Likemind Istanbul was one of the events I had in mind lately. I could finally attend the event, (on it’s 11th edition), which is bending the startup scene in Turkey and the interactive agencies together. Özgür Alaz and Alemşah Öztürk are organising Likemind Istanbul with the motto „an opportunity to enjoy coffee and conversation “. I have observed, that the participants were mostly from interactive agencies, web agencies and media planners. I had the chance to meet people from these agencies and some startups.

Exoin is one of them. The founders of Exoin, Hasan Toprakkaya and Sinan Kaplan. They are planning to bring a Tumblr like service, but because of some important subjects, prefer not to launch the technically ready service for now. One of them is the launching language of the platform. At this point, I shared my opinion about starting local. To be successful in a country, you have to have a crew there. Even Facebook has a hard time in Germany. But anyway, starting the creation of upper grade sevices is a good sign. In an environment, where the country’s biggest media establishment is trying to spread the formats like “yazduvara.com” from ancient times over its own channels, it is important to see two young entrepreneurs thinking about a microblog service.

In the short time I have spent in Istanbul, in the intense traffic of meetings, I have concluded that the market is looking forward for many new things and there is an arising possibility of decentral startup mentality, like in Europe. All the factors, which will make it happen are following: The new generation is convenient for creating initiatives, the market is small but expanding, inverstors are slowly awakening and the people who have already important positions in the market, can now concentrate on new projects. That is going to allow them to analyze the subordinate wave profoundly and lead their way. In the following months, we will be hearing many new startup names.

At the end of march, I participated to the conference Global Marketing and Advertising Organisation in Sao Paolo, Brasil as a speaker. From a general point of view, concerning the economic structure and the construction for internet and mobile internet, Brasil and Turkey have a lot in common.

Talking for internet, there were many interesting names among the speakers. Especially, Dalton Yamaguishi, one of the first speakers, from a media company called Abril. We can compare Abril with one the biggest media concerns in Turkey Doğan Group, who has a wide variaty of channels and a huge capital power. He held a speech about how social networking is influencing our lifes. He made the causation for broadband internet clear and supported it with the portal examples like Facebook, Flickr, etc. The general look is the same as in Turkey. He mentioned that, they also attract a great deal of users over there. Nonetheless, the question what happens if social networking would move to mobile internet, remained unanswered, for he mentioned that he does not know the answer. He specified the big potential on this theme and the importance of using it effective and in the right way. But of course those are general approaches. At the evening I had the chance to talk with him more in-depth and he said that they would make serious investments on mobile internet. I told him about the developments in Turkey. One of the most interesting thing for him was in sake of raising the incomes, that the operators put Facebook banners to their portals. Consequently, there was a big rise in their incomes. That way, the operators made some profit from the Facebook effect. I wonder how would Mark Zuckerberg comment, if he saw the banners in irrelevant sites. This is a joke of course, but I still think, if he heard that people are profiting from what he invented, he would request something.

My personal idea is, for creating the large masses for mobile internet, the operators, internet actors and all other actors should work on a collective software platform, otherwise it would be really hard to create one. There should be developments like Android I guess.

The speech of AC Nielsen gave also some good information, which I found interesting. Especially the Latin America demographic features, given by Roberto Ferrero Vezquez (Business Unit Director, Nielsen Mobile) on internet usage percentage, mobile internet and penetration of GSM helped us understanding the market there. I could help people, who are in need of further information on this subject.

Yahoo’s Senior Director Michael Bayle made us laugh and also told about the big actors and the present situation of world mobile internet market from Yahoo’s point of view. It was nice to listen an insider with that much of experience. Yahoo mobile is really aggressive and seems to become more aggressive.

The most sophisticated and guiding speeches were made by David Oberholzer. David is in the Best Practices Commitee of MMA Global and is very experienced. He gave concrete answers to all questions asked about mobile internet, authorized marketing, mobile spam, etc.
He is a very friendly person and I guess he would be helpful to anyone for further questions.

If I should summarize what I have experienced all day long, I should say the formations on the side of Latin America are very similar to Turkey’s. Everyone dealing with mobile internet, edge, etc. and also broadband gained interest. At the same time, it seems that people are in search for social networking, because the markets are open for those kind of sites. Maybe we should also consider taking some positions in that area.

Our special thanks to Reyhan Baysan, who translated and will translate the blog to english for us.

The conference was mainly concentrated on subjects like law, being a blogger, social networking, open source initiatives and it was possible to meet many people coming from all around the world from Sweden to USA and discover initiatives from different poles. As we are now in the period of waiting new initiatives for Turkey on different frequencies, between presentations I spent my time evaluating on this matter. I talked to representatives of various initiatives, who are intensified on different subjects about their investment plans for Turkey. One perceptible fact comes along, which is also not really unexpected. With its strong growing potential, Turkey stands in a good point in the radar of middle-sized investors from Europa.

Undouptedly, the projects, which are rather easier to be converted ‘logistically’ are more enthusiastic, whereas the other projects, needing to be in strong connection with the settled regional market, are considering the operational costs or communication defficincies and acting more deliberately. Leaving Sevenload out of account, since there are not any decided initiatives yet, I think it will not be meaningful to reveal the names of the projects. But in the following months, as we will be having progresses, I guess Expodea will be one of the groups, who will be informed on the first hand.

For the photos and videos from the event: sevenload/re:publica’08

Since yesterday, in official blogs of creator and CTO Ibrahim Evsan and the site, related articles to the subject has been publishing frequently. What I experienced by reading the related articles and interviews is, that the platform has strenghten its (understanding of pro channel publishing?) and concentrared more on its social network. Instead of becoming just a video search engine, Sevenload is aiming to become a creativity platform, where its users upload their own product of videos. For this reason, to prevent their users from trying other sites, it entegrated Youtube to its own broadcasting. They will be publishing again with a new construction of design and substructre. A couple of months ago, as I have met Mr. Evsan in Sevenload’s techinical head office, he mentioned their aim of becoming a more social and interactive video-photograpy platform. Hediye Evsan, who is in charge for Turkey, underlines everytime, that they base their plans for Turkey from the beginning on a creative content and content channels.

I think at this point, the changes which will occur in Turkey after Sevenload enters the turkish market should be considered profoundly. In Germany, Sevenload contains big productions like Big Brother in his body. When they actualize such an enterprise in Turkey, turkish video sharing sites, which actually don’t have much added value in the market, Sevenload will take their places instantly with its well-prepared context. 240 thousand codes, written within six months will bring a considerably big substuctural power and a weighty component will soon be in Turkey. According to my opinion, the contextual deals with various groups, will play a big role for Sevenload’s introduction.

If its localization actions concentrated on Turkey is going to be planned well and put into practise, there will be not many obstacles for them to be the market leader.
I wish Sevenload team all the best and luck for their new version and international interference.