Turkcell · 2019 — 2022
Dergilik
Magazines stopped being only something you read. On the road or in the kitchen, the page could read itself to you, in Turkish. Search learned to forgive typos, and podcasters got a studio of their own.
- Period
- 2019 — 2022
- Made at
- Dergilik, Turkcell
- Role
- Product Manager
- Medium
- Digital publishing
- Reach
- Around 1 million monthly users, 20 million downloads
- First
- Data: reading and listening time as the key measures, with 20% of every sprint kept for tracking
Work 2.1
A magazine that reads aloud
Turkish text to speech, shipped in three months. Over two million audio articles were listened to in the first eleven months.
- Built for moments when eyes and hands are busy: chores at home, or the commute.
- We tested Google, Microsoft and Nuance on our Turkish content. Our own AI team did better, but it was not ready for production, so the app came first.
- Launched in three months, and not perfect on purpose. The player on the left is what shipped; the one on the right is what it became.
Work 2.2
Search that forgives typos
A new search engine: prefix and fuzzy matching, scoring, and the full text of every issue.
- The old engine could not match prefixes or typos, so one wrong letter meant no results at all.
- Step one changed nothing users could see: the same results on Elasticsearch, so it could be watched in production.
- Then prefix search (“uy” finds “uykusuz”), fuzzy search (“uuykusuz” finds it too), and scoring by reads, downloads and date.
- Then the full text of every magazine and newspaper: search for a singer, a player, a recipe.
Work 2.3
Similar articles
A new way to keep reading: articles like the one you are on.
- The last part of the search project: a new way to keep reading, from the article you are already on.
- User feedback after each search phase asked for it: finding one item was not enough.
Work 2.4
Tested side by side
The player grew through A/B tests and user feedback, one button at a time.
- The first player could not change speed, seek, share, or move on to the next article.
- We built it with the fizy mobile team, who already knew audio streaming on iOS and Android.
- It went to Turkcell employees first, as a beta group.
Work 2.5
Podcast Studion
A new product under a new brand: one place for podcasters to publish, and their podcasts arrive in Dergilik and fizy. Zero to one.
- The idea had waited since my fizy years. At Dergilik it came back, and the plan grew: a platform under its own brand, feeding both apps.
- Podcasters sign up and prove they own the podcast; the platform reads the RSS feed and can host the audio.
- Launched after four months to early adopters first, then built into Dergilik, then fizy.
- New regulation arrived mid-build: editors got an approval step, and speech to text flags episodes that need a look.
- A dashboard shows followers, unique listeners and average listen time, with a monthly summary by email.
Work 2.6
Podcasts in Dergilik
After the platform, the app: popular podcasts, latest episodes and your own archive, next to the magazines.
- The audio article player and the auto-list built earlier did most of the work; the podcast player grew out of them.
- Podcasts sit in the app people already open for magazines and newspapers, so a new podcast starts with an audience.
From the same years
