von Roland Hachmann | Jan. 14, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture
Martin points us to this PDF by Edelman, which is a report on the state of the blogosphere in 10 countries worldwide. It’s an interesting 40-page whitepaper, but of course I started with the German blogosphere. However, Germany is disappointing:
In comparison to several of its counterparts, the
German blogosphere is still in its infancy. The
Edelman Omnibus Blog Study found that 85% of
Germans never read blogs, which was the second
highest percentage, after Belgium, among the
10 markets examined. Unlike France and the
United States, few of the blog conversations
that originate in the German blogosphere seem
to find their way into offline conversations or into
mainstream media coverage.
Again and again I wonder why this is the case. But sofar, I haven’t found any satisfactory answers. Media influential Geert Lovink says that it is due to the german editors of the mainstream press – not because of a lack of something in our net-culture. But I don’t see how this could be a strong enough influence on the german blogosphere.
von Roland Hachmann | Dez. 18, 2006 | Blog, Digital Culture, Social Media Marketing
Time Magazin has once again named their person of the year. But this time, it’s following the hype of web 2.0 and all that buzz around it, so the person of the year is us. The people of the internet, the bloggers, chatters, homepage designers, forum contributors, the Myspacers and Youtubers, etc. etc. Because we „control the information age“:
The new Web is a very different thing. It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it’s really a revolution. . . .
And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you. . . .
But at the same time, as people sit down and spend their spare time creating things they probably expected main stream media to do, there is equally a lot of crap going on, that nobody ever wanted to see:
Sure, it’s a mistake to romanticize all this any more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred.
I like that choice. 2006 really was the year of the social web. Not only in the US. Even in Germany („Old Europe“) web 2.0 has started to become a household buzzword. At least most of the major German newspapers had feature stories on it…
So what’s next, who can be the person of the year in 2007, if everyone has been it already in 2006? An alien?
(via)