Primary target audience of the world’s largest gaming company Zynga is adults, instead of children. But Zynga did not forget to celebrate the only day for children in the world and published an exclusive video for April 23 National Sovereignty and Children’s Day.

Apart from being a nice gesture, the video highlights the importance of culture for localization and community management.

As you know, Zynga got Özgür Bayraktar, who formerly worked for Peak Games, to its Dublin team for Turkish speaking countries in December. This led to an increase in contents exclusive to Turkish users past few months.

This video, published in Zynga’s Turkish blog page, reveals the fact that localization and community management is not only translation, as considering cultural diversities and such exclusive celebrations are really effective.

Zynga’s COO of Game Operations Marcus Segal had an interview with Webrazzi before, saying Turkish market is very valuable for them and added: “Therefore we want to directly communicate with players and receive their feedbacks and we are trying to offer them more each day”

This post has been written by Ümit Öncel and published on Webrazzi Global.

Soner Canko: E-commerce will grow by 100 percent in 2012

• E-Commerce reached 23 billion TRY in 2011.
• There are 133 million cards (debir and credit) in total in Turkey.
• There are 82 million debit cards.
• In 2011, the number of debit cards increased by 17 percent.
• The number of credit cards increased by 9 percent last year.
• 2.5 billion transactions have been placed using credit cards.
• There has been a cash withdrawal of 866 million with debit and credit cards.
• 3,3 billion transactions have been placed using debit and credit cards in total.
• E-commerce got a share of 5 percent from total number of e-commerce transactions. E-commerce has a share of 9 percent on TRY basis.
• 3D Secure uses 8 thousand of 38 thousand cyber offices. 2.8 percent of offices use 3D Secure.
• 3D Secure is used by services industry the most. It is followed by airline companies.
• 12.1 million e-commerce transactions were made in December 2011.
• This number increased to 13.4 million in January 2012.
• The market is expected to increase by 100 percent by the end of 2012.

Seyhun Özkara: There is a large need for Ecommerce in East and Southern East regions in Turkey

• E-commerce volume has grown by 57 percent.
• The most used industries include computers and electronics categories by 17.93 percent.
• The share of variety product selling websites is 12.96 percent.
• They are followed by cosmetics, beauty products and natural items with 12.54 percent.
• **The most rising industries are apparel and lingery, jewellery and accesories, cosmetics and shoes.
• Marmara region is the first among other regions by 55 percent.
• Middle Anatolia region is the second by 16 percent.
• Aegean region is the third by 12 percent share.
• Mediterrenean region is the fourth with 8 percent.
• Last three regions are Black Sea region, Southeast Anatolia and East Anatolia regions with 4, 2 and 1 percent shares respectively.
• Payment system has a major share of credit cards which is above 57 percent.
• Money transfer has a share of 19 percent.
• The third most preferred payment option is pay on delivery with 17 percent.

ArabNet Founder Omar Christidis: Ecommerce in MENA faces some obstacles

• There is a total of 70 million internet users in MENA.
• Penetration is at the level of 31 percent and it has a growth of 60 percent in MENA.
• E-commerce market volume is 4 billion dollars in the region.
• Quwait and Qatar have the largest e-commerce volumes in MENA, a total of 2 billion dollars. They are followed by Saudi Arabia with 500 million dollars. Egypt is the 3rd with 300 million dolar volume.
• 33 percent of the users in the region always shop online.
• Airlines is leading industry that attract users in MENA.
• The studies show that 43 of the users in region has confidence in e-trading.
• 53 of the population does not hold a credit card.

Doğan Online CEO Yenal Gökyıldırım: 2012 aim for turnover is 1 billion TL

• Doğan Online aims to achieve 1 billion TRY turnover in 2012.
• The company’s turnover was 700 million TRY last year.
• 100,000 people start e-commerce each month.
• İstinye Park hosts 1.6 million visitors. While Hepsiburada.com has 5 times visitors.
• 4 trends are expected to rise in the coming period: Barcode appilcation for mobiles, subscription systems, periodical shopping control systems and user-oriented content.

Murat Yerdekalmazer from Mikro Ödeme: Trading goes mobile now

• First mobile payment was made in 2009 in Turkey.
• First mobile payment in the world was made in 1997 with a Coca-Cola machine.
• The first company to industrialize mobile payment was Apple. In 2008, App Store made mobile payment popular.
• Mobile payment is fast, safe and secure and widely used.

