Mark Zuckerberg and JOKOWI go on "Blusukan" make an impromptu field trip - visit to Tanah Abang Market,Indonesia
Mark Zuckerberg Facebook founder and CEO paid a visit to the president-elect and Jakarta
Governor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo at City Hall on Monday morning, to talk about potential cooperation under his upcoming administration.
Jokowi,
who was a successful business man in the furniture business before joining the political
arena in 2005, said that he had asked Zuckerberg to not see Indonesia
as a mere potential market.
“We discussed Facebook users in
Indonesia and how to use Facebook to boost micro economy. He said he was happy and willing to collaborate with the government. There are approximately 70 million FB or Facebook users
in Indonesia, which provide great market potential, But I told him that
[Indonesia] should also benefit [from the platform],” Jokowi told
reporters after the closed-door meeting.
Zuckerberg responded to
Jokowi by saying that Indonesia was among the countries in which his
team would promote the internet.org campaign, a global initiative aimed
at promoting access to affordable Internet services, which he said would
contribute to the local economy in the long run.
“Internet.org is
a global initiative that we’re working on and the goal is to help
everyone in the world get access to affordable Internet services […],
but here are a bunch of different barriers to this.
“What we’re
trying to do through Facebook and internet.org is work with other
organizations to help break down all these barriers -- Facebook as a
company can’t do this by itself. There’s a good opportunity for the
government and telecommunication operators and folks who are building
these services for people to partner together to help connect everyone,”
he said.
The Facebook founder was upbeat that both Facebook and internet.org could contribute to the Indonesian economy.
“When
we think about which countries to focus on with internet.org and
Facebook [we consider] how many people can use the services and also how
much better and stronger the economy can be if everyone’s on the
Internet. Here I think there are 150 million or 200 million people who
don't have access to the Internet and unlocking that can transform the
economy, can help create jobs and help small businesses grow. There’s a
lot of data that suggests that business that use the Internet to
communicate with customers grow twice the speed of small businesses that
don’t use Internet,” he said.
After the brief meeting, Mark Zukerberg was curious what blusukan was like . Jokowi explained to him and thought for a moment and finally Jokowi decided to take Zuckerberg on a blusukan (impromptu visit) to the nearest spot , that's, Blok A market in
Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta.
They arrived at 10:15 a.m. and were exuberantly welcomed by a swarm of journalists and locals.
Zuckerberg
looked relax and excited, smiling the whole time, despite the
overwhelming crowd and presidential detail surrounding the two.
Locals, however, had little knowledge of Zuckerberg.
“I don’t know who that is,” Aisyah said, when asked about the man walking next to Jokowi.
Jokowi and Zuckerberg left after spending about 15 minutes checking out vendors in the building.
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