Making Information Useful

A major newspaper in Turkey claims that Turkey is closing economical gap it has with some European countries, particularly with Germany. And the only argument leads them to make such an unfortunate/misleading statement is; GDP ratio of that couple has decreased to 3.2 in 2009 from 5.5 (1985). Seriously? I don't see any of those 2 curves meeting at some point...

Mobile Penetration Rate of Turkey / World

Google recently announced Google Public Data Explorer as a Labs product, it takes only few seconds to pull and visualize any data from various public data sets. Fun!

Web meets phone

Today, I am thrilled with Google Nexus One launch, which I believe will be remembered as a significant milestone in the future. I've been dogfooding (testing) that phone for almost 1 month all I can say is that, it is a piece of art with both its hardware and software. It has a super-fast processor, a very high resolution camera and a gorgeous screen.

iPhone application invasion in Turkey

There have been many major application releases in Turkey recently; mostly from the carriers and media companies. With the recent introduction of 3G to the market and marketing muscle of carriers for data consumption on high-end phones; Turkey is quickly ramping up to the position it was supposed to be in a -mature mobile market- world. Here are some recent numbers from the the leading operator of the market;

Turkcell has sold about 200,000 VINN modems and netbooks since it introduced 3G

on July 30th 2009

• The number of people in Turkey who have transitioned to 3G since July 30th is more

than 4 million

• There are about 2 million active 3G users in Turkey

• The number of Turkcell subscribers who have used Turkcell’s video service has

reached 1 million

• About 72% of Turkcell’s total data traffic takes place within the 3G network

• 93% of VINN modem users prefer 4GB packages and 78% of VINN subscribers use

Turkcell 3G for their broadband Internet needs

I found opportunity to review those recent apps and all I can say is they are already ahead of the curve in many fundamental aspects such as; speed, usability and stability. Vodafone's app is basically a follower to Turkcell's traffic app for Istanbul. But "support for all operators" is a thumbs-up for it. Turkcell's new app Pusula aims to meet all "local" needs of its subscribers with a cool AR support. CNN Turk's app is my favorite, which provides almost all the news-related content in a very intuitive form, including live stream. And ATV's application is a live-stream app as well, which runs pretty smoothly so far. Since I don't use my iPhone's phone function anymore, thanks to all those apps, it is my mobile multimedia device from now on.

We all know that Turkey is still an attractive market for Internet just because it is not very mature yet and Internet penetration is still relatively low and growing fast. But what I believe is the potential for mobile Internet is way bigger mostly because we were that late on 3G launch. There are many new value propositions that digital agencies can provide to meet their clients' short and medium term mobile needs, starting with basics; mobile presence.

a pizza story

everything started with a whisper to google voice search... and it all only took 7 minutes... congrats Domino's for building such a mobile friendly site which is extremely easy to navigate through and also delivering till midnight!

World's Best CEO 2009 award goes to Turkcell's Sureyya Ciliv

Turkcell was my first employer after graduation and I was thrilled with the energy of that world-class team. On a period of increasing local competition, Turkcell continued to differentiate itself by investing at new businesses and technologies. Tone&Win one of the products I've also worked for at mobile marketing team was a real risk but also a unique approach to push innovation envelope particularly at mobile advertising. Today I've learned that Turkcell's CEO has received the WCA 2009 award and was shown as the best CEO of 2009. And early this year Turkcell was listed in Infotech 100 list with its exceptional performance during global recession. I do believe that "taking no risk" is the real risk that companies should avoid to take in that era and am very happy to see such successful risk-takers from my country. Congrats Turkcell and thanks for your significant contribution to mobile space !

Navigation meets Cloud

Google has just announced its approach to navigation, an Internet-connected GPS navigation system. Have a look at it. And yes, it is free!

Else Will Follow

"Focusing on user" is a very widely used statement by many companies, but I honestly can say that it really is a very fundamental piece of Google culture. I believe, companies running in the industries at which success levels are purely based end-user acceptance, should listen their users more than anything else. And Internet is such a unique platform for managing that effectively at a massive and statistically meaningful scale. One thing to note though is listening users matters as long as you value every single idea regardless of how similar it is to your own ideas.

Here is an example; Google Product Ideas. You can share your ideas about various products here or vote on others'. And they really do matter. If you want take part in that, give it a try by checking the ideas about mobile! And yes, if you want to interact with your audience in a similar way, Moderator is a very easy and effective way to do that.

Thanks Digital Age!

Digital Age, a monthly magazine in Turkey which mainly covers digital information technologies, new life styles and new businesses models; has shown me among 50 people that should be followed on Twitter in Turkey citing my feeds related to the mobile space. Thanks Digital Age!

Mobile as Your Primary Screen

Mobile phones are always named as the third screen after TV and computers. And actually those statements are usually made and considered as a compliment for mobile. I believe we're getting very close to an age where the ranking will be upside-down. One of things that I've noticed during a recent concert was that; a very significant number of people were actually watching the performance through the screens of their phones or cameras . There are many social motivators behind recording/sharing every moment we live but the fact is that even live video broadcasting is now just a matter of good internet connection and a high end phone.