Yunus Güvenen: Consider alternative channels in e-trading well

• Earnings partnership system has 12 percent share in the US.
• In Turkey, earnings partnership has 1 percent share.
• Earnings partnership provides more than 12 million TRY sales turnover for ad publishers.

Altuğ İnci: Messages that are sent very frequently are flagged as spam by 50 percent

• 1.7 billion emails were sent in TUrkey in 2011.
• It is expected that 5 billion emails will be sent in 2012.
• Users have an average of 3 email addresses.
• A standard user receives 6 emails a day on average.
• The percentage of a successful sale to an existing customer via emailing is 60-70.
• The same percentage for a customer candidate is 5-20.
• Ecommerce companies prefer to do emailing between 8 and 9 am.
• 56 percent of received messages are flagged as spam.
• Messages that are sent too frequently are flagged as spam by 50 percent.

 Hasan Başusta: Social trading volume is expected to reach USD 30 billion in 2015

• It is wrong to introduce social trading as it is not a part of e-commerce. The common ground of e-commerce and social networks is social trading.
• Coca-Cola’s expenses for social media had 3 percent of its total expenses 5 years ago. Now it is 20 percent and is planned to grow further.Sektöre yapılan yatırımlar, 2011’in ilk 4 ayında 2 milyar dolar olarak gerçekleşti.
• In 2012, social trading is expected to reach 9 billion dollars turnover.
• This number will be 30 million dollars in 2015.
• 74% say “I like to shop with my friends”.
• 55% say, “I would buy an item my friends recommend on Facebook.”

Young e-commerce start-ups tell their stories

• Bebekbezi.com project reached 100 thousand TRY turnover at its second month.
• Evim.net and İndirdik.com reached 1 million TRY turnover in January.
• Sporcum.com delivers 200 pairs of shoes a day.
• İndirdik.com has a 30 people team.
• Sporcum.com works with 80 sports brands.
• 60 percent of all orders Sporcum.com receives are from Anatolian cities.

 Ömür Topaç: GittiGidiyor targets 50 percent growth in 2012

• GittiGidiyor turnoevers grew by 19 percent in 2011.
• The company aims to grow by 50 percent in 2012.
• Turkey is a “smooth bridge” between Middle East and North Africa.
• eBay Europe considers Turkey be among Rest of Europe region, following Germany, UK, Italy, France and Russia.

iPara: We want to exist in every e-commerce company in 2012

• There are more than 5 thousand e-commerce companies in Turkey.
• iPara aims to team up an organisation and have talks with all erading websites in 2012.
• iPara has a team of 25.
• The company Works with nearly 50 companies.
• The number of companies registering for iPara has reached 200.
• Profitability is important for e-commerce companies now. Companies will stop trying for turnover.
• There will be many new organisations and separations in the industry in 2012.

Sina Afra comments about Turkey e-commerce market in 2012

• There has been agreements of 480 million dollars signed in Israel in 1980s.
• Agreements in Turkey have started to go beyond 100 million dollars.
• The percentage of payment by credit card is 78 in Turkey. Payment on delivery is 1-2 percent.
• 2012 will be the year for payment systems like Paypal, iPara and PayU.
• Average price of items sold on Markafoni is 30-35 dollars. This number can be 4 times in Europe and 7-8 times in the US.
• Rocket Internet in Turkey can make a difference in the way investors consider Turkey. New investors will appear in Turkish market.
• We aim to be the first 1 billion dolar company in Turkey, as a part of our vision.
• Markafoni’s penetration increased by 25 percent once we started TV ads.

Original Post: Rakamlarla Webrazzi E-Ticaret’12

This post has been written by Ahmet Can Şit and published on Webrazzi Global.

Turkcell switched to brand pages and supported a civil society initiative, which is a very positive contribution. Turkcell placed the motto “Do you have 5 liras for Van?” as soon as it switched to brand pages, asking for support for Turkey Moneybox to help Van.

Influential press members in addition to brands use twitter’s brand pages, and the first to have this kind of page has been M. Serdar Kuzuloğlu a short while ago.

