Comments on: German Newspapers do not Use Web 2.0 Services

By: Code Candies » Blog Archive » Zeit-Artikel bookmarken

Code Candies » Blog Archive » Zeit-Artikel bookmarken — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 08:49:51 +0000

[...] Â»German Newspapers do not Use Web 2.0 ServicesÂ« beschwerte sich Carsten Pötter noch vor kurzem, zu Recht wie ich meine. Glücklicherweise sind wir lernfähig: bei ZEIT online kann man ab sofort Artikel zu del.icio.us, Mister Wong und webnews.de posten. Ein erster Schritt ist getan. [...]

By: Falk

Falk — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 22:41:12 +0000

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.

By: Carsten PÃ¶tter

Carsten PÃ¶tter — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 15:43:41 +0000

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.

By: Falk LÃ¼ke

Falk LÃ¼ke — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 10:21:36 +0000

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

By: Thomas H.

Thomas H. — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:19:58 +0000

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)

By: Carsten PÃ¶tter

Carsten PÃ¶tter — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 18:31:56 +0000

@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.

By: Thomas H.

Thomas H. — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 15:43:26 +0000

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)

By: bit2bit

bit2bit — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 10:26:26 +0000

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.

By: Lawrence Nell

Lawrence Nell — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 08:06:49 +0000

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

By: Alex Iskold

Alex Iskold — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 03:07:48 +0000

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

Alex