First let me explain what an incubation center for those who do not know. We see examples to incubation centers in the United States and abroad. An incubation center is an incubator environment for Internet entrepreneurs in particular. New internet initiatives are in need as a newborn baby has some needs to live.

In general, a new internet initiative gets the following help in incubation centers: Office space, office supplies, counseling-mentoring and most importantly, capital. In abroad, incubation centers are being created by especially universities, civil society organizations and investors. The incubation center in Istanbul was established by Akinon, investor of KariyerGENC and founder of Markafoni, and e-tohum, which brings Internet entrepreneurs together. This is why the name is “etohum Akinon Incubation Center” (EAIC).

The purpose of this office is to help the emergence of new and successful Internet companies by providing the necessary resources and services. The incubation center will start to work with the 8 internet initiatives to be selected in the 2009-2010 period, and will provide the necessary office environment and consulting for the internet initiatives to turn into successful companies.

The system works as follows: Companies to be accepted to EAIC etohum are selected at the end of an evaluation process performed from August to December each year. Before being admitted to the center, internet entrepreneurs tell about their projects to EAIC managers with 10-minute presentations, and if they are selected, they sign 3-month contract with EAIC. Entrepreneurs are obliged to report 3-month performance targets to the Board EAIC, and then they can start to work on their projects. At the end of the period spent in EAIC, entrepreneurs make presentations and are again taken into consideration by the Advisory Committee EAIC. The board aims to guide to internet companies that are in the center and to accelerate their success and consists of experienced entrepreneurs in Turkish Internet industry. Entrepreneurs regarded as high-performance can remain at EAIC, not to be more than 2 years.

Entrepreneurs get coaching and consultancy services, and supported by seminars, panels and training throughout the duration of their stay at EAIC. Costs such as office rental costs are transferred to entrepreneurs in a transparent way by EAIC and are refund to EAIC when business ideas turn into successful companies. Therefore, it is very important for the entrepreneurs accepted to EAIC to keep tables of monthly income and expenses.

Entrepreneurs who does not reach the level of expected performance or encounter unexpected situations have to leave EAIC but etohum continues to support these entrepreneurs from the outside.

In addition to these, it is possible to sign mutual agreements with entrepreneurs accepted to EAIC, and depending on performance status partnership agreements can be made. Although there is a minority share of partnerships, the rates of partnership may vary for each initiative.

I am very happy to announce this development, which is very important for our country. If you wonder why there wasn’t an incubation center until today, I would say “because no one has ever shouldered the responsibility”. But today we saw that some people took the responsibility, which means the risk, to support Internet industry in Turkey which has an incredible future. We congratulate and thank first to Burak Büyükdemir and Sina Afra and all for the labor and wish them success.

Visual Courtesy: stocker

This post has been written by Hasan Başusta and published on Webrazzi Global.

Hasan: Can you introduce yourself and iMobileCode shortly?

Cahit: We have been developing mobile applications for Turkish market since January 2009. We own another company headquartered in Indianapolis, USA, which offers service with Zen Particles brand in the same field. In Turkish market, our primary goal is to develop innovative iPhone applications for companies and create new marketing channels, while enabling iPhone users reach valuable information easily. Until today, we have published 12 applications, and usage and download numbers prove that we are on the right path. Considering the number of applications, we are leading in Turkish market and we aim to lead the market in the coming years. Our biggest aim is to develop applications that will make Turkey sound in the global market and be used by users worldwide.

Hasan: What kind of applications have you developed so far and what kind of successes these applications have got?

Cahit: Until today, we have published applications that let users meet useful content.  Some of them are Deniz Otobüsü, Eczane ve Havaalanı applications which are used by a large number of users and are popular among Turkish users. Total download number of our applications has exceeded 250 thousand and their usage number is 1,5 million per month. All of our applications that we have published so far have been listed in Apple App Store free 100 List and have been listed there for a long time. We are the company with the most applications on that list as of today and our Eczane application has been in top 50 since February when it was first published. We have developed applications for other companies as well. Some of them are Ford Champions League application and Coke’n Music, and they caught pretty much attention.

We have published “Meals On Wheels” application in the US, which is one of leading applications that aims donation in Apple App Store. In addition to these, there is “Broad Ripple” application that got its place in Indianapolis social life.

Hasan: Are there any applications that inspire you in the world? Which applications do you like the most globally?

