This week the guest speaker of E-commerce course at ITU was Yusuf Azoz, who is the general director of kariyer.net website. His presentation was short, but all that said Yusuf Azoz was clear and useful.
Being the graduator Bogazici University (Electronics major) Yusuf Azoz occupied different managerial positions before joining kariyer.net. I do not remember in which year our guest speaker was brought to the position of general manager of kariyer.net, but it was about in 2002.
Talking about kariyer.net, it is a platform, where companies may find employees and may find jobs in digital format. Kariyer.net was created in 1999. In 2000 the e-model obtained first investment. The money earning model was as such, the companies that place the job offers pay money for them (on yearly basis or another way). And in 2009 the website added a new function to present model, which was the function for companies to search for candidates in the data base of kariyer.net, to have access to this data base. And this access was also for money. These two models are considered as main sources of funds for kariyer.net
According to last data, there are 15 000 000 CVs in the database of kariyer.net, and the portfolio consists of 36 000 companies in Turkey. On average the each job offer is being applied by 150 people. Today there are 265 workers, who operate under the roof of the company, and there are 10 affiliates in different regions of Turkey.
Watch video of Yusuf Azoz 2009
In collaboration with Haberturk, kariyer.net publishes a journal “HT Kariyer”, and distributes it to the human resources managers of companies, that are present in their portfolio.
Being not a start-up at the moment, kariyer.net is still working on possessing the same motivation as it was at the day of creation, being at the same time under the process of restructuring the firm into departments. This point was pointed highly by Yusuf Azoz.
One more project, that was supported by kariyer.netby a sum of investment was unisbul.com, the website for part time job offers search and there are 50 job offers currently present on the website.
One book was recommended by Yusuf Azoz, its name is “World is flat” by Thomas Friedman, and when I will find time I plan to read it.
Lastly, our guest speaker presented us 3 laws that are working in the world:
1) Moore’s Law – day by day microchips become smaller but their performance increases
2) Metcalf’s Law – utility of the internet increases in greater pace than increase in the internet users (network effect)
3) Steve Jobs Law (developed by Yusuf Azoz personally) – augmented reality is possible.
So, I thank Yusuf Azoz for his presentation.
Last week E-commerce course at ITU was visited by Mahir Erkan – Adwords and Analytics Manager at Google Turkey. Actually, I myself was absent that day, but I will try to summarize what told me my classmates. The most important thing they mentioned was that it was the best presentation till now, so I lost a lot, I think.
First of all, I want to say some words about Mahir Erkan and his education and professional profile. In 2001 our guest speaker graduated from Bogazici University (Economics Major). Till 2006 Mahir Erkan was employed by some different places, not related to internet and e-commerce, they are: fair organizing company Hannover-Messe International (marketing manager), Ogilvy & Mather and Grey Worldwide (customer relations manager). One good phrase Mahir Erkan said: it is impossible to know where you will be in 5 years, but it is important to follow the trend, and so did he giving himself to e-commerce and e-applications trend. His blog – interneticaret.blogspot.com from opening day till now provides us with the fresh and important information about e-commerce world and was cited by different publishing editions. At the moment Mahir Erkan occupies the position of Adwords and Analytics Manager at Google Turkey and for about 6 years is a successful member of Google Turkey team.
Watch video with presentation of Mahir Erkan:
Mahir Erkan, in the beginning of the speech, repeated the word of our lecturer Burak Buyukdemir about the way how to make a blog visited more and more. He said that you need to choose the theme and post the writings on the topic you like and you feel you are professional in it. By this way the rating of the blog will always rise and the results will be grateful. Hope I made it clear.
Talking about marketing in internet, Mahir Erkan mentioned that the potential growth success of e-commerce in a country may be measured by 2 indicators, they are: time the users spend in internet and time the users spend on retailing websites. This two indicators show us the volume of potential customers and their rate of increase.
A comparison was made between the USA and Turkey in the percentage usage of smart phones. In last years it was 40% in USA and 10% in Turkey, making Turkey not a profitable market in scope of mobile applications. But last data about Turkey was saying that this number rose to 25% and has huge potential to rise to 50% in near future. This is a trend. It means that this is a chance to concentrate on mobile applications.
