Peter Bihr on Social Media, Web 2.0 & Digital Life

[The Waving Cat. ’cause it’s good luck AND shiny plastic.]

How I tried (and failed at) legally buying music in Germany

Please note: What’s about to follow is a rant. It’s also advice to music labels. Short-short version, dear content traders: Make your stuff more easily available.

This is a story of a sucky customer experience. As customers and experts alike will tell you, users like to rock, not to suck.

Buying music online is supposedly easy. Or so you’d think. And indeed it can be, as I learned from the awesome music subscription at emusic.com, where I get 30 tracks per month. (I love it!) Alas, emusic.com doesn’t have access to all the music out there, so if you’re looking for something in particular you might end up with zero search results there.

I just tried to buy the new Gnarls Barkley album, The Odd Couple. Sadly, emusic.com didn’t have it. But hey, it’s 2008 and the labels aren’t the stupid, slow & bullying giants they once were, right?

Right??

So let me try to briefly describe my journey - trying to buy a normal, major-label pop album.

First up, iTunes, as linked to from the original Gnarls Barkley website. I’m sure there it would have worked, but since iTunes writes your email address into the files you buy, I don’t really feel like buying there. I don’t know if having my email address in my music would cause any harm as of now, but I’m almost sure any kind of (even stripped-down) DRM is inherently evil and will lead to trouble at some point. There goes iTunes.

Second stop, 7digital, “The Home of MP3 Downloads”. 7digital has the album, even though the price (7.99 British Pounds) seems a bit steep for a digital download. But ok, I’m willing to cough up the price for a regular physical CD even though distribution costs equal nearly zero for the label. Why not. Hey, you need to sign up to their service instead of just buying through your credit card. Ok. Wow, even the newsletter signup is opt-in. Unless, of course, you don’t fill out all the form fields - after showing me an error message, the newsletter was suddenly ticked, I didn’t notice after having it checked beforehand and clicked, and all of a sudden had a 7digital account and a newsletter I didn’t want. As a user, I simply didn’t want to feel like being tricked into a newsletter while buying a simple music album and, slightly grumpy at this point, canceled the purchase.

Third, good ol’ amazon. The US version, amazon.com, offers The Odd Couple for an amazing $5.00. How awesome is that? I was already sold. I even agreed to download the Amazon Download Manager. For whatever reason I would need that I still haven’t figured out. After it was installed and I clicked the Buy button — nothing. Not living in the US, I’m excluded from music downloads. Books aren’t a problem, neither are electronics. But digital goods, those zeros and ones, no way.

Fourth, disappointed from the amazon.com experience, I went back to the German amazon store, amazon.de. I could have spared myself the effort: In Germany, Amazon doesn’t sell music downloads.

From there it went downhill. Where I found DRM-free Gnarls Barkley music, it was their old album, which is great, but wasn’t what I was looking for.

My conclusion? I tried to pay you money for music. I tried hard, and annoyingly long. As long as this kind of effort doesn’t allow for a legal, DRM-free download, the music industry has no reason whatsoever to complain about losing sales. As bloggers and press people learn early on: Make your stuff available. Make it easy to get it. That is the first and most important rule when trying to increase your reach and your sales, or when you simply want to get your message out. Music labels, learn this lesson. If you hide your goods or don’t bother making them more convenient to use, those regular folks out there (us!) won’t bother either.

Working on a relaunch

As I’m looking into a bit of an optic overhaul for this blog, the site might look somewhat odd occasionally over the next few days.

Also, if you get too much traffic through my RSS feed, please just ignore it - chances are my site hasn’t been hacked by spammers but I just ran into technical trouble of sorts. Feel free to drop me a line so I can fix it even quicker.

That said, I’m looking forward to your feedback once the new design is up.

Chinese Anti-CNN Campaign

Note: I won’t touch the politics behind this campaign in this post. If you were looking for any political opinion on this subject, feel free to skip this post.

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been getting increasing amounts of propaganda material spam (pardon: information) related to China’s campaign against the CNN.

