German Newspapers do not Use Web 2.0 Services

January 31, 2007 in Web by Carsten Pötter | 10 comments

Yesterday Alex Iskold of Read/Write Web posted a noteworthy article on the increasing usage of Web 2.0 services by US mainstream media. He had a look at newspapers and magazines (the exception being the British BBC, of course) like New York Times, Washington Post, Time, and some more. Each one offers RSS feeds, most of them even link to social news and bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and Digg.

So I had a look at websites of some major German newspapers and magazines to see if the situation is similar here: Frankfurter Rundschau, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Welt, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Handelsblatt, Financial Times Deutschland, Die Zeit, Focus, Stern, Der Spiegel.

What can I say? It is disillusioning. While all websites offer RSS feeds, it is often difficult to even spot the links. Fortunately Firefox auto-detects RSS feeds. Just one magazine - Stern - provides links to social news and bookmarking services. Among others: Mr. Wong, del.icio.us, Furl, Yigg, Yahoo My Web, and Google. Quite impressive. But I really expected more mainstream media websites were using those services already because links on those services could provide some additional page views and ad revenue. Hopefully things will change this year.

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  1. Alex Iskold’s avatar

    Alex Iskold on January 31, 2007 at 04:07

    Interesting observation Carsten, I will link to this from the comments.

    Alex

  2. Lawrence Nell’s avatar

    Lawrence Nell on January 31, 2007 at 09:06

    Hello, I am connected to one of the above emntioned socail bookmarking sites, namely http://www.yigg.de . While you are right, that so far of the major publications only Stern has made a move into social bookmarking we have indications, that some of the others are considering their options. We believe that one or two of them will follow Stern in the near future. The others may take some more time. There are, however, a number of sites that may not be top tier, nevertheless very respectable that offer social bookmarking links such as http://www.sportgate.de , http://www.moviemaze.de, http://www.sevenload.de (video) and http://www.gulli.de (search / news) .

    Let me know if you would like to hear more from our corner of the world.

    Regards Lawrence

  3. bit2bit’s avatar

    bit2bit on January 31, 2007 at 11:26

    There’s the problem here, that the Web 2.0 services are no Mainstream Media in german speaking area yet. There’s still no german focused channel on the Digg, Newsvine or Slashdot level.

    But it’s starting off right now, there were several new social news & bookmarking services launched last year (Wikio, Webnews, Newstube, Newsider, etc.) and we have the very first successful seriuos services by now - Yigg.de and Mister-Wong.de.

    Let’s just help make people be aware of it.
    It will come soon.

  4. Thomas H.’s avatar

    Thomas H. on January 31, 2007 at 16:43

    I think you guys are missing something important. Germany is a really literate country. Has a long history of writing, publication, etc. And Germans are alienated by new things and especially things, that seem to bee random or chaotic. But that’s not the main point. What is important, that these newspapers are well aware of the internet impact (just read the FAZ, or any other major newspaper). But just like the music industry, they try to survive the hard times. And money isn’t made on the internet (well, the Web1.0 Bubble burst hit many journalists, too!), it’s made with the paper itself.

    Socially, Germany inhabits more and more old people, which, often, can’t use a computer properly, and obtain their informations just the way they are used to. And Germans love to save money. When newspapers would start to offer information in a easy obtainable way people will say “Why pay 2 Euro when I can just fire up my PC and pay nothing” (well… you pay the internet bills, but anyway. Try comparing 60 Euros or more to 30-40 Euros for your internet connection)

  5. Carsten Pötter’s avatar

    Carsten Pötter on January 31, 2007 at 19:31

    @Alex: Thanks for the link. I added a trackback to your article on R/WW but it didn’t got through, it seems.

    @Lawrence: I also hope that some others will follow Stern. Actually I was surprised that Die Zeit don’t have links to social bookmarking services. They have several blogs and also mentioned the social web in some articles recently.
    News are always appreciated. Just drop an email to the address in my Impressum.

    @bit2bit: I agree with all your points. There are at least three news services which look quite promising: Yigg, Wikio, and Webnews. I didn’t have a look at the other ones you have mentioned. But it’s good to know that they are out there.

    @Thomas: Why do you think links to social news and bookmarking services were chaotic? Have a look at the New York Times. Excellent integration.
    I think revenue from advertising on the web will increase. I mean adding social services won’t cost any money (apart from paying the web designer) but it could certainly generate more page views. Newspapers may be hesitant because of the reasons bit2bit mentioned. But I doubt that they are able to increase the number of subscribers to their respective publications dramatically. So they won’t earn more money from ads there.

  6. Thomas H.’s avatar

    Thomas H. on January 31, 2007 at 20:19

    It’s just what people tell me, when I say “go visit digg, or /. or any other site”. (I love these sites, esp. ./, but digg is sometimes full of irrelevant news. And the community is much younger. I feel more drawn to fark, as to digg)

  7. Falk Lüke’s avatar

    Falk Lüke on February 1, 2007 at 11:21

    Hi,

    might be interesting: we (and several in the project participating users) did some research on this topic last fall. You may find the results at http://wortfeld.de/wiki

  8. Carsten Pötter’s avatar

    Carsten Pötter on February 1, 2007 at 16:43

    Falk, that’s a great project. If I knew about it before I didn’t post this article. Very comperhensive.

    BTW, even non-Germans should have a look at the wiki Falk has mentioned. It features links to similar surveys in Italy, UK, and USA. There are even PDFs and spreadsheets. Great sources.

  9. Falk’s avatar

    Falk on February 2, 2007 at 23:41

    We’ll probably do a second evaluation this year for comparison reasons. Will be interesting to find out whether the ongoing change is more or less a technical approach or not.