Cahit: Our team in the US follows global application and technology trends very closely. They attend to leading seminars, give presentations and make speeches in most of them. Therefore, they keep in touch with the groups that set global trends and follow the developments as closely as possible. In Turkey, we have created the first and only application that uses “Push Notification” technology (Champions League), which could be considered as an indicator that we are following the trends closely. Following trends in the world requires following software applications developed worldwide and developers developing them too.  IPhone App should not be considered the only mobile application. There are Cloud Computing and many other related technologies behind a mobile software. These technologies also affect the user experience and the success of mobile applications. Due to these, we have taken active duty in Cloud User Groups sponsored by Sun and Microsoft as iMobileCode. We are trying to improve our designs in every project.
Global applications we like are, one of the most successful applications we have seen so far is Shazam (you can find the artist or the name of a song media is playing by listening to it and purchase it from iTunes instantly.) Apple is publishing this application only in America due to copyright issues, but we find it very successful in terms of functionality.
Another example is Bump application, which lets exchange of contact information as you hit you hand you keep your iPhone in with your friend’s hand, and it is another successful application.

Hasan: What applications do you plan to develop in the near future?

Cahit: Companies’ interest in iPhone applications is increasing every day. In this context, there is a large number of projects we are developing and having meetings on. Apart from the projects for companies, we are continuing to add new ones to our own applications. We have a photo application that will be published in the near future and we believe that iPhone users in Turkey and worldwide will prefer this application highly. Another project is an application that users will be able to use in emergencies. In addition to these, we are working on a Twitter project with well-known software developers and , and we hope all iPhone users will like it.

Hasan: What do you think about the future of the mobile world? What are your thoughts about Mobile Marketing?

Cahit: World mobile market is growing with each passing day. Each year, sales are growing at around 7% and the world’s mobile phone need today is much higher than the need to many other electronic devices. In the market the share of smart phones has risen, particularly seriously with iPhone. In the last 2 years, growth in number of smart phones in our country takes place at a rate of 300%. According to estimates of experts, progressive growth of the smart phone market will increase even further. Of course, the technical characteristics of the devices develop very seriously with this. Apple has already started to work on dual-core processors running on their phones. On the other hand, Google has come with a new perspective to mobile phone operating systems with Android operating system.

We have remembered how important this job is in the world when Google bought Admob for 750 million dollars. Currently mobile applications are a very new field. Still companies are discussing to what degree it is necessary and reasonable to do what mobile. But as I have mentioned, this field is growing very quickly and we fell lucky to be in this area.

In mobile world infrastructure is as important as devices. We know that the most successful mobile phone applications published work online. One of the most important factors that increase the success of the applications is the developments in the Internet infrastructure offered by GSM operators. We have experienced performance increases in many applications, as the market was introduced 3G internet connection. In this way, we began to prefer to display information online by minimizing the content on the application for our new projects. This lowered the size of the applications and gave freedom to change content displayed in a more comfortable way.
In the light of these developments, we consider today’s mobile applications web sites of 90’s.  We believe all of the companies will have their mobile applications in the near future. Today mobile applications are considered “nice to have”, but they will be “must have” in the future.

Hasan: Cahit, we thank you for this informative interview.

This post has been written by Hasan Başusta and published on Webrazzi Global.

He told that, Gold.com.tr is the internet face of Gold chain stores. It means that all IT products that are sold in Gold Chain Stores are available at Gold.com.tr too. These products are delivered from Gold Headquarters. On the other hand, Hızlıal is an online shopping web site which sell a wide range of products from pushchairs to fishhooks and from mobile phones to LCD TV’s.

So what makes Dopdolu different from others? One of the biggest problems of e-commerce is that ordered products are delivered late, which make Dopdolu different from other shopping web sites. Gold Group has a franchising network with more than 150 members nationwide. Using these branches, the products are delivered from the city that you live within the same day with free shipment. The reason is that dopdolu.com.tr includes opportunity products sold in Gold branch stores. This model integrates online and offline trading in the most successful way and dopdolu.com.tr works like an e-commerce website of a local opportunity store.

Another problem of e-commerce in Turkey is that Turkish users use the Internet for comparing products, prices or features but are not willing to do online shopping. As far as I’m concerned, Gold has aimed to turn this disadvantage into an advantage using its franchising system. If you do not wish to buy products without touching them, you can visit the Gold store in your city and buy it at Dopdolu.com.tr price.

This post has been written by Hasan Başusta and published on Webrazzi Global.

For Twitter, Webrazzi is the second of the websites visited the most. It is not hard to see the website that topped in the list did so due to its domain name and the article Arda wrote for Webrazzi.