Another example came from social media and social networks. All social medias are considered as very strong competitor towards the traditional media (TV, radio, newspaper etc.). The news is considered news when they are new. The news that comes second time is not interesting and has not value. Therefore a big market share of media market will be occupied by social media in internet, and primarily by social networks, like Facebook, Twitter etc. Moreover, these social networks are rivals among themselves that makes them even stronger day by day. Of course, TV, radio, newspapers won’t disappear so easy, but they have strong competitors now.
Talking about the killed industries, Mahir Erkan mentioned music industry. Actually it was not killed, but the way music in now distributed and ways of earning money changed. Today albums may be downloaded from internet for payment.
Lastly, our guest speaker introduced and told in brief about some web-tools, like Google Analytics, Google Adwords, SEO optimization etc. It was interesting listening to Mahir Erkan (as my friends said), hope one day I will have chance to be present on his presentation personally.
Contact Mahir Erkan:
In Gagauzia students will not study the history of Romania. This was said by bashkan of Gagauzia Mikhail Formuzal live on Publika TV. The statement was made in defiance of the Prime Minister Vlad Filat, who at the time of the report in Parliament, referring to the issue, said the law must be complied with by all.
“It’s very subtle sphere – education is very thin. Carefully as a surgeon, do no harm, be very careful in there! One stroke of a pen – the history of Romania. It will not be in Gagauzia! Will Formuzal be there or not is not important. History of Romania will not be studied in Gagauzia. Run, as Voronin, eight criminal cases, 20 more to arouse me. There will not be Formuzal, but will not be there studied the history of Romania! It must be understood. People, students will learn, and love the history of their country “, – said bashkan of Gagauzia.
Earlier it was reported that from September the 1st this year, school subject “History” will be renamed to “History of Romania and world history.” This decision was made by a group of experts at the Ministry of Education. Will also change and the ratio of hours in the teaching of the course: the history of the Romania is given more time.
On the 18th of April 2012 Ali Selim Aytuna – Mobile Application Ecosystem Manager at Nokia (Turkey) made a presentation at Istanbul Technical University – Macka Kampus for the students taking E-commerce course. Ali Selim Aytuna told about himself shortly and gave information about the development of mobile applications market in Turkey and especially the activities Nokia does in this field.
Ali Selim Aytuna had aim to become internet entrepreneur, but in 2009 he decided to enter Nokia – Turkish branch, but continued to deal with entrepreneurs, by giving them financial and technical support and representing Nokia.
The presentation started with the graph, showing the speed of usage of internet from mobile devices, and this speed is two times faster than usage of internet by PCs and laptops. The interesting point is that in 2013 people will start using mobile devices to enter the internet more than using PCs and laptops. I mean, internet users will not need PC or laptop to enter the internet and will prefer mobile phones, because it will meet all their technical requirements and will be much more easy. A lot of internet entrepreneurs develop their projects not considering mobile media, however it is vital to start considering it.
Mobile phones penetration is very fast, in 2010 it was rising with rate of 100% yearly. People find much more easy to use mobile phones, because they may use it everywhere, and would like to make as much as possible operations, not only send SMS and talking to each other, but also make payments, watching video, playing games etc., in one word do the same operations as they do on PCs and laptops. And the speed and costs of internet on mobile devices develop day by day, supporting the trend.
Coming to numbers, Ali Selim Aytuna shared them with us, so today early downloaded number of applications from Nokia OVI shop is about 50 million, and OVI shop in Turkey occupies the first position in Europe in this aspect. In the world the first country is China, the second is India and the third is again Turkey.
Talking about the statistics of previous years, Ali Selim Aytuna shared with us the point of successful mobile applications in Turkey. Turkish customers do not wish to pay money for the downloading and using of mobile applications. However, one of the ways to make them pay for an application is to offer a demo version for free, but then offer for money the full version. All games and another applications that appear abroad, should be changed to local tastes. For example, Snake game was changed to Halay dance and was very popular. By the was Turkish customers download a lot of games and like them, but those game have higher probability of success if they are adopted and changed locally.
