Social Media in Bali, Indonesia

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Results of a search for social media related sites from Bali, Indonesia

Having just finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, the last section of which (“love”) is set on the beautiful island of Bali, Indonesia, only a few hours north of where I live, I have been relishing in the past couple of days some memories of Bali, where I have spent some very happy and also educational times.

That in turn led me to wonder about the state of play with social media in Bali today, and then in Indonesia generally.

So I did some searching (I have only a few words and phrases of Bahasa Indonesia but with the help of Google Translator I can usually figure out what sites in the language are generally about).

On Facebook a simple search <Bali> produced , not surprisingly, the BALI page, with over 51,000 “likes”.  The Info section provides only a link to a blog, Bali Community, completely in Bahasa Indonesia, with basic tourist type information and an acknowledgement of content – including a table of Governors from 1950 to the present) from Wikipedia. The posts on the Wall section of the Facebook page are a mixture of advertisements for houses for sale and hotel offerings, with some fleeting comments about Bali, but not much sign of conversation.

Another Bali-focused page on Facebook has more than 120,000 “likes”, very little information on the Info section (a couple of links only), very few contributions on the Wall, but over 1,600 photos.

I found also the Bali Blog (part of the BootsnAll travel sites), mainly a guide to hotels and other accommodation and with actual posts as well as ads.

Another site, Bali News, discovered via Google, looked promising at first glance, but disappointed on closer examination. The claim on the About page is ambitious and full of promise for anyone interested in Bali:

Launched in February 2008, BaliNews.web.id is the interface for the latest web-buzz on Bali, a single web page that encapsulates up-to-the-minute headlines from the most popular sites on the internet having to do with the keyword “Bali“.

What I found was a page with syndicated links from:

• the Bali Blog mentioned above)
• the Bali Discovery Tours site (dominated, not surprisingly, by advertisements for tours and accommodation), and
• the Bali Travel News blogspot site (a few posts from January and one from July but nothing more recent).

Which I guess fulfilled the promise, but I found it less than exciting.

Best till last

Just when I was getting somewhat disheartened in this search, I revisited and took a closer look at a site I found yesterday, that for water&stone, described as “a full service digital agency”, with its offices in the Kerobokan area – that is, actually in Bali in a findable, physical location, with telephone number, etc. Listed services include web design, print design, search marketing and social media marketing.  They are on Twitter and designed the elegant and functional site for Bali’s prestigious and rapidly growing Ubud Writers and Readers Festival.

My search for social media relevant sites in Bali took me into searching on Indonesia more generally and I will post soon about what I found on the broader front.

In the meantime, I would love to hear about other Bali-related sites which can illustrate the state of the social media landscape in that island of gorgeous landscapes.

Image credit: Bali Statue by Erik K. Veland, via Flickr – Creative Commons