So, we conclude that Webrazzi is the most visited website among people interested in social networks and social media in Turkey. Of course it is a more specialized market and is about the preferences of the interest persons. We hope that Webrazzi will be the most visited websites when Facebook with 14 million members in Turkey is searched one day.

This post has been written by Hasan Başusta and published on Webrazzi Global.

There are some other web sites such as Notebook.gen.tr and Sadece Notebook which aim to provide the most appropriate information to Turkish Internet users who plan to buy laptops. However, what I find most interesting is the earnings model of Notebook Platformu, as it makes projects to brands under sub domain names creating joint ventures in addition to usual advertising-marketing model. A classic example to this is the address 3g.notebookplatformu.com. These sub domain names are created in accordance with the corporate identities of the brand names and the contents are provided by the brands as well. Notebook Platfomu has already managed to add Turkcell and Intel to its joint venture portfolio.

When we google 3g and notebook, Notebook Platformu tops the list of search results, and it provides the users who wish to get online via 3G using their laptops the appropriate content for the corporate identity of the brand and also explains why the brands make payment for this model.

I can conclude that this initiative of  Hayal is very successful and believe that the website will increasingly grow as users continue to leave their desktops and start to use laptops.

This post has been written by Hasan Başusta and published on Webrazzi Global.

“It does not matter for us if a company is large or small. There are laws and regulations in this country and one cannot acquire illegally here. They are making a fuss because we have blocked their website. In some platforms, people are publicizing that the government does not know about these things. It is totally false. There are two people in the world that haven’t been brought to heels, and one of them are Turks. Therefore, if you are here, you should obey the rules. We do not want to be treated differently, just do what you do in Israel. I feel very aggrieved at this issue, that’s why I brought this topic up.”

Tayfun Acarer, Chairman of Information Technologies and Communications Authority, made a speech at the ceremony, saying that they have started to work on a homemade search engine, but did not give any details concerning the issue.

Minister Binali Yildirim told “We support every activity that aims to make an asset with effort. Our doors are open to the young, and we have our money, as well as our laws. We have all we need. We are going to make an announcement soon.”

This post has been written by Hasan Başusta and published on Webrazzi Global.

The prizes were given in 10 categories. Ali Babaoglan, who has given an interview to Webrazzi before, was deemed worthy to be awarded in personal achievement field with his Marro.ws project. Babaoglan was among the most successful 75 students selected by IBM EMEA in 2008, and the best student-worker by Microsoft. Born in 1986, Ali Babaoglan was awarded in the category “Personal Achievement”, which shows that people at such a young age can achieve a lot in Turkey.

In business world, economics and entrepreneurship field, Yomi Kastro, cofounder of Inveon Software Solutions, was deemed worthy of the award. Born in 1981, Kastro was recognized among the best entrepreneurs in Turkey by Endeavor in 2008. Bloxoo (former Blograzzi), which Arda Kutsal was cofounder of and then transferred its rights, and mulakat.tv, the first video based HR interview site in the world, are only two of the web sites that Inveon developed.

The leader of Tish-o.com.tr project Fatih Demir won JCI Turkey Special Award for “Healthy T-shirts” in the field of environmental protection and ethical leadership. Tish-o is a website enabling users to design their own t-shirts online. Demir got this award as tish-o uses healthy textile printing methods and uses healthy products, and non-carcinogenic dye for the t-shirts. Another reason that Tish-o was awarded this prize is the company aims helping handicapped young people acquire a profession and helping homeless children.

In “Contribution to Human Rights, Children and World Peace” category, Rodin Alper Bingol was awarded with his “Remove the Obstacles Movement”. Born in 1984, Bingol prepared this social responsibility project as his thesis project and then turned it into a social movement. The community that gained shape around engellerikaldır.com is an important factor in expansion of this movement to such a large population. This movement uses social media in the best way and has more than 160 thousand members in Facebook and nearly 600 thousand supporters. Bingol gives lectures on digital marketing and media technologies at Marmara University and he has achieved his goal by using online and offline platforms in the best possible way.

Each award is very valuable and each work is very good, but what is worth attention is that the young persons in the web world are more prominent than the other sectors. These young people getting awards in Turkey now, will be evaluated together with the other candidates from other countries by the international big jury and will have the right to get “The Most Successful Young Persons of the Year” awards in the next year’s World Conference if they come first in the international leg of the contest. We wish success to those young people, who have been World’s Best four times before.

