Ashlee Betteridge

Yahoo Launches Indonesian Language Version of Meme Microblogging Site

Yahoo has rolled out an Indonesian language version of its new Meme microblogging service this week.

The Indonesian version comes after English, Spanish and Portuguese versions of the site were released. The Washington Post’s Techcrunch blog reported the news on Tuesday.

Meme is spelled as “Mim” on the Indonesian translation of the site.

Yahoo Meme lets users post their own content, including text, photos, videos and links. Users can also repost the content of others with one-click publishing, follow other Meme users and comment on their posts. The site describes itself as “where you share everything you find that’s interesting.”

Meme was launched in May this year, initially only in Brazil.

Some have likened the service to popular microblogging Web site Twitter, even labeling it a clone, but while Twitter only allows posts of 140 characters, Meme messages can be as long as 2,000 characters. The site has also been compared with new wave blogging services such as Tumblr and Posterous.

The decision to chose Indonesian as the fourth language for Meme could be linked to Yahoo’s plan to target Asian markets, where the number of new Internet users is predicted to rise steadily.

During a talk at a conference in Singapore on Tuesday, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said that the company would be focusing on expanding its reach in Asia, including tapping into the growing popularity of mobile web access, technology news site ZDNet reported. During the talk, Bartz noted that the company’s US Internet user base grew 3 percent in the last twelve months, while its non-US user community grew 11 percent.

Bartz said that the company also saw huge potential in the Asian advertising scene, but recognized the need to localize content.

“In Southeast Asia, for instance, we don’t come here with US content. We come here with local content and have local partnerships,” she said, citing the success of Yahoo’s localized news portals in Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore.

This week, Twitter also announced that Indonesian users would be able to access the service using SMS through Axis.

The Indonesian version of Yahoo Meme can be found at http://mim.yahoo.com/, while the English version is at http://meme.yahoo.com/.

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