If you think social TV is just an English-language phenomenon, think again. Since we launched our list of social TV companies, we’ve learned about some exciting platforms that are innovating and disrupting from different corners and regions of the world. One of these companies that has gained traction in their market is Turkey-based Tivilog.
Founder and CEO Murat Buyurgan described to us that they “work like GetGlue but only in the TV category.” They’ve already launched partnerships with three different TV shows and one network in Turkey. They’re about to launch a major partnership with Show TV, one of the country’s largest networks. We spoke with Buyurgan about the state of the TV industry and Turkey and their plans to grow the company globally.
Lost Remote: What’s Tivilog?
Murat Buyurgan: Tivilog is a social TV check-in app and second screen platform for Turkish people. Users check-in to their favorite TV programs, and earn badges and points. Tivilog finished it’s beta period in at the end of April. Today there are about 5,000 users. We are working on our iPhone app, which we plan to finish at the end of August.
LR: What’s social TV like in Turkey?
Buyurgan: Turkish people always liked to talk about TV series and programs. They tweet about TV series and become the fans of official Facebook pages. TV series started to use Twitter hashtags this year. Some of them promote their hashtags during the series on TV. About 1,500 tweets with a hashtag can make a TV program a trending topic on Twitter. Internet TV services Turkcell and Tivibu just started to use Twitter and Facebook integrations with their TV watching services. Turkcell is the largest GSM operator in Turkey and Tivibu is the brand off largest ADSL company TTNET.
We can easily say that Tivilog is the first and only social TV startup in Turkey.
LR: When will you be launching an English version?
Buyurgan: An English version of the web site and mobile browser version will be online at the end of June.
LR: How does Tivilog make TV more social?
Buyurgan: Users earn points and badges from the shows they checked-in. We will be giving promotional gifts about TV shows. We will give our users a chance to go to TV studios, to meet with actors and take photos with them.
We just finished a campaign with our partner Mint Productions. We gave Tivilog members a chance to go to Seksenler studio, watch the production and meet actors. Tivilog users who earned the Seksenler badge will get to go to the studio, watch the production and meet actors. We are now focused on Turkish-speaking users which is said to be about 200-230 million.