Indonesia is the 16th highest GDP in the world. 4th most populous. If they can take and hold Indonesia, they might be able to continue into Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Owning that much of the growing 3rd world in Asia in 10 years of compounded growth in those countries is worth a lot of money to a lot of really big tech companies. It's an easy thesis when Google and Facebook are willing to pay up for social networks.
Interesting, but this may be a spectacular own goal.
Indonesians probably found Path interesting because it was foreign. They probably didn't care that a company in San Francisco was slurping up their address book. However, a local conglomerate with a dodgy reputation?
The investment news from Bakrie sent a shock across Indonesia. Across Twitter and Path, people are talking as if the group had acquired Path and many have decided to remove Path from their devices...
The Bakrie Group and family has a terrible reputation in the country. As per the Jakarta Post report in February 2013, Bakrie Life has been in a deadlock with its clients regarding a failed investment scheme...
The group’s largest indiscretion in the country, and one that’s causing much of people’s anger towards the family, is the seven year mudflow in Porong, Sidoarjo, East Java. The ecological disaster has been attributed to Lapindo Brantas, a Bakrie-owned company, which conducted a drilling expedition in the area in 2006...
In short: SE Asia is where Social Networking sites die.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see people come and try to turn this around (e.g.: make money as a hi-tech company in my home country) but so far the facts have stated otherwise.