(When I say “China”, I’m referring not necessarily to the government, although I suspect it’s a driving force here, but to the origin of the messages. Same goes for CNN: The news channel is just a name for Western media, both in said campaign and in this post. End of disclaimer.)

Just to name a few pieces I found noteworthy:

Anti-Riot and Anti-CNN shirts:

(I have to admit, I kind of like the slightly oddly translated slogan “Anti-Riot & Explore The Truth”.)

A Twitter account called Jack Cafferty, supposedly by the CNN anchor. The profile links to Anti-CNN.com where you can find the real deal, like campaign propaganda videos suggesting that the situation in Iraq and U.S. involvement there has relevance to what’s going on in Tibet. (Err. Ok. No politics, right?)

Twitter Anti-CNN hasn’t said a lot yet, but follows a motley crew of folks including: Putin, Mao, Jack Cafferty, Jiang Zemin, and - oddly enough - Jeremiah Owyang.*

One thing all of them have in common: The words truth and lies are used rather inflationary, and usually in upper case. Always a good sign, right?

Apart from that, I do find it interesting how quickly social media are deployed in this campaign. And I can’t help but wonder: Is this a centralized, orchestrated campaign or some kind of decentralized, bottom-up movement?

Have you experienced any elements of the Anti-CNN campaign? What did you think?

* Update: As Jeremiah notes correctly, it’s not strange that folks are following him (many do, he’s a thought leader in social media), and it doesn’t indicate his endorsement of his followers. However, when I checked Anti-CNN’s Twitter account, they were following only (or to a large extent) fake profiles of dictators, political leaders, media figures. It’s that not-being-fake part that made Jeremiah stand out. Sorry for the misunderstanding, J.!

[citation needed] Challenges Ads, Truthiness

On Michelle’s new blog, I just stumbled over a very neat art (or rather: protest?) project, all sticker-based. [citation needed] questions the factoid and claims we encounter in everyday life - ads, for example, are full of them.

Wikipedia has a simple way of asking contributers to validate their statements: The ubiquitous [citation needed] tag that inspired this particular flavor of street art.

Notes the artist:

One of my favorite quirks about [Wikipedia] are the little [citation needed] tags that users can place in an article, indicating that a dubious claim needs a reference. One day an idea struck - what statements are more dubious or outright ridiculous than those in advertisements? Thus, an OM project was born. I had 250 8×2 inch stickers printed, which I handed out to friends, who circulated them further. In true wiki fashion, the final placement of the stickers is a collaborative effort, now distributed and anonymous.

(Photo by mmechtley)

So, as Michelle points out, we shouldn’t take this kind of statement for a fact. Instead, we need to double-check the sources to confirm truth, not just truthiness. [citation needed] can help remind us to do so.

Just sayin’.

[citation needed] stickers are up for sale.

Creative Commons for German Public TV Could Save Costs, Archives

German public TV and the Some Rights Reserved content licenses by Creative Commons don’t seem to be a natural mix.

Then again, maybe they do.

As NDR, one of Germany’s regional public TV stations, proved by putting some shows under Creative Commons, open licenses and public TV may be a pretty good match indeed. (This goes both ways: During production of pieces, for example by using Creatice Commons music, and to license the TV shows.)

(For the US-Americans of you: Public TV plays a very different role in the media landscape in Germany than it does in the US. Like, people actually watch it, and it’s good stuff.)

At re:publica, Chief Editor of NDR Online Jürgen Werwinski shared the broadcaster’s experiences with going Creative Commons. Despite quite a bit of internal resistance (or rather: unfamiliarity with the subject), the station hasn’t regretted taking the steps towards to licensing their content more freely. After all, all the content is paid for by public funds, and making the content accessible is part of the public stations’ legal mission. (At Netzpolitik.org, Markus Beckedahl has been asking for more Creative Commons-licensed coverage for a long time.)

To stress my point of how important freely licensed content from public stations is, let me share a story that a friend told me. She works for public TV, where she’s an editor for a kids news program, Logo. The show is great, and also technically up to date, they even offer all the shows as a video podcast. Yet, the archive only goes about a week back, then disappears.