This post has been written by Hasan Başusta and published on Webrazzi Global.

studentSN has some alternative products such as SMS delivery, mobile content (downloading games, ringing tones to mobile phones) and distant education and its earnings model is to sell these products with Top-Up cards. These cards were only available in school canteens until now.

According to a new agreement, Top-Up cards will be put up for sale in 4000 PTT (Turkish Post) branches. For now, using Top-Up micro payments cards shopping can be done over studentSN, members/students can buy e-documents, send SMS and download games to their mobile phones. Top-Up micro payment cards will be used only on studentSN for the beginning, and then will be open to use on the other sites as well.

Micro payment is crucial for ecommerce, especially when we consider how much little amounts increase the cost of the product when buying with credit cards or money order, and even most of the time, the product costs higher than its original value, we can understand its importance for ecommerce better. Those who do not have a bank account, credit card or refrain from using their credits cards for online shopping, can use Top-Up cards without worrying.

As Top-Up prepayment cards are first used on studentSN by its members, who are students, thus young population that use the Internet, the changes that micro payment cards will be accepted in Turkey are high.

With this agreement, students will be able to reach hundreds of thousands of sources that they can make use of for their essays and theses and download them from studentSN library as e-documents for little amounts. In addition, they will be able to offer their own documents that can be used as sources like lesson notes, theses to other students and make money by doing so. studentSN has documents that can be purchased for 1-10 TRY, as well as free documents to offer students.

The establishment, which has the largest sales network in Turkey, PTT will address a young population by adding micro payment card to its product range. This young population is almost 10 million, meaning this population consists of 14 percent of total Turkish population. The customers that go to PTT branches to buy micro payment cards today, will be businesspersons of tomorrow, who will work with, get credit cards, or insurances from PTT.

One of the most well-established and important government entities of Turkey, PTT has offered the micro payment product of an Internet project, which can be interpreted as it believes in and supports Internet projects. I believe that this is an important development for Turkey.

The earnings from the sales of first 1000 cards will be donated to a Social Responsibility Project. Webrazzi and social network users will decide which of these would be the social responsibility project. As a Webrazzi reader which social responsibility project would you like have donation?

This post has been written by Hasan Başusta and published on Webrazzi Global.

On October 3, 2009, Zynga.com, owner company of the most popular Facebook games such as Farmville, Mafia Wars, Yoville, Zynga (Texas Hold’em) Poker, Blackjack …), was blocked in Turkey.

To date, we have not posted any entries until we have the facts and details concerning this incident. Meanwhile, we have taken a screenshot of the screen explaining on what grounds the games are banned in Turkey, as you can see below. However, the ban has been lifted after a while, and it is again possible to access to Zynga games in Turkey.

Now, let’s discuss the details concerning why Zynga games were banned in Turkey. Users trying to reach these games from Turkey got this message during the day: After technical analysis and legal evaluation based on the catalog crimes of the Law no 5651, Administrative measure has been taken for this website (zynga.com) according to decision no 421.02.02.2009-272446 dated 02/10/2009 of “Department of Telecommunications Communication Presidency” (TIB)

This statement was unfortunately no surprise for Turkish internet users, as this law has already blocked more than 3000 websites. Official statistics, as revealed by TIB (Telecommunications Communication Presidency), show that as of May 11, 2009, 2601 websites have been blocked in Turkey under the provisions of Law No. 5651. While 475 (18%) of the 2601 websites are blocked by court orders, the majority of them, 2126 websites (82%), are blocked via administrative blocking orders issued by TIB.

Since Law No. 5651, entitled Regulation of Publications on the Internet and Suppression of Crimes Committed by means of Such Publication came into force in November 2007, access to a considerable number of foreign websites including popular websites such as YouTube, Geocities, DailyMotion, WordPress, Google Groups, and Google Sites have been blocked from Turkey under the provisions of this law by court orders and administrative blocking orders issued by TIB.

In February 2008, Head of Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TIB) Fethi Simsek stated that, gambling and betting games are included in a group that is called “Catalog Crimes”, leading to suicide, sexual abuse of children, facilitating drug use, supplying hazardous substance for health, obscenity, prostitution, providing opportunities and place for gambling and crimes committed against Ataturk. We understand from this law that, the reason of the blocking seems to have a direct linkage to the gambling games of the company.

So, why have the blocking/unblocking occurred on the same day? Was it a mistake or was it due to the attention of the media? We do not know the exact reason yet, however we will be investigating and keeping you updated about the issue.

YouTube and other similar websites in Turkey are banned within the scope of the above-mentioned law. MySpace and Last.fm are the recent ones that added to the banned website list in Turkey, which becomes more worrying day by day.