Turkcell published its first Twitter advertisement with gnctrkcll last December and Avea, Efes Pilsen, Garanti Bank, Markafoni and many other brands followed it. It is possible to see a similar movement on brand pages.

Google+ is one of the most successful social networks that made progress on brand pages, while Twitter and Facebook continue to improve on brand pages. Twitter switched to brand pages with only its partners, while Facebook is expected to pass its brand pages to timeline using the same method.

UPDATE:

Twitter offers Enhanced Profiles, which enables brands and people place visuals in profiles, the ability to pin a message to the top of the feed (when this feed has a picture or a video link, the related content is displayed). It also offers a feature that enables to receive private messages unfollowers (to communicate in private when needed), and detailed Twitter stats (full RT number, full favorite number, number of clicks on links in messages, follower rate etc.).

Turkcell Digital Media Manager Engin Gedik says;

When Twitter’s new feature for global giant brands was announced, we immediately made necessary correspondence and submitted our demand, making this feature active in our country in short time. As the leading tech company in Turkey, it was one of our plans to be the first company using this feature, as we have been for many others, and first thing we did was to make Turkey Moneybox for primary content of our Twitter page.

Thanks to Twitter brand pages, we will be able to make all content more visible that we want to highlight, and better analyze our followers. Besides, we will make many different parts and interesting uses of our brand page visually in the short term.

Twitter, which came into our lives as a micro blogging service, is expected to be a major player on both advertising and traffic monitoring on social media with these developments and attract brands more. I wonder how new and effective services like Pinterest will affect the market’s way.

Original Post: Twitter marka sayfaları Türkiye’de yayına girmeye başladı [Güncellendi]

This post has been written by Sami Eyidilli and published on Webrazzi Global.

The first figure at the infograph reveals the interest of women in ecommerce. Female users make up of 70 percent of all Pabbuc.com users and each of them buys 5 pairs of shoes a year. On the other hand, each man buys 2 pairs of shoes a year on Pabbuc.com.

Pabbuc.com grew by 500 percent in 2 years in a row, and it is a proof of the major importance of shoes for ecommerce. The numbers for order delivery of Pabbuc.com are also considerable. The items Serdar Yaman once had to keep at his house, are noe at a warehouse which keeps more than 80 thousand items instantaneously. An order is shipped in 4 hours on average, and the time to supply an order is nearly 1 hour.

The start-up, first founded in İzmir, has more than 1 million visitors per month. The number of pages visited per visit is 25 on average on the website that brings many major brands together, while the percentage of visitors who leave it soon is 0.1. However this can be the result of female visitors who are largely interested in shoes, bags and accessories..

Pabbuc.com’s stats reveal that İstanbul (30 percent) places orders as much as the sum of Ankara, Bursa, İzmir, Antalya and Adana. The remaining 40 percent of orders are received from other cities in Turkey.

Infograph lastly shows that it has received more than 11 thousand positive feedbacks, which made up of 99 percent of all feedbacks. This figure points to both customer satisfaction and the fact that customers do not leave the website as soon as they are finished with shopping.

Pabbuc.com is one of the first major players in Turkish vertical ecommerce market and it will continue to be, as it seems. While it offers its services at a hot competitive field, the last part of the infograph particularly reminds me of Zappos. The website also shows that every start-up has unique solutions with details.

Original Post: Pabbuc.com iki yıl üst üste yüzde 500 büyüme gösterdi [infografik]

This post has been written by Fırat Demirel and published on Webrazzi Global.

Let me tell you shortly about what happened in DLD conference that we earlier streamed live. Or, about what happened at Digital Bosphorus session.

The session was moderated by TechCrunch author Robin Wauters, who was with us at Webrazzi Summit last year, and we all know the guests; Alemşah Öztürk from 41? 29!, Cenk Bayrakdar from Turkcell, Nevzat Aydın from YemekSepeti, Sidar Şahin from Peak Games and Sidar Şahin from Markafoni. All topics covered at the session summarized the success of Turkish internet industry, will positive comments highlighting the point it has arrived. Most important of all, we are very far from being satisfied with the success we have had, and this is good. I must say I am as excited about Turkish internet industry, as I am for Webrazzi, because we will improve further, grow much more, will take place in international fields more often and catch the attention of the rest of the world. We will be more than guests and be hosts, in short.

