No Competition in the German Tech Blogosphere Anymore

May 25, 2008 in Web by Carsten Pötter | Comments

Since last week there is one less excellent German tech blog to read: Martin Weigert of zweinull.cc is writing for netzwertig.com now and is quitting his own blog. zweinull.cc was one of the very few serious tech blogs in this country which was started only 14 months ago and quickly gained popularity and acceptance among the more tech savvy crowd. It’s probably fair to describe it as a German Read/Write Web, i.e. tech news without copying press releases and a healthy dose of opinion. It was certainly a must read blog and will be missed.

Some people might argue that Martin is writing for another blog – netzwertig.com – now and nothing will change. That’s good, isn’t it? Well, I am not sure. netzwertig.com just launched one month ago. It belongs to Swiss blog network Blogwerk and is run by Andreas Göldi, Marcel Weiß, and Markus Spath. The three guys are well-known in the German speaking blogosphere because of their own blogs. They are certainly three respected voices. Andreas Göldi ran Beobachtungen zur Medienkonvergenz, writing about the convergence of media and (internet) technology. His blog was also part of Blogwerk. Marcel Weiß is still running neunetz.com, a blog similar to zweinull.de but with stronger opinion. While the aforementioned guys are probably fairly unknown to readers abroad, Markus Spath should also be known in the English speaking blogosphere. Besides running his own blogs live.hackr and Museum of Modern Betas, he was also writing for the German edition of Blognation.

Now Martin is joining them and suddenly netzwertig.com is THE tech blog here. While some smaller blogs cover similar topics – Thomas Frütel’s Webmaster Blog comes to mind – there is no real competition to it anymore. Marcel has reduced his posting frequence on neunetz.com already and Markus’ blogs are focused slightly different. Don’t get me wrong (it’s my week of negativity anyway), I like netzwertig.com a lot so far but I am wondering if it’s really healthy for the blogosphere here. It will be more difficult for smaller blogs to gain similar acceptance because netzwertig.com has all the attention and admittedly the competence.

Tags: Andreas Göldi, Blog, blog network, Blogs, Germany, Marcel Weiß, Markus Spath, Martin Weigert, Museum of Modern Betas, Netzwertig, Tech, Thomas Frütel, Thomas Frütel's Webmaster, Webmaster

  • Thats a fair point you make.
    Let me add a few thoughts:
    we at netzwertig.com are not the mainstreammedia. I link out as much as I can and I encourage the other authors to do so as well (not that they don't already on their own). I also highlight good articles elsewhere every workday morning; I'd prefer articles in german blogs, but you know..quality comes first.
    So if you run a good, thouhtful german tech blog chances are high you'll get some linklove now and then from us.
    It just happens now that there aren't really that much well written and thoughtful techblogs here -besides for example Thomas' blog which you mentioned already-.
    So, yes, right now most of the best or at least well-known germanspeaking techbloggers have combined forces so to speak. this will allow us to build something big, something that hopefully will go beyond the german blogosphere and will get recognized in the msm as well. that's my goal anyway.
    in the short term the discourse in the german techsphere will almost certainly get hurt by the concentration, I agree with you there, though we still have to see how much and if at all.
    but think long term. Like I said I'm more than willing to go out of my way to help small but thoughtful techblogs to get heard. Why? Because I'm a strong believer in the importance of a healthy public discourse. And the bigger the audience I can talk to the better the chances for helping me to finally get some discussing started over here. :)

    (oh and world-domination too, forgot that one, sorry)
  • Carsten Pötter
    First, thanks a lot for the long reply. I appreciate that. Second, I really, really like netzwertig.com. :)

    Though as much as I understand the need to establish a recognized tech blog, an authority even, which has the chance to influence discussion outside of the small blogosphere, I wish there was at least one other, similar blog that had a different agenda and opinions. Unfortunately there is none.
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