Vestel led the way into Second Life for Turkish companies with Remax, Rixos, Garanti Emeklilik, and Tefken following suit. About 10 more firms are already planning on entering the virtual world in 2008, reports the Turkish Daily News. Companies like AcerPro and the Brand Institute have established their own developers' niche to help meet the increasing desire to come in world. “Two of these companies are pending, their budgets ready. Actually, everyone is doing feasibility research. Following trends the virtual world is taking, online universes will surround all companies,” said Elif Şener from Brand Institute. “Second Life provides many online advantages to companies. Apart from communications, it is possible to use the platform's 11 million users as a focus group before marketing new products."
In the most recent statistics, Turkey was only ranked 21st out of all participating countries by active avatar count with 2947 avatars, which is actually down from September's 3617 active users. The users are fairly active, though, accumulating 108,816.43 hours in world, up from 79,971.50 in September. Also, many of the Turkish companies that have already entered Second Life are using it for a global access portal. For example, Rixos, a luxury hotel line, promotes its services to tourists around the world.
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