Turkish Technology Team's Next Sosyal aims to attract users across Türkiye, other countries

KOCAELI, Türkiye

The new social media platform Next Sosyal, developed by the Turkish Technology Team (T3), will be widely used in Türkiye and other countries, the T3 Foundation Board chair told Anadolu.

Elvan Kuzucu Hidir said the Next Sosyal platform offers unique opportunities for Türkiye, allowing users of all ages to “express their thoughts and feelings” on a platform that is “free from influence, manipulation, misinformation, and profanity.”

“We aim to grow this platform to have millions of people to build our country’s next-generation social media platform,” she said.

She noted that young tech entrepreneurs in Türkiye are working tirelessly to enhance the country’s defense industry and its social media landscape. “Projects that come from these young people to develop Next Social and turn it into an even better platform will be implemented,” he said.

Hidir emphasized that efforts are underway to create a Turkish large language model (LLM) that is not translated from English.

“We want to build these LLMs that can understand and speak Turkish—Tubitak (Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Institution) is researching a basic LLM, and similarly, T3 is working to develop a Turkish LLM for our T3 AI chatbot accessible on Next Sosyal,” he said.

Hidir stated that artificial intelligence (AI) has gained significant importance in Türkiye, as seven out of the 57 competitions held by the country’s premier technology, aviation, and space event, TEKNOFEST, were directly involved in AI.

“Such competitions are of great importance to train qualified people in AI and LLMs,” he said, noting that participants as young as high schoolers were involved in these events.

“Young people are thinking and coming up with ideas, and this curiosity that begins at a young age will continue to grow with the higher education they will receive,” he said. “These young people will play a key role in meeting our human resources needs in establishing initiatives in critical technology areas.”