Top Web Apps in Turkey
Turkey is next in this R/WW series
on top international Web apps. It's the 9th country I've profiled so far - the others
have been Germany,
Holland, Poland, Korea, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain and China. For the following information on Turkey, I
have Emre Sokullu to thank (also Honor Gunday for info on his web apps). Emre is an open
source enthusiast from Istanbul, whose projects include GROU.PS, Turkix and SimpleKDE. He was over in Silicon Valley recently and not
only did he attend the TechCrunch party,
he also visited the Googleplex and ate
quasedillas "just 10 m. away from Sergey Brin"! But I digress...
Overview of Turkey Web market
Turkey is a nation of over 70M and straddles Europe and Asia. In terms of Web apps Emre said that Turkey, like Israel, has a number of growing web 2.0 companies - and "almost all of them are local clones of some proven [international] ideas". But he says that his own app, Grou.ps, "is an exception there." Interestingly, there are no exact Flickr and del.icio.us clones in Turkey. Emre thinks the reason is that photo sharing is not popular enough in his country and StumbleUpon (see below) is more than enough for link sharing/storing.
Amongst the international web apps, Gmail, Meebo, Blogger and StumbleUpon are very popular in Turkey.
Emre said that in previous years the Turkish Web market was dominated by large Turkish media enterprises. Only a few independent ventures have since become big successes. However, in the current era of the Web there are many independent ventures. Emre said that while most of these Turkish 'web 2.0' apps have not gotten popular yet, they are promising.
Top Turkish Web Apps
Yonja.com is headquartered in the USA. It is a MySpace clone and is the leading player in the Turkish market - it currently claims 2.6M members. Emre told me the Yonja team uses the popularity of their portal to promote their other new ventures - like meqan.com, 7inci.com, metroliste.com.
Google's social network Orkut gets a special mention from Emre, even though it's
not Turkish. It was however built by a Turkish Google engineer - Orkut Buyukkokten, originally from the Turkish
city of Konyahas and who went on to obtain a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford
University. In Turkish, Orkut means "the
holy meeting place."
Zurna.com - like Yonja.com, a Turkish clone of MySpace; but Zurna is more like TagWorld, with its more web 2.0-like look 'n feel and smaller user base (80,000 users). Zurna is also headquartered in USA, by Stanford graduate Honor Gunday (Yonja is from a Harvard graduate).
Zurna owner Honor Gunday sent me this information about Zurna:
"We launched Zurna.com for Turkey, last August. and it quickly grew to about 80.000 users now. It is currently #3 among social networks in Turkey, the largest one being Yonja.com but slowly eroding and 2nd largest one being Siberalem, which is also eroding. Zurna is the only Web 2.0 social network in Turkey, and probably the first web2.0 website, which allows people to blog, create groups, use 3rd party widgets, video, odeo, tags, photo ratings, customizable profiles a la myspace-but better- etc... Our initial version of Zurna back from 6 years ago was actually the first website to offer blogs in Turkey, but nobody used the blogging feature then now, it's slowly taking off. Turkish people don't really like to blog, but like to look at pictures and watch videos. So our digg-like photo commenting functionality is really really popular. and we also have an experimental project called Sozluk, which is a multimedia concept repository. People can define a concept with different media : pictures, video, writings, just like wikipedia, but more multi-media. We also have a section for aspiring music artists where they can create music profiles and upload their mp3s and get comments from the Zurna users..."
GROU.PS is Emre's alpha web app and he insists that it's not a clone! He told me it's an original idea "born in Palo Alto and targeting not just Turkey but international markets." Grou.ps enables social groups (communities, alumni, colleagues, etc) to set up a web site quickly - and share and communicate via email and mobile phones. Emre says it a "next-generation version of Yahoo! Groups, Google Groups or MSN Groups."
cember.net - Turkish LinkedIn, OpenBC clone. Has more than 100,000 users and has attracted media attention.
videbu.com - Turkish YouTube clone, featuring some local videos inside. Getting popular and has no quality problems yet.
blogcu.com - a blogging service. Blogcu means "blogger" in Turkish. Getting very very popular, said Emre.
ntpy.com - Turkish reddit clone. However just got hacked 1 week ago and is down for a while.