As we have mentioned before, we believe the “web site bans” have a big negative effect on Turkish economy while Turkey has the 7th largest and most engaged online audience in Europe with its 27 million Internet users. As comScore stated in the report published in May 2009, internet users in Turkey spend more time online and consume more pages than users in other European countries. We believe that you have something to say on this matter and your comments count. Do you think there is any point in recent blocking of MySpace, Last.Fm and Zynga in Turkey? We invite you to share your opinion with us.

Update: According to Milliyet News ( One of the biggest newspapers in Turkey) TIB chairman Fethi Simsek stated that, “Department of Internet Presidency” has a duty to block access to gambling sites. These are the sites that poker and similar games are played. The blocking of the site has occured because it was suspected that the games were a form of gambling which means they are played in exchange of money. But after the explanations and telephone traffic in the evening the access has been regranted however investigations with a suspicion of gambling will go on. Blocking Facebook is out of question.”

As a result, we were right about our opinion that the cause of the blocking roots from the gambling games of Zynga. From this statement, we also understand  that the pressure of social media and then the traditional media (they get the news from social media on this matter) have a great effect on the telephone traffic which resulted to unblocking of this site. The people who created this effect are the ones who tweeted and shared these posts on Facebook, Friendfeed and other social networks. So I have a question. Why not adopt the same approach for other blocked sites in Turkey?

This post has been written by Hasan Başusta and published on Webrazzi Global.

KariyerGENC

Hasan: Hello Nurettin. It has been five months since KariyerGENC started to be online. How did you make use of these five months? What kind of reforms have you brought to life?

Nurettin: Five months is a long time for an Internet initiative. We think we have made use of these five months well. Especially the brand awareness of KariyerGENC among companies and youngsters are increasing. The term “orange tie”, representing university students and fresh graduates, has already started to be a commonly used term. Besides, we are doing technological innovations all the time. Apart from “make a CV and apply for job” ritual, we are becoming a platform for the user to manage his career. This makes the user attach to the system more. We are making improvements to satisfy our users further. We are also active on the offline side of the business and feed KariyerGENC offline as well. As a matter of course, we have collaborations with many organizations from university clubs to career centers, from different student communities to academicians.

Hasan: What are the differences between KariyerGENC and the other career websites, other than it addresses to young people?

Nurettin: As you have mentioned, companies or students do not get lost in the masses in KariyerGENC. KariyerGENC does not work like the other websites that only say, “Save your CV and apply to the job ad”. On this platform, young people can get to know the company or the area of work s/he would like to work in, he can build his CV in PDF format, he can follow his area special activities form his user page; he can build his career along with applying for jobs. This is only one of our purposes.

Hasan: How many youngsters sign up to your system daily? What affects their choice?

Nurettin: We have been online since April. Some companies’ hiring period is just ending. What we know is that in a short period of time many youngsters have found part-time, seasonal, internship and new graduate jobs thanks to KariyerGENC. In addition to this, although we came to life just in April, the number of our members is increasing incrementally. To name a number around 1000-1500 CVs subscribe daily. We are happy to see this number increasing every day. This increase in CV submissions is thanks to mouth advertising of youngsters and our Orange Tie membership system. Our partners have inspired us upon seeing the success of Markafoni’s membership system. In addition, eighty-six well-known companies in Turkey and the world use KariyerGENC services.

We are very happy with the progress KariyerGENC shows. Especially having a Turkish Internet initiative become popular among university students and fresh graduates so fast makes us extremely happy. We receive messages from Bosnia-Herzegovina asking us to send them Orange Ties. Not only in Turkey but also in the world, many career portals follow our new features and developments.

Hasan: What are your plans for the future? What are you planning to do in the long term?

Nurettin: We will develop products that will add value both to our users and to the companies that have purchased services from KariyerGENC. This is a plan that requires us to think 24/7 and produce new ideas. We are a start-up that focuses on user satisfaction but it is never enough for us. We are continuing to make developments for the happiness of our users. We are developing business models that have no other examples in Turkey, for example, our last service is employer brandization pages we offer to companies. On KariyerGENC companies are able to open their own micro pages and publish their companies’ videos, articles, office images and announcements. The young people that apply for the job have a better idea about the company thanks to these services. The companies that apply these models in the world are not more than a dozen. Meaning, we are a very anxious team when it comes to developing new models.

Hasan: We are anxious to hear more about these developments as well. Thank you.

This post has been written by Hasan Başusta and published on Webrazzi Global.