Vertical social networks, which connect people with similar interests, are gaining a lot of attention nowadays in Indonesia. One example is Stockbit, a social networking community for Indonesian traders and investors.
Many traders and investors currently discuss stocks on Twitter, forums and blogs. However, information is still very much scattered and traders may not able to get the whole picture; it can take quite some effort for them to check all those sources one by one. Stockbit helps to solve that problem by integrating the information into one platform that is light, stable, and real-time.
Stockbit’s easy-to-use interface is one of the main attractions of the service. Users can share ideas or converse using the live feed section, and can get curated information from third-party sources when searching for information on a particular stock. The financial information itself comes from Indonesia Stock Exchange, which serves as the government body for stock exchange in Indonesia. Wellson Lo, the CEO of Stockbit, adds:
Stockbit also helps users [by sending] timely notifications either via email or within the website when a stock company issues an announcement to the Indonesian Stock Exchange. Now, nobody needs to miss out on important corporate information that could potentially move the stock price. Time is money for all players in the stock trading industry.
Stockbit has been running since January of this year and has gained around 2,600 users so far with 700 daily visitors. Wellson admits that the trader market size in Indonesia isn’t that big; there are only 400,000 registered investors in the stock exchange database. Considering that half of those people could well be the older generation of people who don’t use the internet, Stockbit’s current market share might only be about 200,000 people. Despite these challenges, Wellson believes that traders are quite loyal when it comes to using valuable online tools like Stockbit, and there is also the fact that a new generation of tech savvy traders will be potential Stockbit users as they grow up.
Wellson told us that he plans to cooperate with a data provider company to offer a premium subscription model. This will include a complete profile of the company along with its fundamentals, such as stock and market data, that will help users research, analyze and make better investment decisions. He hopes to roll out that feature before the end of this year.
One of Stockbit’s competitors in Indonesia is Idsaham, which has the same news, charts, blogs, and comments features. But personally, I think that Stockbit is one step ahead in terms of the general ease of use. Will that be enough for it to beat out the competition? We’ll have to wait and see.
(Edited by: Charlie Custer and Enricko Lukman)
Stockbit, a Social Network for Indonesian Traders
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