From Deaths to Memories: We’re rebuilding Kenangan.com from scratch! (&& you can help, too)

Reinhart Previano K. - Aug 30 '21 - - Dev Community

Hey! This post was originally posted with Indonesian users in mind. But please feel welcome to discuss about this exciting project!

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Kenangan.com is an ordinary, orbituary website where people can post announcements and memories of people’s deaths online. But soon, we realized that the word “kenangan” (as in Indonesian/Malay) isn’t just about deaths and sorrows, and we should instead focus on the true meaning of “kenangan”, which is, well, memories.

Whether it’s the first time you’ve successfully won a competition, or recently passed your final exams, just started your programming class, having a date, marriage, or even just having a vacation with your family, we believe that there’s always a memory for every moments of our lives.

And that’s why we shifted the focus from being an ordinary, orbituary website into the next, social commerce app that’s real hot in town.

Now, you might have already know about it either from Indo-Art Students Association (IASA) or from Unlimited App, as both of them have recently held a brand competition for Kenangan.com on Unlimited App. And yes, the rebrand will be the start of our transformative journey to bring Kenangan.com closer to everyone.

What’s a social commerce, again?

The term “social commerce” has been coined by Yahoo! at least in 2005, and hence we can’t say that Kenangan is the first social commerce app or website in the world, or at least in Indonesia.

The true essence of social commerce comes from not one, but two core principles : implementing an online commerce system while maintaining the social aspects of the users: sellers, buyers.

Now, those of you might already know that many Indonesian and Southeast Asian e-commerce apps offer a set of social media features to help sellers to promote their products. Does anyone here familiar with Shopee with a set of Instagram-like features where you, yes you , can post and create livestreams despite never sold anything yet through the app?

Or are there any Tokopedia or Bukalapak fans here who purchased products from the app just from seeing it on the home page?

These are just examples of how social commerce can influence people to buy products. However, at Kenangan.com we will doing social commerce differently than those mainstream apps out there. And that’s what makes Kenangan special, just like your memories.

Commerce-first vs Social-first approach

Now, remember that the main focus of Kenangan is giving memories, not selling products. Bukalapak, Shopee, Tokopedia, and even Facebook and Instagram are taking commerce-first approach while doing social commerce: they make you buy ’cause you’ve just interacted with the sellers and love with their products.

However, as some of you might expect, Kenangan.com will do the opposite. And in fact, you won’t actually have to buy something just to send posts on Kenangan.com. We call this as a social-first approach , or in a slightly informal term, giving. You finally buy products ’cause you’ve interacted and care for someone which doesn’t have to be the sellers, regardless of what the product is and who’s the one selling or producing the products.

Giving and gifting on Kenangan.com will be as easy as pressing an Add Gift button when sending a post or a message. Like sending a full year of Discord Nitro to someone on a Discord server. Or perhaps sharing a DANA Kaget (“daget”) to families’ or colleagues’ WhatsApp groups. And don’t worry, if the person you’re looking for is not on Kenangan.com , you will be able purchase the gifts to be delivered to your house, too!

If you finally can gift someone more than just a Discord Nitro or DANA Kaget in just a few steps…

…then Kenangan.com surely will be your go-to destination to celebrate, and help people to celebrate, every moments of their lives!


Getting Involved

Now, if you’re an experienced web or Flutter developer, we’re none other than happy for you to work with us. Here are some of the requirements (contact info@kenangan.com to apply and for further details):

  • Dedicated and self-driven
  • Experience working in company or working on several projects
  • Min. 1-2 years of experience in Flutter
  • Min. 4-6 years of experience programming apps, webapps and backend
  • To be successful in this role you will have to give an example of an application you have built

Additionally, if you’re a company looking for business opportunities with us, please don’t hesitate to contact us on the same email address (info@kenangan.com).

We look forward to build Kenangan.com into the place where people could share and celebrate every memories of their lives, me included. So, are you guys ready to be a #PemberiKenangan?

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