Twitter announced Monday that it entered a partnership with giant Indonesian carrier Indosat, allowing its 68 million users to use its direct messaging (DM) feature.
Twitters move to lift its 140-character limit in June opened new business opportunities such as the deal it recently struck with Indosat. Twitter has been eyeing the emerging market in Indonesia for quite some time.
According to Venture Beat, Indosat chief of digital Prashant Gokran said the they are the first company to strike a deal with Twitter in the Asia-Pacific region. "We're excited to partner with Twitter... Indosat subscribers spend a lot of time on Twitter, one of the largest social media platforms in Indonesia, and they can now easily purchase out packages with a direct message (which includes SMS, data, and voice)," said Gokran.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Parminder Signh, Twitter's managing director for Southeast Asia, India, North Africa, and the Middle East, said that the company's next phase of growth is Indonesia, which has some 250 million people.
On September 2, Twitter hired a team to develop business in Indonesia to overcome sluggish global growth in users and advertising revenues.
The team in Indonesia will focus on marketing and business development. Their staffs are dedicated on building media partnerships, public policy development, and selling advertising. Signh said hiring staff for the Indonesian team is growing very rapidly. In March, Twitter opened an office in Indonesia.
To take advantage of Twitter's new service, users need to follow Indosat's Twitter account, send a #TwitBuy DM hashtag, and follow an authentication process. One of the major downside of the new service is that users have to use traditional methods of topping up, like running a USSD code using the dial pad, if there is no WiFi around and the user ran out of data.
There are no data yet to show if people in Indonesia will adapt to the new feature. Meanwhile, On Thursday, Twitter shares went up 0.44% at $27.30.
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