metroliste.com - Turkish craigslist clone. A product of the Yonja.com team; Craigslist's own Istanbul service is more widely used by foreign citizens living in Istanbul; whereas metroliste is used more by local Turks. Its success is mostly due to the ads they get from yonja.com.
eskobo.com - a Personalized start page that Emre said is a NetVibes/Live.com clone; hasn't been maintained though.
pilli.com - FederatedMedia clone; an advertising network for targeted blogs like bildirgec.org, hafif.org, 3ayak.org, zamazing.org, 22dakika.org;
paylaj.com - Turkish Habbo clone. But it's still in its infancy.
istanbul.net, izmir.net, ankara.net - formed by some successful web 1.0 veterans in Turkey (siberalem.com and itiraf.com), these sites are location targeted "dating 2.0" sites. The owners bought some very expensive city names for this project. The content is exactly the same across the sites. And just like most dating 2.0 sites, they don't charge for viewing profiles - but they charge for people getting in touch with one another.
daveti.com - meetup.com of Turkey. Jut started but is doing pretty well.
pazarmetre.com - web 2.0 online shopping site. Just launched. Not very popular yet. Looks promising but should be ready for tough competition; because already-established and popular online shopping sites are controlled by Turkey's large media companies.
7inci.com - Turkish version of yelp.com; yet another clone venture of the Yonja.com guys
meqan.com - Dating 2.0 portal; rival of istanbul.net, izmir.net, ankara.net; The dating portal business is very successful in Turkey. Again, yet another venture of Yonja.com guys.
closo.com - online marketing and e-commerce site; venture of zurna.com owner, Honor Gunday.
happyhourmaps.com - a site to share fun places; Google Maps powered and yet another venture of zurna.com owner, Honor Gunday. Not a working release yet.
Summary
If you are from Turkey or know it well, please add to the comments if I've missed a major Turkish web app - or if you'd like to correct or add to the information in this post.
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First of all thank you for covering Turkish Web Market.
As you mentioned in your post, the market is growing too fast and global players like MSN, Google, ICQ and Skype already entered the market. I think MySpace will be the next.
Let me give you some more examples from Turkish Web Apps.
*YumiYum.Org is a del.iciou.us clone and it's still in BETA state.
*Seyvet.com is a kind of Flickr clone but with less features.
*su.gge.st is a tinyurl.com clone.
*Flimk.com is digg for movies.
*Doviz.com is a Web 2.0 approach to foreign exchange rates
*Sosyomat.com is a new Web 2.0 App from Pilli. That's a community portal but has great features which make Sosyomat a mixture of MySpace, Squidoo and Ziki.
And I have Webrazzi which is a couple of weeks old blog, and it's like Read/WriteWeb in Turkish. I write about web startups from Turkey and the world.
Thanks again for this great post.
Believe me you'll have much more Turkish visitors after now on.
Thanks Arda for the extra info and products - much appreciated!
I only wish I'd known about your blog before I posted this, as it looks like it has excellent coverage of Turkish web apps.
check out www.koolim.com
nice app there at koolim.com, thx for the link.
well, it seems that .n t.p.y.'s url needs an edit in your article. it should be http://www.ntpy.com/.
Thanks Ether, fixed now.
"GROU.PS is Emre's alpha web app and he insists that it's not a clone!"
Seems like you're not persuaded :)
I insist because this is not social networking or sth. This is sth new that I've called social groupware: Next generation eGroups. eGroups clones were aggregating your group emails; this one aggregates not just your mails but also your photos, links, content, blog entries, calendars and all.. Sure it's way too alpha for now but keep an eye on it. I've just come back to Palo Alto and I'll continue the development here with a larger and very talented team.
I'm pursuaded Emre, don't worry :-) I just put the word "insists" in there because you mentioned it isn't a clone a couple of times ;-)
great review. thanks to emre.
i`m living in turkey and tracking web2.0 since middle 2005 but have never heared of some of the apps listed here:)
very beneficial..
BTW, emre why is your site down? abi, siten calismiooooo:)
Wridea - Online idea management tool. You can use its web interface to manage your ideas/thoughts or you can send your ideas by email to your account. Also you can create collaborative brainstorming sessions with other wridea users.
by the way, great article :)
Thanks for your nice review Richard.
