In the social app market in the Middle East, the market in countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates is gradually becoming saturated, and competition is becoming increasingly fierce. However, Turkey, with its unique geographical advantages, high Internet penetration rate, and relatively open cultural environment, is becoming a new battlefield for social applications.
On the social track, with the surge in the number of applications, content homogeneity has become serious, and the Saudi and UAE markets tend to be saturated, and many developers say that “local users’ money no longer seems to be as easy to make as it used to be”. As a result, opening up new markets in neighboring countries has become one of the important strategies for latecomers. With its unique geographical advantages and high investment in mobile networks in recent years, Turkey, located at the junction of Asia and Europe, has attracted the attention of many developers.
According to public data, by the end of 2024, Turkey’s Internet users exceeded 92 million, with a usage rate of 87.1%, exceeding the global average of 67%, showing strong growth potential. In addition, compared with other countries in the Middle East, Turkey has formed a more tolerant religious culture under the influence of the “secular” system, allowing the public to openly believe in many faiths. For social applications, this means that the leniency of content moderation may be improved, and it also provides developers and users with more freedom and broader creative space.
Driven by market competition and favorable conditions, Turkey’s social application market has shown a significant growth trend since last year, and Lovi is one of the more representative products in this boom. According to its official data, the app has reached 4 million users since its launch in March last year, most of whom are from Turkish users, and has recently entered the top 15 of the local social free list. Judging from the advertising data displayed by Insightrackr, the product has not increased its advertising efforts recently, so it is judged that this list is likely due to its own natural volume.
In addition to Lovi, in the other two social apps Tolky and MatchPub, which are also popular in Turkey, we found that these apps have invariably chosen to create new ways to play in the matching function under the basic functions such as live broadcast and tipping. Although this feature can be seen in most social apps, how can it improve user engagement and experience through differentiated matching gameplay? What is the difference between socializing in Turkey and socializing in Saudi Arabia? Solving these problems may be a major breakthrough in the local market.
Countdown matching, “active socialization” under big data
Influenced by strict religious culture, “faceless” voice applications have become a very popular way for Saudis to make friends, but local live broadcast platforms have less entertainment content, female anchors are even rarer, and supervision is very strict, and they will be banned if they are not careful.
In contrast, Turkey’s religious culture is relatively open, entertainment live broadcasts are more common, female anchors have a high level of participation, and they are relatively free in dress and interaction style, and the overall supervision is relatively relaxed. As a result, Turkey’s live streaming social application market has developed rapidly in recent years.
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Although Lovi has not been online for a long time, the growth is very obvious. Judging from its download area, it can be said that it is a live broadcast social application specially created for Turkish users, and the exclusivity of the crowd can also avoid some cultural conflicts to a certain extent.
The overall design of the application is not complicated, and you can see multiple live broadcast rooms on the homepage, most of which involve entertainment content such as life sharing and talent display. According to the popularity of the live broadcast room, the most popular live broadcast room ranking will be displayed to users to attract more people to participate.
“Only deeper social networking can ensure user activity and stickiness”, therefore, under the basic form of live broadcasting, users can also have 1V1 interaction with each other, and more in-depth communication can be carried out through private message chat or direct video. How to enable users to spontaneously open such a form of interaction depends not only on the initiative of individual users, but also on the platform, which requires more guidance.
In order to drive users to be more active in making friends, Lovi has launched two major gameplays: matching and geographical location dating. Based on the basic information and interests filled in on the user’s personal page, the system will automatically match users with common interests. At the same time, the matching process is made into a dynamic page, and with a few seconds of countdown, users can choose to “accept” or “cancel”. If you do not select the timeout, the match will be automatically canceled, but once you choose to accept, you will be taken to the video call interface.
The uncertainty of matching, coupled with the quick selection in a very short period of time and the opening of dialogue mode, gives users a strong sense of excitement. It not only stimulates users’ curious experience, but also greatly helps to increase the activity of the application.
In addition, with the help of Lovi’s location function, users can quickly establish contact with nearby people, and even develop from online netizens to offline friends, providing a good platform foundation for users to expand their circle of friends.