Of course, the shows don’t get deleted (I assume), but they aren’t accessible from the outside anymore. This is, to a large extent, due to the background and atmo music used in the news pieces: The music licenses only cover online use for a week or so, after that extra licensing fees would be due. Of course, the stations can’t just go on and keep paying ever-growing amounts of licensing fees of public funds, so they hide the archives. Effectively, this destroys these huge amounts of great shows which would be a priceless knowledge base for kids and teachers.

For obvious reasons, Creative Commons or similar licenses would help solve this issue single-handedly. Depending on the exact license, the music is available free of monetary costs, i.e. the stations wouldn’t have to pay at all; All they would have to to is credit the works, and - again, depending on the license - also license their content for external use. (More about share-alike licenses here, German version here.)

This, of course, is a highly political decision: Do we really want to give up a little bit of control, open up, and allow people out there to distribute our content freely?

My take? Yes, yes, and yes.

That’s not because I’m an info anarchist. (I’m not!)

Creative Commons make perfect rational sense for the public TV stations to use to fulfill their mission.

Why is that? First of all, Creative Commons licenses make it easy for viewers (users? citizens?) to share the content they like. This has both a valuable social aspect and helps the stations distribute their content more cost-efficiently. More reach, better distribution, easier and more wide-spread access.

Second, if you allow viewers to use and endorse this publicly funded content, it increases the feeling of ownership. That’s a key issue for public education.

Third, Creative Commons allows for fairly granular control of what you want to allow to do with your content. (An overview of the available licenses here.) For example, you could allow non-commercial use only, or also allow commercial use. (Non-commercial probably being the right way to go in this particular case.) Also, while allowing to remix your shows is pretty darn awesome, it’s understandable that institutions like public TV stations wouldn’t be comfortable with remixed versions of their content, so they could settle for non-derivative use, i.e. a no-remix license. Only the show as such may be redistributed, no changes allowed. This is particularly important if you’re worried about your stuff being used out of context.

Fourth, it’s free advertisement, as every show needs to be credited to the original creator.

Fifth, and most importantly, without the licensing fees you get an ever-growing archive of shows and knowledge that you don’t have to take offline anytime, ever.

And sixth, not having to pay licensing fees means saving a lot of money. This money can then be spent on furthering the cause of spreading knowledge and fulfilling public TV’s legal mission.

Of course, there are downsides as well.

First, in day-to-day work, editors often pick music more or less by association: If you deal with a certain topic and a song just comes to mind, this song it is. (Example? It’s a piece on the end of the school year, so School’s Out by Alice Cooper it is.) This works well and is easy to do because we all have a common base of pop cultural references we grew up with. Most Creative Commons songs haven’t reached this kind of popularity, they simply haven’t been around long enough. (Keep in mind that CC have been around for less than a decade.)

Second, this very mechanism (or lack thereof) also means that it takes longer to pick songs, simply because the editor has to go through a lot of songs to find some stuff they see fit.

However, these problems seem to be temporary - once the mechanisms are in place and editors get more familiar with what’s out there, speed picks up. Also, more and more songs become available as I’m typing this. There’s no inherent reason not to switch to a different policy here.

Who can change this policy?

Now the tricky part is who to talk to about this. As I see it, there are two main arguments you could make to convince the stations to switch to Creative Commons licenses, both for their own content and the music they use:

First, the mission statement argument: Creative Commons can help the stations fulfill their missions as best as they can by making access to their publicly funded contents easier. We’re talking distribution and archives here.

Second, the cost argument: Without horrendous music licensing fees, the shows can be produced with the same level of quality but for less money, making a more cost-efficient alternative. The savings can be used to either produce more stuff or to experiment with new formats, both of which the stations have inherent and legitimate interest in.

So where are the economists out there to crunch the numbers? Who’s got the ear of the decision-makers? This is something we all should be interested in. I’m very interested in personally, and I could imagine some of you are, too. Get in touch?