Our presenter gave some suggestion to those, who wish to launch an internet based project in 2013 and so on. Firstly, usage on mobile devices must be taken into consideration. Secondly, local tastes and local characteristics must be taken into consideration, because what is successful in USA may not be successful in Turkey.
Thank Ali Selim Aytuna for presentation. I think a lot of young entrepreneurs are now thinking a lot about the mobile media and will consider this point while developing their internet projects.
Contact Ali Selim Aytuna:
This week the creator of markafoni.com web project Tolga Tatari was one of the guests, who made a short speech at ITU-Macka Kapmus to the students taking E-commerce course. Tolga Tatari told in general about himself and his entrepreneurship experience, and also, gave some information about markafoni.com and other internet based projects.
As Tolga Tatari told us, he was a bad student. The entrepreneurship life of Tolga Tatari started when he was 18. He graduated from Bilgi University (Visual Communication Design Major), and while being a university student Tolga Tatari, together with his partners, who were much more older than him, gave life to the first project – Hip Productions, related to music, DJs etc. But the crisis of 2000 in Turkey became an obstacle in the further development of the firm and the project was stopped. In 2002 Tolga Tatari was one of the creators of evlilik.com website, but in 2003 they decided to sell it. The funds received were spent on opening and Investor Company, named Akinon, and till now Akinon provided a lot of investments in projects of internet entrepreneurs. In 2008 Tolga Tatari decided to create his own e-commerce project, and in September 2008, the first Turkish special club online private shopping website was opened under the name – markafoni.com, having Tolga Tatari as one of the creators.
The idea, the concept of markafoni.com was a closed private shopping group, where only people, who had invitations could register and purchase the products. The idea was taken from abroad. A French company – Vente-Privee – appeared with such idea, but Tolga Tatari and his partners managed to adopt this concept to Turkish market. Opening capital in amount of 300 000 EURO came from a worldwide know investor Ben Holmes, who is also known as investor of Skype. Later on a lot of different small size investors also invested funds in markafoni.com. Firstly, there were 5 employees operating in markafoni.com. The first users where the relatives and friends of employees, whom about 2500 of invitations were sent. Later on, together with each purchase an amount of invitations was sent and by this way the number of registered users was rising.
The first sold product was Ferry sunglasses (4 items), and they were purchased by the Markafoni stuff with the scope of testing the system. Before launching the website, the most difficult thing was to persuade the brand high-level managers to collaborate and let their products be sold by internet. Big global brands, having high revenues worldwide didn’t see high potential in internet sales, some of them had their own websites, where 1-2 products per month were sold. However, on the other side, there were also the firms, mostly local brands, that supported the idea. At first, it was very and very difficult to bring a brand to the website, a campaign on the website could last 3-4 months, till other brand agrees to work with markafoni.com. Talking about the market, firstly, in Turkey people were not used to shopping and purchasing clothes, footwear, glasses etc. online, and by word of mouth, day by day much more people found it convenient and easy to go shopping to markafoni.com. As a result, it may be said that Markafoni created private shopping market in Turkey. In 2009 Markafoni decided to go abroad and at the moment there are companies in Australia, Ukraine and Greece. There was also unsuccessful experience in South Korea.
In Turkey about 500 of employees are working in markafoni.com. About 50 000 of products are sold daily. Major users of markafoni.com are females. 5,5 million registered users till now and the number of brands is about 100, this is in Turkey. 50% of sales are done to customers in Istanbul.
There about 15 of similar concept firms opened in Turkey, that are considered as competitors of markafoni.com, they are limango, trendyol, daybyday and others. But, taking in consideration statistics data, that each person tracks in average 2,2 websites, in near future most of them will be closed.
At the moment, the concept of markafoni.com is changing, because the website has over 5 million users and cannot be considered as closed group. Today, the company tries to position the website as “mode and life style” products selling website.
From 2010 Tolga Tatari decided to work on different projects and lunched most of them successfully. One of them is grupfoni.com, the website that lists the entertainment places in Istanbul and proposes the users to discover the city by making different reservations.
