Turkish Social Ad Network Co-Founder On The Growth Of Social Networking In Turkey [Interview]

Usually we tend to focus on the world of social media and the statistics surrounding social media in North America, so when a Turkish Social Ad Network reached out to me with a pitch I thought I’d take the opportunity to find out what’s going on in the Turkish social networking world.  Gülseren Arslan, co-founder of adnboost, shared some interesting statistics with me that reveal that social networking in Turkey is booming.  Read on to find out more.

Before asking Arslan about social media usage in Turkey, I asked her to provide a bit of background on adnboost.  She founded adnboost with co-founder Cevdet Süer and Ahmet Arslan in April 2011.  She tells me, “adnboost is a new social advertising network in Turkey and is the first and only Facebook ad providing company in Turkey.”
The company recently announced a partnership with SupersonicAds, an international leader in virtual currency monetization for online games.  Arslan tells me, “SupersonicAds’ experienced team and technology combined with the company’s know-how and our strong background in Turkey’s internet advertising industry will enable us to be the largest social media ad network in Turkey with a reach of more than 20 million people performing an estimated 200 million activities on social networks per month.”
Because adnboost specializes in Facebook advertising I asked Arslan if she could provide any statistics about Facebook usage in Turkey.  She explained, “the most popular social network in Turkey is Facebook.  Currently there are 31,247,120 Facebook users in Turkey, which makes it number 6 in the ranking of all Facebook statistics by country.”
But Facebook isn’t the only popular social network in Turkey.  There are an estimated 6.5 million Twitter users in Turkey, 1 million LinkedIn users, 1 million Google Plus users and 1 million Eksi sozluk users (Eski sozluk is a collaborative hypertext ‘dictionary’).  Arslan points out the impressive fact that “Only 4% of Turkish online users do NOT use social networks.” This could have something to do with the fact that Turkeys population is very young, with the average age being 29.2.
Gülseren Arslan hypothesizes that the “large percentage of young people in the country increases the popularity of social media” and explains that “70 percent of the Turkish population is under 35 years of age.”  Additionally, she points out that Turkish people like engagement.  “Turkey has been named the most social and flirtatious country in the world by a new study by social network Tagged.  Turks, and specifically Turkish men, sent the most friend requests as well as the most “winks”—a flirty communication method on Tagged similar to the Facebook Poke.”
Are you familiar with the Turkish social networking scene?  We’d love to hear your experience below.