Re:publica 08 #4 (Wrap-up)

So re:publica 08 is over, it’s the week after and things are back to normal. I’m only posting this just now since my weekend pretty much went into moving to a new apartment, but now that I’ve settled in, I’m back on a more regular schedule after after a trip to New York and San Francisco and visiting the blogger conference.

To quickly wrap things up, re:publica was fun, and again very well organized. A big thanks to Newthinking and Spreeblick!

One thing that struck me as noteworthy was how many attendees used Twitter. Twitter was all over the place, much more than last year, when the odd (and oddly addictive) messaging service/social network hit mainstream at SXSW. (If you’re on Twitter, say hi.) Probably this was the highest Twitter density ever reached in Germany. Twitter was so ubiquitous that it pretty much made obsolete the SMS wall behind the main panel, so we had several layers of meta discussion at all times: While in the background text messages (and the occasional tweet) were projected, there was a much more lively backchannel via Twitter. Also, this made it pretty clear how much of an echo chamber Twitter still is, with mostly Social Media folks using it while the outside world hasn’t even noticed.

Speaking of echo chambers, Alana Taylor did a fun, brief video poll among students around NYU, asking them about Facebook, Flickr and Twitter:

(Admittedly, I was surprised how few folks were familiar with Flickr, which I always had down as quite mainstream..?)

The whole event was, of course, not just about content, but also about meeting folks, so networking was high on the agenda. The location, called Kalkscheune, is a great venue in that respect, as it has smaller workshop rooms, a big panel room, a coffeeshop-style lobby as well as a nice backyard, and it’s located very centrally in Berlin Mitte.

Someone (who, by the way?) also tried to facilitate networking by printing out Twitter follower stickers, so you could tag, or rather: follow, your fellow attendees Twitter-style with neat little stickers. Of course, this didn’t help the infamous conference-chat, which consists of not locking into people’s faces but at their name tags, but lots of stickers were seen, so obviously the concept resonated.

I had the chance to meet a whole bunch of folks, but since I couldn’t be there all the time, I’m sure I’ve also missed quite a few. If you had planned to get in touch, please do, via email, Twitter or what you prefer.

Re:publica 08 #3 (Law)

One of the best panels My favorite panel at re:publica was Henning Krieg’s panel on law and blogging. At pretty much every other conference I missed out on Henning’s quite famous talks, and it was no surprise to find the room packed to the limits. Relaxed, informal and funny presentation, a lot of value for the regular blogger like yours truly. What about the infamous German imprint (”Impressum”), what kind of content am I allowed to use on my blog, who has rights to this photo, and what will a German judge count as an insult? Plenty of questions from the audience, lots of answers. If nothing else, the audience sure learned that the law can’t quite keep up with technology and common practice.

The slides are already online, but Henning is also planning a series of posts specifically about blogging and law. So keep an eye on his blog, Kriegs-Recht.de. (That is, if you’re interested in German blogging law and are fluent in German, of course.)

Re:publica 08 #2

Today is day 3 of re:publica 08, the last day of this year’s installment of this conference. Re:publica is the biggest and most important blogger & social media conference in Germany, organized largely by the Newthinking Team (i.e. the net activists whose most prominent member is probably Markus Beckedahl, author of Netzpolitik.org. Thanks Markus, and all the others who don’t get the same media attention.)

So far, it’s been a great event - the organization worked pretty much smoothly except for minor wireless outages, although of course the most interesting conversations happen in between session, in the lobby, the hallways, the surrounding bars.

Right now I’m sitting in a panel on video in political communication with pretty harmonic panelists (representatives of the Social Democrats, the Green Party, ver.di as well as social media scientist Jan Schmidt).

Turns out everybody agrees that yes, video plays a more and more important role in online election campaigns, but no, it’s not crucial yet. Also, I’m getting the impression that while the strategists know very well what to expect and how to use online media, but this seems rather detached from their constituencies’ new media expertise. Basically, whenever it’s time for an election campaign, the parties get out their new media toolkit and are surprised their voters don’t really care as much as they expected; maybe it’s because in between election campaigns the parties are not very active in social media?