Lastly, I want to mention that in 2009, as I remember, markafoni.com found a big investor, who is the only investor at the moment – MIH Alegro (owner of multinational mass media company Naspers).
Markafoni is a really revolutionary project, that is being developed day by day, and, I wish the managers luck in their further operations.
Contact Tolga Tatari:
A resident of Indianapolis became the first person who made over a million edits in Wikipedia as Gawker reports.
Justin Knapp began editting the online encyclopedia in March 6, 2005. This date is listed on his personal page in the Wikipedia where it appears under the nickname koavf. Taking in consideration this data, it turns out that Justin Knapp brings to the encyclopedia on average 385 edits per day (excluding corrections he added as an anonymous user).
Justin Knapp is 30 years old, and he studied at Indiana University, where he received degrees in philosophy and political science. Education has determined the range of his interests, and most of the time he makes edits to articles on politics, philosophy and popular culture.
Responding to the congratulations of other editors of Wikipedia on the discussion page, Justin Knapp wrote that participation in the project was prompted by the sudden loss of his job.
Second in the ranking of the most prolific English-language editors of Wikipedia with active accounts was Neil Edwards from Wales. He has made over 625,000 edits in Wikipedia. In Russian “Wikipedia” the first place in the number of edits (125,000) is owned by the user with the nickname Ilya Mauter.
Wikipedia appeared in 2001. For information filling in the encyclopedia responsability lies on the volunteer editors, and their number around the world exceeds 90,000. Wikipedia is the fifth in the list of most visited websites in the world.
Ilkan Gokyilmaz – creator and CEO of sporx.com made a short presentation at ITU – Macka Kampus on the 11th of April 2012. The concept and model of sporx.com differs from, let’s say, traditional e-commerce models, so, it was interesting to learn about so unusual project and its details.
Talking about himself, Ilkan Gokyilmaz mentioned that he was born in 1976 in Istanbul. In 1998 he graduated from Bogazici University (Computer Engineering Major). Being in the graduate status one of the projects, that Ilkan Gokyilmaz and his classmates were developing for a course, was the creation of e-mail, similar to yahoo and hotmail that were present that time. They managed to do it and called it Trekmail, because they liked Star Trek. After this success, by coincidence, the group found its first client, whom it was supposed to create a website. In 1999 three friends from that group, created a company, whose name was BIMTEK (coming from Bora, Ilkan, Mete Teknoloji) on the territory of Bogazici University with the support of KOSKEB. In 2000 Bora and Mete moved to USA and Ilkan Gokyilmaz together with the first client, created a company, whose name is Maximum Iletisim Hizmetleri A. S.. Till the year 2002 Ilkan Gokyilmaz occupied the position of IT director and from 2003 he is the CEO of the company. In 2005 a new website was created – superspor.com, and only starting from this moment the firms began growing. In 2007 the website name was changed from generic superspor.com to unique and still not copied brand name – sporx.com.
Sporx.com is a one of the biggest sport news websites in Turkey. There are a lot of services and activities beside the publishing news that is done by the company, but I will tell about them later. At the beginning there were 2 employees working at company, but now there are 40 full time employees + about 100 freelancers. There are 100-150 news posts published on the website daily. The traffic of the website is 500.000 visitors daily. The traffic is the highest during supper, the reason behind it is the transfer season in football calendar, and the desire of supporters to learn the latest transfer news each day. In Alexa TR the rating of sporx.com is 52. 15% of visitors visit the website from their mobile devices. 90% of visitors read the news about football. And 90% of those visitors read about three big football clubs in Turkey – Galatasaray, Fenerbahce and Besiktas. Football is the topic that is highly popular in Turkey and this fact shows that Ilkan Gokyilmaz and sporx.com team chose the theme with high potential for their project.
