Took this photo today at a free Wifi park near Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia Mosque. (hat tip to David Churbuck for the suggestion)

As part of my Turkey trip this week I have started compiling statistics and information about Social Media and the Internet here.

YouTube Banned
Similar to China, YouTube is blocked here in Turkey. This dates back an incident I wrote about in 2007 when a virtual war erupted between Greeks and Turks on the video platform.

Basic Internet Stats (various sources)
With more than 26mn Internet Users, Turkey is one of the 15 largest Internet populations in the world and roughly the size of Spain, Italy and Canada.
34% Internet penetration
30% Household Internet penetration
6mn Broadband Users

69% of Internet Users are 34 or younger
38% are aged 15 to 24
31% 25 to 34
18% 35 to 44
10% 45 to 54
3% 55

Turks spend a lot of time online
29.7 Hours spent online per month (Which puts Turkey behind only Canada’s 43.1 and the US’ 32.5, according to ComScore.)

Internet commerce and advertising growing
11.6% of Internet users buy online
33% growth of online advertising year-on-year

Turks love searching
More online searches are conducted Turkey than Italy or Spain, despite having a smalling online population.

Turks love Facebook
Turkey has the third highest Facebook population in the world. Following Facebook, the most popular Social Networking Services are Windows Live Profile, Mynet Eksenim, Netlog, Kalpkalbe, according to ComScore.