I want to tell you a little of Silicon Valley, the famous valley in San Jose… I wonder if there is anyone who is interested tech, internet or software and not dream about working there? This is our dream place. As you know, the name of the valley is not a coincidence. The name “Silicon” is given to the valley, as there are many silicon chip producers that lead R&D studies there, and the material called sillicium, of course. Largest tech companies are born there, and new companies locate themselves in that area. There are countless companies and start-ups.…

What is this Digital Bosphorus?

Silicon Valley represents a good model for us, if you think that tech companies alter the name of a geographical shape. And Dijital Boğaz is that kind of name which will make Turkish internet industry be referred this way. The founder of the name is Sina Afra, CEO of Markafoni. Digital Bosphorus concept has been widely supported in social media so far, with supporters on Twitter. The unique Bosphorus in Istanbul, which admires everyone, can be the tilt of Turkish internet industry in the world. I believe that people in the industry should support this, because the name can be common if only we adopt it. Surely, the name is not only for Istanbul, but also for Ankara, Izmir, Bursa and Antalya: it should be used as a name representing all Turkish industry throughout the country, highlighting the importance and position of Turkey. So we have to make it beyond Silicon Valley and get all Turkey together around Digital Bosphorus.

People at the session talked about what a large market Turkey is, how young and enthusiastic we are, and how much we are tend to grow and go international. The synergy also showed that we will, or have in fact, started to run. As I was writing this article, I wondered if I was too optimistic. Maybe it seems so, but it is an undeniable fact that we have a huge potential. But this potential is not enough by itself. We have to work harder, and we should not undervalue this big potential. For example, Webrazzi Silicon Valley author Reyhan Çepik tweeted a few days ago. She was asked why they did not work at Silicon Valley. Her answer was short and clear: We are aware of the potential in Turkey. So Silicon Valley is aware of us! International markets are also interested in Turkey. Our country has started to receive big investments and acquisitions. We are supporting Digital Bosphorus as Webrazzi and let you know all news of acquisitions this type. Foreign investments and Turkish brands that go international… These are all works of Digital Bosphorus.

As everyone is aware of the potential Turkey bears, we are naming it now. We can really be a big market that is dreamed of. We can extend our vision with our entrepreneurs and investors, and have a stronger faith in the future. Every one of us should adopt the name Digital Bosphorus. Those who want to do something for Turkish internet industry must absolutely use the name Digital Bosphorus. There is nothing to prevent us from being as famous as Silicon Valley, if we want to. Because we are changing and improving… Please remember to adopt Digital Bosphorus, because we are all a part of it.

Not: Thanks to Ali Bozkurt for showing the courtesy of letting us use the logo he created for Digital Bosphorus..

Original Post: Dijital Boğaziçi Silikon Vadisi’ne rakip olur mu?

This post has been written by Sami Eyidilli and published on Webrazzi Global.

Ömer Bilge Ersoy says there are 11 million social gamers in Turkey and local market is growing fast. Ersoy also says Arcade Monk is aiming to grow in EMEA and be a global.

While 212 Capital Partners investment amount is not officially announced, you would like to remember that 212 partner Emre Kurttepeli has been among Alemşah Öztürk and Ömer Bilge Ersoy founding Arcade Monk.

ArcadeMonklaunched a game called Lezzet Dünyası (World of Tastes), with a similar structure as Lezzet Dünyası, a while ago.

Founded only a few months ago, 212 Capital Partners has made its third investment, following Balerin.com and Butigo.com. We will let you know further details on this new investment for Arcade Monk.

Original Post: ArcadeMonk 212 Capital Partners’dan yatırım aldı

This post has been written by Ali Altuğ KOCA and published on Webrazzi Global.

The award for the best B2C application created by agencies was given to Yemeksepeti. The developer of the application is tmob, local Turkish tech company that we have written about before.

tmob won award for its BlackBerry application developed for Atlas Jet. We have talked to tmob Amsterdam Key Account Manager Arek Kayhan in Amsterdam and learned that the company has developed 7 apps for Blackberry so far.

Arek Kayhan told us that Yemek Sepeti application was developed completely by Istanbul office, it is an effective application for Blackberry Bold and Blackberry Curve devices and the team has developed a nice application with the experience tmob has at Blackberry part.

