Jakarta

Indonesia is the leader on the microblogging site Twitter. A report from the capital city of impatience.

Ve Handojo is walking through a shopping centre in Jakarta, past a Louis Vuitton shop. He twitters, “Just because you’re wearing Louis Vuitton trousers doesn’t mean your polo shirt has to be tucked into them.” He knows it’s banal, but it’s less than 140 characters and it’s fun. It is only 10 o’clock when he sits down in a café and twitters, “Those who truly wish to follow their dreams should just sleep longer.”

Indonesia is the country in the world where mobile communication has completely altered the growing middle class. The Southeast Asian country is the world leader in twittering. Approximately 21 percent of all its inhabitants over the age of 15 have an account. In the USA it is only about ten percent. If you walk through Jakarta’s streets or its air-conditioned malls, you will see people everywhere staring at the displays of the mobile phones or typing messages. In the traffic jam-plagued city of 14 million the devices are a pastime. But, mainly they are a way to constantly be in touch with friends.

Film producer Ve Handojo (36) is one of the busiest twitterers. He has about 8,000 followers. Yet the number of his followers is not decisive, but who they are, namely Islam scholars, human rights activists, stars, journalists and an increasing number of politicians. So far, he has written 28,000 “tweets,” sending 50 to 100 every day. “On the one hand, Twitter is my main source of news,” Handojo says. “I get the gossip, arts and political news here the fastest.” He then forwards the news and comments on just about everything. “When I say something negative about politicians, especially, my follower numbers increase.”

Yet in Indonesia Twitter encounters a particularity of the people: it is unusual to do anything on your own. If you travel alone, you will hear sympathetic comments about whether you have no friends. At the same time, the island of Java is one of the most densely populated places on earth with about 1,026 inhabitants per square kilometre.

Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are so successful here in part because for decades the people have been accustomed to not having any secrets from one another. All Javanese are constantly at work on their public presentations and that works best on Twitter and Facebook. These are the two networks that are the most popular.

Another reason for the excessive use is the abundance of devices. “Indonesia has crossed a technological threshold,” business consultant Arif Hasyim tells me. “Hardly anyone in Indonesia had a land line and therefore access to the Internet when it became popular 13 years ago.” But now that everyone can afford a mobile phone and the connections in the cities are good, everyone is using mobile Internet. The telephones capable of it cost only 20 euros and a Blackberry can be purchased for 150 euros.

In 2009 when bombs exploded at the Hotel Ritz Carlton and the Hotel Marriott in Jakarta, the news was spread within seconds via Twitter. That same day, Handojo launched the Twitter campaign IndonesiaUnite, calling on everyone to take a stand against terrorism and Islamism. Hundreds of thousands joined him. The movement was even on the main BBC news.

This openness can be a problem, as famous people have had to learn. The daughter of the former minister of transport recently twittered how the traffic jams in Jakarta were getting on her nerves. Thousands of people responded that her father was to blame for the problem. The father was forced to apologize for his daughter.

The mayor of Jakarta, Fauzi Bowo, uses his Twitter account to get feedback from the population, even though it is mostly negative. “I once invited 45 well-known Twitterers to discuss the city’s problems,” he told Welt Kompakt. It was a way for him to approach the technophile young population. “Sadly, they don’t have the patience for texts longer than 140 characters.”

Ve Handojo feels differently about that. When he is sitting in the café for awhile, he will pull a book out of his pocket to read; at present it’s Marquis de Sade’s Juliette. He also likes to twitter about what he is reading. But, usually a friend will drop by who happens to be in the neighbourhood, like Soelastri. She read on Twitter that he is here and wanted to meet him. She sits down, promptly plugs her Blackberry into one of the outlets that are mounted next to the seats in many of Jakarta’s cafés and lays two more phones next to it. “One is my personal phone,” the 41-year old explains, “the second is for work and the third is just in case one of the other two runs out of power.” Red lights are blinking on two of the devices; apparently there is news. “I’ll check while I’m stuck in traffic or as soon as Ve picks his phone back up.” Anything else would be impolite in Indonesia.