falklueke.com

Occasionally, I check what I can find about my former class mates on search engines. I think it is a good indicator on where the line of on-/offline people is right now.

It’s no surprise that most of the names do not result in at least one hit. But it starts to change a little bit: some of them are working at companies which offer employee profiles or something similar online. One year ago, even this was almost unavailable.

But still it’s a very few people I can find online that way. It’s easier to search for them on StudiVZ, the german facebook clone (even though I’m quite sure most of them are no students anymore these days :)). On Xing, in Germany a very popular business networking platform such as Linked-In, even less of them registered.

I doubt this will change soon. On the other hand, significant change already happened, compared to some years ago when I was one in three who were “googleable”. This is not the generation where the majority has grown up with computers and the net already. I think it’s the last one before.

Michael Arrington, the main writer and founder of TechCrunch, sometimes picks up topics from Germany. For example today. “German tech bloggers can’t stop posting” about a new startup which is announcing it’s upcoming launch by using some online spots without any message, he writes.

In fact, I never heard of it. And I think my eyes and ears are quite open to new stuff. “Deutsche Startups”, which Arrington links to, in my opinion is nothing but a PR blog (self description: “to inform in extensio about aspiring german startups”), financed by well known venture capitalists and investors.

The thing I wonder about the most is that Arringtons posting is showing his cluelessness about the German scene. Of course the german market is much smaller than the US market, but it’s much harder to find any successful “viral marketing”-dontknowwhat here. And according to the well-hated Technorati (which is probably wrong but the same degree of being wrong for all, so you can compare the data anyway), the buzz about this company is much higher in the english language world. For german language blogs, it counts 20 references only right now. That’s just: nothing.

I’m sorry Michael, but that’s something you could and should have checked out before writing your post.

From last wednesday until friday, in Berlin the german “blogger and other net inhabitants” conference re:publica’08 took place. For the second time, most of the german language blogosphere and international guests came into the great location of the Kalkscheune in the very center of Berlin (geographically, hence a center does not exist for real in this city).

About 900 people registered for the conference and I really don’t have a clue about the real numbers. It was a great meeting place to me with some coffee, club mate, beer based talks. I moderated a panel on political video podcasting on friday, which is online available (german only). Sebastian Reichel from the german Ministry of Work and Social Welfare, Robert Heinrich from the german Green Party, Bernd Steinmann from the labor union ver.di and scientist Jan Schmidt from the Hans-Bredow Institute discussed about the now-and-then impact of political videos on the internet. I had a good time with these four very smart guys, who turned out not to be aliens in the online world.

Since I moderated a panel on the topic of Politics on the Internet at re:publica’07 too, I really enjoy a look forward on next years re:publica’09: in beginning of June the European Parliament Elections will take place, in September or October the german federal elections will follow. It will be a great time for discussions and in-depth-workshops for all those who are interested in internet based political communication.

I met a lot of very nice people. Old friends whom I met online for the first time more than 10 years ago, new faces I never met before but know for years via the net and absolutely new ones. I really enjoyed the time and hope to see all of you again next year.

(I did not write articles on anything regarding the conference since I was involved into the programs committee.)

I’m a little surprised by the overboarding creativity of German entrepreneurs. For example, take a look at a typical german breakfast.

It’s called Frühstück (by word, it’s translation is “early piece”). After I wake up and some time is left, I visit the bakery and buy some scones (”Brötchen”) or cut some slices of bread, butter it and put some jam or chocolate hazelnut cream, some cold meat or cheese on it. I drink a hot chocolate, tea or coffee, which is the most popular choice for breakfast in Germany. Sometimes I really like to have some variation in my breakfast, so I boil an egg or make some Müsli.

Of all the things eatable in the paragraph above, there is one thing to start with: the latest. Müsli. Last year a German startup went online with a nice web shop: MyMuesli.com. You can mix your very own Müsli by choosing from a list of ingredients. The company delivers your preferred mixture by mail.