May I add our Limk.com, Turkish kind of linklog (meme) site. Kind of member contributed web happenings listing.
Blog system form Turkey:
*Gaxxi Turkish and
*Gaxxi English
@elvir
yes, thanks to readwriteweb :-)
our servers are fragile and can't handle these loads.. it's working now but that's the first thing we'll look into.
http://www.gamerbug.net
Game site
http://www.guncelblog.com last internet and daily news foru turkish people
I think www.chatcity.cc is one of the best web application, not only in Turkey but the whole world, but you never mentioned that ;) Where did you find the web sites above??
http://www.serverim.net Turkish online gaming portal
there is a news aggregator called gunlukbasin.com. it is still beta but it will be a good resource os the entire published presses. it is done by Adobe Flex.
http://www.nooluyo.com - turkish digg clone
Author,
do you want to make a top 10 list from Brazil? I can help!
Let me know.
Fabio Seixas
http://www.cinarsozluk.com is new kind of dictionary in Turkiye. Site work like wikipedia but more like a dictionary.
add one more to the list http://www.turkishpersonals.com/ which is in English and Turkish.
theres a musical portal just found out
called herkesdinlesin.com its just like purevolume a social network for musicians and so on
add one more to the list
http://www.haberinvarmi.org
http://www.resimvideo.org
http://www.bilgikupu.org
http://www.saglihimiz.org
which is in Turkish.
Blog system by terspapuc.com
You've forgotten to mention maybe the most important Turkish web app. It is called eksi sozluk ("the sour dictionary") and is sort of an informal encyclopedia about everything. Only approved writers can make entries and becoming a writing is very ritualized and one must qualify, new writers are accepted in batches every couple of years.
There is an amazing amount of entries about all topics conceivable (for instance, "nap times in kindergarten", "people who dress up to study in the library", along with more serious topics) . What sets this apart from wikipedia for instance is the tone of the entries. They are based on personal experience and very much have an insider feel to them. For instance, before traveling somewhere one can read the best insider tips and quirky corners of the destination.
www.eksisozluk.com
TurcoPundit - http://turcopundit.blogspot.com/
Turkey and Middle East Related news, views, comments and analyses. Sort of realclearpolitcs and antiwar.com combined.
Thank u very much for Top Web Apps in Turkey article. But, Emre didn't gave u info about Turkish market! He only gave web site names of his own projects:)
I think here is not the area of advertising. So, u must delete his web sites and insert genuine giant ones.
Yonja.com ok, but Turkey shopping sites hepsiburada.com of the Dogan, ideefixe.com etc., but ones emre said u. And other giant sites e-kolay.net, mynet.com, haber7, and i alright did the project manager of these huge communities. So, pls mention of these projects near these silly noob sites.
Emre, go away! We are 7 people. Get away stealing our projects. Don't forget there are 4-5 men like Kevin Rose in Turkey including me. We are very stronger than u and pls leave stealing to do clone of our monetizing projects in Turkey!
Developing clones of netvbies.com and pageflakes.com, feel free to contact me on ICQ 273329698.
http://www.bildirim.net/ Perfect web page, web 2.0 technology announcement.
Thanks for Top Web Apps in Turkey article but i couldnt see any art project like http://www.semaverkumpanya.com
Good job. thanks ;)
Very much. Bookmark. How new surveys.
Well, Isn't this funny......
Apps in Turkey - yes, this is my real name & yes, I did live in Turkiye back in 1968, 1969 & 1970 - - what a fun
and interesting time!
I don't know who is going to read this but I thought it was pretty cool to have Apps & Turk apart of this web site!
Go figure!
Gule Gule......
Turk Apps
http://www.oyyla.com
Oyyla: Turkish Digg
www.linkibol.com - Full ajax based social bookmarking site
this one is for travellers to Turkey from other travellers. I was in Turkey
qiraz.com - a Turkish Facebook clone.
http://www.sevdm.com - This is one of the better ones. Similar to digg, but lots of extra features
TurkSpace.com - a MySpace clone for Turkey
Please keep an eye on www.salatta.net which will be one of the biggest social networking sites in Turkey.
It's Salatta.net