platform for our region. Just within a short span of 3 months, Friendster’s social games are proving to be creating deeper engagements and interactions for these young Asian users.
Social games on Friendster are offered free with exclusive in-game items purchasable to enhance the users’ game play. Friendster’s virtual currency, Friendster Coins, has also seen a healthy increase since the site was re-launched.
MOL Global is on the right track to make Friendster a sustainable online business. There are endless possibilities for us to extend our service offering to our users. For example, Friendster has also introduced a free wireless Internet services at popular outlets such as Starbucks, across Malaysia. We will continue to introduce more new channels and integrate more online and social activities in the near future.
It is distinct that Friendster will be a site that allows for more social interaction and focuses on letting people create a viral interaction through online game. Friendster is passionate about improving people’s lives with a one stop platform to enjoy multiple social activities anytime and anywhere.
MOL recently show interest to Indonesian market. Why is that?
The Indonesian online game and internet industry has been growing very rapidly in the last couple of years. This is shown by a number of things: the number of games being launched every year, the growing number of local and global publishers getting into the market, the fast growing of Facebook users (although India has just overtaken the second place from us recently) and how more and more people are starting to make transactions online. MOL saw this as an opportunity to grow its business to a larger global scale, as well as to provide Indonesians with a wider array of content, having owned a vast selection of global MMO contents and also popular social contents like Facebook Credit, Zynga Game Cards and Playfish Cash.
How will you position yourself in Indonesian market and grab their attention?
MOL is proud to say that one of our top products is Facebook Credits and having worked direct with Facebook, MOL is able to offer a very competitive rate of Facebook Credits to the market. We also have our own Facebook App called MOLPoints App that allows users to reload and make purchases of MOL contents right from Facebook to create an enjoyable and user-friendly experience. Furthermore, MOL is also very strong in bringing global contents as options to the Indonesian players.
In general, where do you think this whole “digital money” thing is going in the future? What’s the next big thing?
From past success stories, for example, eBay has shown its success via listing and transaction fees model, whilst Google has made it easy to place and serve ads, even for small SMEs and individuals. Tencent’s (China) model is based on light consumer monetization, whilst others include freemium models like Angry Birds, and the successful subscription model of World of Warcraft, a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG). From that, we are always optimistic about the future of digital currency and products. New developments that we need to take note of are many, but especially NFC (near field communications), cloud computing and the rise of smart-phones.