Then, a few days ago, another startup went online. It’s a service called Sonntagmorgen, means sunday morning. And it’s all about your favourite taste of coffee. You are a real expert in coffee beans, in espresso, cappuccino and coffee grinders? You can mix your very own Coffee by choosing from… Well, you already know.

Now there is another service: MyCornflakes.com. And I’m quite sure we are going to see MyEgg, MyHotChocolate, MyButter… sooner than later Oh well, and not to forget MyCopyCat.com. If I sound like a cynic, you are right. They don’t use APIs, so I can’t mix my very own breakfast in widgets. Need some coffee, now.

Commentaries on the german Social Democrats Party (SPD) are going nuts these days. Since losing the majority in the 2005 federal election, the oldest german party with more than 140 years of history is troubled. Most elections went down the drain, and the last one the SPD can claim to have won in the state of Hessen (Hesse) is leading into new trouble.

The former state party of the German Democratic Republic SED, later called PDS, has survived and can rely on some kind of trust especially of older people in the five eastern german states which formerly were the GDR. The SPD and the Green Party are more or less center-leftist parties, with a clear attitude towards the center of the system and partly even conservative. When some unionists and left wing politicians of the SPD left the party in 2005 to form a new party called WASG, the SPD was in deep trouble: the WASG was going to breed the ground in the western states of Germany. When former-communists of PDS and the still post-natal WASG joined forces and renamed to “The Left”, they clearly targeted at the west german parliaments: with 5%+ of the popular vote, you grab seats there

The voting in Hesse set up a new scenario for the SPD: before the election, they strictly denied the possibility of a coalition with the Leftists. After the vote turned out to be not very helping in setting up a ruling coalition, the party faced a public and internal discussion on how to deal with the Leftists. In eastern states, coalitions of both parties are nothing special. But the western states always were kind of taboo.

After some discussion, the leader of the Hesse SPD  Andrea Ypsilanti and the chairman of the federal party Kurt Beck agreed to some strange appearing model: the “Linke” should not be included in a coalition. But tolerating an SPD-led government built on a coalition with the Green party.

But despite all power games on highter party levels, some elected member of the parliament of Hesse is not willing to follow the party leaders choice, as turned out in the last days. Now Andrea Ypsilanti will not try to become elected in the beginning of April, the federal chairman of the SPD Kurt Beck is facing loads of criticism (he is said to have influenced the Hamburg elections in a very unprofessional way when announcing the then-expected Hesse deal).

So the oldest german party is in very troubled times now, behaving like a pile of chicken when facing a fox. Probably Kurt Beck will have to go, the foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is one of the speculated successors. But what’s already obvious now: bringing the SPD back on the right (or maybe left or centrist) track won’t be easy. And the former mighty working class partys influence will further decline.

Jeff Jarvis seems to be annoyed by all that horse race-talk about the primaries.

Well, Jeff. You really can’t imagine how crazy it is to see more or lesse exact copies of what’s reported in the US in Germany these days. It might be interesting stuff since I’d never say that the election of a new US president would not affect us here. But the details of Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, the life, jive and drive of John Edwards and details of the life of Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton and more or less nothing about their plans for the future, even little about their foreign policy (except positions on Iraq).

I think they only matter for one reason: it’s easy to cover for media around the world. Just copy and translate the US sources, mix it up and shake it once or twice. What you will get is a nice story of famous (well, not here) people fighting (well, not here, too) each other in “Highlander” mode: In the end, there can be only one.

That’s sensationalism, not journalism. It’s easy to cheer someone up when you already know he’ll come down again. And if you have about 10 people to write into the sky, you’ll be wrong just 8 times until primaries end.

I wrote a lengthy article on a very specific german topic for the march issue of the german magazine “Journalist“, which all members of one of the two big german journalist associations (DJV) receive. The situation is quite complex: since more than 50 years a self control institution run by journalist associations and publishers called Presserat is checking  (on demand) whether printed publications are following the ethical codex of the Presserat or not. Though it’s effectiveness is despited by critics since many years, it’s at least some kind of general benchmark for the minimum quality of content. The codex includes rules such as a clear separation of business and editorial stuff.