At BlackBerry Developer Challenge, the award for the most effective company went to  MDC Mobile Data Collection(Gulliver), the best website conversion award went to Salzburger Nachrichten Mobil (Salzburger Nachrichten) with BlackBerry WebWorks platform, the most creative application using Super App character award went to  InStyle.de (ISEC7), the award for the service making best use of payment and/or ad service went toBellshare, the most compelling application developed by a student or an academician award went to Polar Slide (Dustyroom).

Original Post: Developer Challenge ödüllerinden biri Türkiye’ye [Webrazzi BlackBerry DevCon'da]

This post has been written by Fırat Demirel and published on Webrazzi Global.

Interbank Card Center (BKM) data for 2011 reveals that the number of people who prefer e-commerce is increasing each day. The report shows that by the end of 2011, 135 million transactions, worth 22 billion TRY, with local credits cards, have been placed on local and foreign websites. When the turnovers of e-commerce for 2010 and 2011 are compared, there is an increase of 57 percent on e-commerce.

There is also an interesting details on the report; the increase of expenditure turnover is more than the number of transactions. While 147 TRY was spent per transaction in 2010, this number reached 164 TRY in 2011. This data makes us think that users tend to choose more expensive products for e-commerce expenditures now.

BKM data results show that, in 2011, the largest number of e-commerce transactions include expenditures for telecommunications, airlines and electronics items. Also remember that these data include POS figures.

You can have a look at the number of e-commerce transactions and turnover figures of 2009 – 2011 below.

In the same period, the number of transactions made with debit cards reached 1 billion 69 million, with a volume of 255 billion TRY. Compared to the same period last year, the number of transactions made with debit cards increased by 15 percent.

The report reveals that the number of credit cards in Turkey is 51 million 360 thousand 809, debit cards is 81 million 879 thousand 92, automated teller machines (ATMs) is 32 thousand 462, point of sales terminals (POS) is 1 million 976 thousand 843.

This post has been written by Ahmet Can Şit and published on Webrazzi Global.

comScore report, created in accordance with the number of unique visitors in banking, reveals that Turkey is the 13^th on the list, having one of the most active internet and social network users in Europe. The report shows that 9.4 million Turkish internet users visit banking websites.

USA and China are at the top two

United States with 84,6 million visitors in banking, is followed by China with 69 million visitors. The 3^rd of the list has a much fewer number, that is 27 million, and after the 12^th, countries have less than 10 million online banking users. Top 5 is completed by France, Germany and the UK, while Russia and Spain gets ahead of Turkey.

26 percent growth

comScore data show that online banking visitors in Turkey have increased by 1.8 million, but this can be considered a fast growth, with a ratio of 25.

While 7.49 million of 22.5 million internet users above 15 visited banking websites in December 2010, in December 2011 this number increased to 9.47 million in a total of 23.3 users.

Most Visited Banking Websites

The most visited banking website is Garanti.com.tr by 3,62 million visitors. It is followed by isbank.com, and the 3^rd is Akbank’s website. The total penetration of top 3 on the list is 87 percent of total penetration.

The ranking changes on the number of page visits, time spent and other stats. You can find the details on the first 20 websites, and compare the averages with your own visits.

These tables do not give any info on which services these users have benefited and how, but I believe that there will be studies held on the relationship of banking industry and internet in Turkey. We will continue to share further information with you.

Original Post: Türkiye’de banka sitelerini ziyaret edenler 1 yılda yüzde 26 arttı

This post has been written by Fırat Demirel and published on Webrazzi Global.

LinkedIn EMEA General Manager Ariel Eckstein said Turkey is regarded a strategically important market for LinkedIn in terms of its location and economy.

Turkish employers including Aviva, Abdi İbrahim, Medyasoft and Doğuş Holding, make use of LinkedIn’s Human Resources Solutions to find employees in Turkey.

And companies such as BASF, GEFCO and Philips, use LinkedIn Turkey for ad campaigns for customers and customer candidates through Marketing Solutions of the company.

Here are the 3 sectors that are represented the most by Turkish LinkedIn members:

Banking
IT and Software Services
Construction

Top 3 Turkish companies with the largest number of LinkedIn subscriptions are as follows:

Mynet
Turkcell
Meb

Original Post: LinkedIn Türkiye 1 milyon üyeye ulaştı

This post has been written by Ahmet Can Şit and published on Webrazzi Global.