Advertising is primary activity and source of revenue for sporx.com. Generating high traffic sporx.com manages to attract advertisers to their website. All posts are created by the company journalists and writers, that are even published on other websites, that are considered content purchasers of sporx.com (another source of revenue). Live results are also present on sporx.com and they are purchased and come in XML format from world sport agencies (this is one of the costs). Sporx.com is highly involved in mobile projects, it lunched its application for Nokia and Apple products. The company collaborates with mobile operators, being the supplier of sport SMSes (Sporx.com is the only partner of AVEA – AVEA Lig Paketi).
Sporx.com supported the creation and development of by-projects – another 3 websites: karakartal.com, webaslan.com and superfb.com. The purpose was to use the popularity of those clubs, generate traffic and then receive advertising.
20% of traffic comes from abroad and primarily from Germany, where a lot of Turkish people live. So, the company established partnerships with a German mobile company and provides SMS services (sport news, live results) to people in Germany and executes other projects.
The competitors of sporx are fanatic, fotomac, htspor, ntvspor, mackolik etc.
SporxTV.com – is another project developed by Ilkan Gokyilmaz and sporx.com team. This website provides sport videos.
Two journals were bought by sporx.com, and one of them is Futbol Extra. So, sporx.com invested in printed media, which is at first glance illogical investment, but there are still journal readers in Turkey, and moreover, this increased the image and awareness of sporx.com.
Otoaraba.com – is a car selling portal, in which the management of sporx.com also invested. At the moment the portal is 5th in Turkey.
Sporx.com is official partner of Adidas: www.sporx.com/adidas
So, as you see Ilkan Gokyilmaz and sporx.com team is open to and invests in different projects. They do not generate high revenues as online sales providing websites, but their development and success is stable and rising steadily. Wish them good luck!
Contact Ilkan Gokyilmaz:
From 9th to 29th of June (2012) there will be held Istanbul Shopping Fest 2012. 20 days and nights, hundreds of modern shopping centers 24 hours a day will offer shoppers from around the world their products at attractive prices. Istanbul Shopping Fest 2012 is an excellent opportunity for foreign tourists to purchase products at great discount prices up to 50%. Moreover, they may benefit from paid back taxes on customs, while leaving Turkey. The bonuses for those who like shopping will be consist of numerous actions, contests, fashion shows, prize drawings, entertainment and all kinds of parties. Do not miss the visit to shopping areas of Istanbul, such as: Sultanahmet Square, Abdi Ipekchi Prospect, Baghdad Street, Bahari, Sisli, Nisantasi, Fatih and Istiklal Street.
Guide and translator services: Tvoygid.com – individual guides and translators in Istanbul.
Last year, in the Istanbul Shopping Fest participated dozens of shopping malls, hundreds of firms and owners of famous brands, and more than 5 million tourists flew from around the world. Istanbul Shopping Fest 2012, being held between June 9th and June 29th, is bringing shopping and fun together again, with setting of Istanbul’s historical and cultural assets. The Istanbul Shopping Fest is an annual shopping fest held in Istanbul, Turkey.
Guide and translator services: Tvoygid.com – individual guides and translators in Istanbul.
Melih Odemis, one of the three creators and partners of yemeksepeti.com website, last week made a presentation at ITU – Macka Kapmus. The presentation was organized for the students taking E-commerce course. Melih Odemis told the class briefly about his life and about the yemeksepeti.com web-project from its creation till present.
So, Melih Odemis was born in 1976 in Istanbul. In 1999 he graduated from Bogazici University (Computer Engineering Major). The years Melih Odemis was studying at university were the years, when internet passed to a commercialization state and he was lucky to be one of the first young engineers in Turkey, who had chance to learn and use World Wide Web. As his parents and older relatives suggested, saying that it is better to start professional life in a big firm or corporation to get experience, young Melih worked for one year at Citybank. At the end of 2000, he stops working in Citybank and together with two friends they create their website – yemeksepeti.com. By the way Melih Odemis managed to obtain MBA degree, studying at Bogazici University between the years 1999 and 2002.