In general, although Lovi does not have much innovative content in form, it creates a different dating experience by refined the matching function and puts the dating option into the hands of users themselves. And this experience is the key to impressing users and accumulating retention in the early stage of product development.
Random interaction “open blind box”, two-way selection is safer?
On the Turkish social list, there are also two apps in the top 15, Tolky and MatchPub, which have also made “new tricks” of matching gameplay.
According to insightrackr data, Tolky was launched in October 2023, and according to incomplete statistics, the app has been downloaded about 477,000 so far, of which nearly 83.1% are from Turkey. Similar to Lovi, Tolky can also see a lot of live cards on the live broadcast homepage and categorize them according to the type of content.
And more exciting than the Lovi system matches based on interests and countdown selections, Tolky has introduced a random match feature that can send or receive messages to random users. Although it is not certain whether the whole process is completely random, it is like “opening a blind box”, bringing a tense and surprising experience to users.
In addition, Tolky has also added card like gameplay, through the pictures shared by users in the app, to express their love for it, so as to obtain the possibility of active friendship. This shows that apps are more creative and flexible in guiding user interactions.
However, since Tolky does not enforce real-name authentication, you only need to enter an ID name to enter the application, which also leads to the existence of some “inappropriate content”. Although the app has many obvious prompts to prohibit violence, be polite in language, etc., it is still difficult to escape the complexity of users.
Another MatchPub that was launched as early as 2021 has official data showing that it has more than 8 million users. Although this app is not specifically aimed at the Turkish market, and there are many Indian users in it, it has always maintained a relatively leading position on the Turkish social list. Considering its Chinese multiple attributes, random matching is obviously not suitable for this type of product.
Therefore, MatchPub has launched a geolocation-based matchmaking game, and unlike most social apps, it is not fully automatic, but provides users with some personalized settings to manually filter according to their acceptable range of friends. For example, distance range, gender, age, online status, etc., after filtering and narrowing down the scope based on this information, you can make friends more efficiently and even become offline friends.
In addition, in order to ensure the security and controllability of content, MatchPub restricts users from opening chat conversations only when the two parties match each other, that is, “two-way selection”, and in order not to let language become an obstacle to communication, the app also provides real-time translation in text or video chat.
Overall, although the matching function is integrated into the application, in comparison, Lovi and Tolky are more random, which will bring more unknown to users. MatchPub, on the other hand, takes into account user groups and cultural differences, so there are more restrictions in the matching process to ensure efficiency and safety during the trial process.
Saudi Arabia is crazy about PK tipping, and Turkey chooses “above content”
In addition to the gameplay, there are also obvious differences from Saudi Arabia in terms of advertising and promotional materials on Turkish social apps. The promotional elements of Saudi social apps tend to focus on some cool tipping special effects and multi-person interactive PK, while Turkish social apps are more based on content and gameplay, and there is not too much tipping PK content. This may have something to do with the level of payment in both regions and the cultural understanding of online socializing.
According to the data, Lovi and Tolky, which focus on the Turkish market, are currently buying diamonds or coins (in-app currency) to reward gifts between users, but the overall willingness of users to pay is not very high. Therefore, it is almost impossible to “make quick money” in Turkey’s social market at this stage. It is necessary to gradually cultivate the payment habits and willingness of local users through innovative content and gameplay to accelerate commercial monetization.
However, although Turkish users are far inferior to local tyrants in terms of payment ability, from the perspective of development trends, Turkey’s social market is moving from the edge to the center, and may become the next strategic location worth cultivating.
epilogue
As Saudi Arabia’s social track gradually shows signs of saturation, the Middle Eastern market urgently needs to find new growth opportunities, and it seems that a consensus has been reached in the industry to open up the new blue ocean of Turkey. Even though there are current problems such as insufficient content supply and users’ payment habits are still in the cultivation period, it also creates a good opportunity for developers to explore deeply in the local area and provide high-quality services. It is believed that with the entry of more challengers, Turkey will become another fulcrum to leverage the Middle East market after Saudi Arabia.
