Hurriyet.com.tr’s great success

When I heard that Hurriyet.com.tr is one of the four most popular news websites in Europe, a question popped up in my mind:- What is it like to create a brand name?In fact, I need to ask this question to vuslat doğan Sabancı…Because she’s the one that gave a start to hurriyet.com.tr in a very small room with only a couple of people…Back then, let alone online journalism, even means for personal communications were not sufficient. In addition, there was nothing like a news website on the Internet. And today, that brand name became a feather in our cap.This is Hürriyet, the brand that competes with the European newspaper giants.comScore, one of the most leading companies on Internet statistics, published a report on the traffic of European newspapers’ websites.You’ll find the detailed results in the related news article.The data are compiled between June 2010 and June 2011.Mail Online, the website of the British paper Daily Mail, is on top of the list with 17 million 206 thousand unique visitors.British The Guardian, with 13 million 505 thousand people, is the second.German Bild, follows The Guardian with 9 million 941 thousand unique visitors.And then Hürriyet!The number of Hürriyet’s unique visitors is 9 million 453 thousand.Today we’re all proud of this unbelievable success. And the 450 thousand people margin between us and Bild tells me the following:- Hürriyet is one of the top three in Europe now…This is a great success…All of our friends that work 24 hours a day, sweat over a single photo, prepare the 3D operations on the web; all of our readers and commentators, every single one of them has contributed to this achievement in Europe.Four years ago, when Mrs. Sabancı and Hürriyet’s then editor-in-chief Ertuğrul Özkök asked me whether I wanted to be the head of the website, I was not quite sure about what I was going to deal with.As a journalist who worked on “paper” for years;I realized that this did not mean to be sitting at the head of something.It meant to walk into a 3D world. But what I liked most was the candid laugh that we shared with Hürriyet’s current editor-in-chief, my friend, Enis Berberoğlu, when we heard about this success.I’m going to tell you that story on my column on Monday. TOP THREE IN EUROPEYes, today, Hürriyet is a brand that competes to be one of the top three in Europe.At this point, I would like to congratulate our friends in Milliyet, with whom we have been in the same group up until very recently, for their success to become the second Turkish brand in top five.These results are important.Because they give us another message.Dear readers,These results tell us the following:- Up until today, our perception of Europe was like that:- Win or lose!- To access or not to access!Now, Hürriyet’s success has proven that the third way also exists.Today, winning or losing, accessing or not accessing to the European Union is not only about diplomacy or sports games.Being in Europe;Is only possible through the rise of a brand name.This is the importance of the acceptance, rise, competition and starring of a Turkish brand.Now, think about it:You, 9 million 441 thousand people, are logging into the top three of Europe every month.And you’re not required visa…We embrace you all. EUROPE’S TOP 10 MOST FREQUENTLY VISITED NEWS WEBSITES Website                                              Number of unique visitors (monthly)Daily Mail                                                17,206,000  Guardian.co.uk                                        13,505,000  Bild.de                                                     9,941,000  Hurriyet.com.tr                                         9,453,000  Milliyet.com.tr                                           8,803,000  Le Monde Sites                                          6,673,000  KP.ru (Komsomolskaya Pravda)                   6,438,000The New York Times Brand                        5,692,000  Le Figaro                                                  5,478,000  RIAN.ru (RIA Novosti)                                5,409,000