Yemeksepeti.com successful story told by Melih Odemis:
At the beginning yemeksepeti.com staff was composed of 5 employees (3 entrepreneurs, 1 secretary and 1 employee, who was sending orders by fax to restaurants). Melih Odemis was responsible for Soft and IT tasks and remains responsible for IT issues till now. The idea was taken from American market where similar models of ordering food online were present and local application of the model was found. First office was located in Etiler district of Istanbul and was 25 m2. For 2-3 months the young entrepreneurs were writing the software and in January 2001 the website was created. At first only 26 restaurants were present on the website. After 3-4 months of operation yemeksepeti.com was receiving 30-40 orders per day. On week-ends and on the night hours Melih Odemis and other entrepreneurs were following the operations by themselves.
Yemeksepeti.com model represents a website, where the descriptions of different restaurants dishes are present. The customers enter the website, register, specify their location and order the food from the restaurant operating in their location. The restaurants receive the orders from yemeksepeti.com by fax, e-mail etc. Payment is done by customers directly to restaurants on delivery, so no credit card data information needed to make an order. The restaurants are supposed to transfer to yemeksepeti.com an amount of commission per each order. Commission amount differs between 2-10% +VAT. This is short description of the model, and with 90% rate the model remains the same till present.
In the years yemeksepeti.com was created e-entrepreneurs had more time to think over the models, the speed of competitors’ appearance was not as fast as it is in present. Moreover, the beginning of 21st century was characterized by crisis and unfavorable conditions for internet projects investment in Turkey; however yemeksepeti.com model was not the one that yields huge monthly cost. This factor may be named as its strength.
150, 400, 900, 1500 … orders per day is the statistics of orders received by yemeksepeti.com at the end of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on years of operation. At the moment yemeksepeti.com receives 50 000 orders daily.
In 2008 20% of company’s shares were purchased by a German investor. At that time the website was receiving 10 000 orders per day.
In 2010 yemeksepeti.com started to operate in Russia (Moscow and Saint Petersburg) and UAE (Dubai).
The first food chain that started to collaborate with yemeksepeti.com was Domino’s Pizza.
The main rule of yemeksepeti.com is that the prices for packing orders coming from restaurants own websites should be equal to the prices published on yemeksepeti.com
Yemeksepeti.com is always searching for and launching new campaigns and promotions. Some examples of them are Campus (student discount) and Joker (instant discount) models.
Over 4000 restaurants are now registered on website, however from 2001 till present the amount of restaurants than no longer are present on yemeksepeti.com website is over 2000. So, as you understand, the rotation is high, because yemeksepeti.com demands high quality service from restaurants.
Contact Melih Odemis:
Google has begun testing augmented reality glasses, as The New York Times informs. Photos of glasses are published in the Google + social network and are presented below (more pictures).
Looking at the photos, we see that the prototype of Google augmented reality glasses does not have lenses. The device is a ring, which is held up on head by nose and ear fasteners. In front of the right eye there are built in a tiny transparent screen and the camera, which looks in the direction “from the user.”
Technical characteristics of the glasses are not published by Google, but presumably, there are speakers, microphone and GPS and Wi-Fi built in.
An example of the use of glasses is shown in the video “Project Glass: one day…”
The device informs the user of incoming messages, reminds the appointments and helps to get to the right place, displaying a map with directions. The user communicates with the glasses by voice commands.
All information is superimposed on an image of actual reality that the user sees by own eyes, and does not overshadow it. The technology of introducing virtual objects in a picture of the real world is called “augmented reality”.
Most probably the camera in the Google augmented reality glasses is not only used for photo and video checking, but also to analyze the environment and situation. For example, when the user looks out of the window there is the weather forecast displayed.
In the Google+ social network the information about the Google augmented reality glasses was shared by Google employees Babak Parviz, Steve Lee and Sebastian Thrun. They asked the users to name the tools and options, which, in their opinion, should be carried by the device.
As The New York Times informs, Steve Lee is responsible for the development of navigation software. In past he had previously participated in the creation of “Latitude” service. Sebastian Thrun work on developing the robotic machines that move without the “live” driver. Babak Parviz is one of the founders of the prototype contact lens augmented reality.
Information about the desire of Google to develop glasses became known in early February. It is unknown if the company will the company launch the device on the market after the test run.
aandrey9 