What I was writing about: even though most of the most popular german websites are run by traditional media, the press codex did not apply on any content that was not deriving from printed magazines or news. The Presserat would like to change that now, but in fact it’s still not clear whether this effort will show any effects: the publishers don’t want to be judged too hard and many others involved in some way don’t seem to have a real clue about what’s going on at online media in Germany.

In fact, we see some quite specific new problems arriving with online journalism. Publishers, formerly print, now do audio and video. User Generated Content is thought to be beatific, but brings a lot of new problems. There are just a few and some badly reasoned decisions by courts on responsibiliy and quality assurance duties for the publishers in the field of UGC, laws are fragmentary and some classic approaches turn out to be non-applicable nowadays.

What are we going to expect now? Either it will become a very weak online media codex and it’s effects will be none, so it’s wasted time. Or it’s going to become a real sign of quality, that gives good measuring possibilities and includes strong sanctions. Well, what’s your guess?

Some minutes ago, the german federal court Bundesverfassungsgericht published a ruling on a complaint against a  law which was set up to provide the intelligence service of the state of Northrhine-Westphalia to so called “online searching”. Most of the badly conceptualized law was ruled to be incommensurate with the german constitution.

In Germany, many people awaited this leading decision. Even though it was just a ruling on a state law, it was clearly becoming a decision on how the police and intelligence have to deal with computer systems in general. The federal court ruled, that a new basic right is now to be respected by legislative and executive branches of the state: “a guarantee on integrity of information-based systems” is derived from and included in the personal rights.

The case which the Karlsruhe based court had to rule on now was just one in a series of rulings on the question, how laws for the internet age have to be designed and applicated. A lot of laws curtailing basic rights more or less like the european directive on data retention have to be ruled in the next months and several new ones will follow.

It will be a very huge discussion during the next days and weeks, to what extent todays ruling will affect the work of the parliament, the police and intelligence. Many people in Germany have started to watch what their politicians are doing in this very specific field of politics regarding the daily internet usage life. The expertise of politicians in the field of internet politics is still improvable, as the german minister of justice Brigitte Zypries (social democrats) was showing a few months ago in a now famous interview situation. A children reporter was asking about her online behaviours and she was answering: «What is this browser you are talking about?»

«The first real internet news site» is here, former news anchorman and now publisher of Zoomer Ulrich Wickert says in a video advertorial. The german publishing house Holtzbrinck launched Zoomer a few minutes ago, targeting at young users. It’s an ambitious project, with joint forces of the staff of the last year discontinued Business News and the online department of the Berlin based Tagesspiegel.

The new site is meant to be new in several ways, especially in terms of user participation. But right now, there’s not much to see on that: you got to know that it’s the average of editorial and user voting which gives a news item it’s place on the front page.

Noticeable: a lot of flash toys, and captchas appear as soon as you try to interact with the site. Another eye catching feature is the personalization login.

In a more journalistic view, the site looks quite lurid to me («Attempted Murder?», «Mother drown baby in bath tube») and show oriented - football, pop culture…
You should take a closer look at the footer section, since there are many publications of Holtzbrinck Group named, which texts now could appear on Zoomer, too. But golem.de is missing, a german tech ticker which belongs to Holtzbrinck eLab at the moment. Unlike the Lausitzer Rundschau, which fits to the target group just like Ulli Wickert: the man who retired from TV news some year ago could be the grandfather of the young targeted group.

(Disclaimer: Right now I’m employed by a company which is part of the Holtzbrinck Group, too)

 Some german newspaper publishers believe in some diffuse future online, but if you take a closer look at it, you won’t get the impression it has to be the online journalism.

In a survey, the “Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft” (translates “Institute of the german Economy”) learned that average german online editorial staff is at 4.2 editors plus 6.3 freelancers. At many local newspapers, ratio and absolute no. of staff is 1 on 1.