I know of a few projects that look promising, like the Social Democratic Party’s social network meineSPD. (I’m sure there are others as well that I don’t know off the top of my head.) But generally, there’s hardly a political social media scene in Germany, although it’s growing. This is also what political journalists told me when I interviewed them for my M.A. thesis on the relevance of weblogs for political journalism in Germany. Their conclusion: There are no relevant, i.e. quote-worthy, political weblogs in Germany as of now. The journalists explicitly wished for better political weblogs, though.

Hopefully conferences like re:publica can help establish this kind of political blogosphere in Germany.

Re:publica 08 #1

So far, I haven’t been able to blog about re:publica 08, Germany’s top blogger & social media conference. Not because it hasn’t been interesting - quite the contrary - but because I ended up chatting with a lot of cool folks. Which is, let’s face it, the main point about this kind of congregations. The conference feels a bit like a class reunion, the social web scene is a bit like a small family.

There’s a few things I found noteworthy and that I’d like to share.

First, if you’d like to follow the panels but can’t be in Berlin, there’s a pretty awesome video livestream by Hobnox.

Second, yesterday’s panel about Journalism vs Blogs sounded kind of yawn, but turned out great. The usual suspects were there: Thomas Knüwer, Mercedes Bunz, Stefan Niggemeier and Johnny Haeusler. Although they all pretty much are on the same side, the discussion got interesting, although of course there wasn’t any real opponent there. Good fun!

Third, brands4friends.de was so nice to sponsor a neat blogger dinner, which was great fun and a good occasion to mingle and to get to know some cool folks. Thanks!

(I’m going to stop numbering my points. Like, now.)

Harvard’s Viktor Mayer-Schönberger gave a talk reminding the audience how important it is for the internet to not just remember, but also to forget. A slow, but very concise talk, a presentation in Lawrence Lessig’s famous minimalistic black and white style, and some great points.

Today, on day two, I’ll be in the panels on PirateBay (which is where I’m sitting right now, typing), as well as Tom Steinberg’s panel on MySociety, as well as the Net Advocacy panel later on.

If you’re around, make sure to say hi!

Also, coordination here works best via Twitter, so feel free to follow me here, I’ll follow you back.

Also, here I’d like to recommend links, blogs and what else I stumbled upon. This list will be updated when new stuff comes up:
RechtZweiNull.de (German blog about law and Web 2.0),

Valley Trip Summary: Half-time.

I’m about half-way into my trip to the Bay Area, i.e. Silicon Valley, so I figured it’s time for a first summary. First of all, I’ve been neglecting this blog, and to some degree even Twitter. This isn’t just because I’ve been spending my time doing and seeing a lot of stuff and a bunch of cool folks, but also due to a certain lack of infrastructure.

Sounds weird? Well… just when I was packing my bags for this trip, I got notice that my OLPC Laptop had (eventually) arrived. Excited to try it out, I decided to take the risk not to take along my real laptop, and instead to rely on the little green kids laptop. Turns out, that was a bit optimistic. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but it’s not exactly the perfect tool for today’s knowledge worker if you know what I mean. (No, not even when you work mostly web-based. Trust me, I tried.) The main problems I can see after just a few days are the tiny (and very soft) keyboard, browser performance and the pretty regular crashes when trying to open more than two browser windows. Again, this is not what this laptop was intended for, it’s just my experiences. On the plus side, the battery is great, it’s super light and the screen is simply amazing: You can read perfectly in direct sunlight.

What else, besides my personal geek issues? This part of the West Coast is absolutely gorgeous, even more so than I expected. What struck me even more, though, is just how well-connected and highly energetic the web and tech community in the valley is. Within just a few days, I’ve had the chance to meet a whole bunch of cool & interesting folks. Even during this short time, I feel like I’ve learned a fair bit about startup culture and how different it seems to the German secene. It’s almost a cliché, but practically every person I’ve met works in either tech/web, finance/VC or academia. The speed new connections are made here amazes me. On the other hand, once you just get outside and stroll through the streets of San Francisco, time seems to slow down and people seem very laid back. (Is it a sun thing, maybe, and the mild climate has a soothing effect?) I could totally see myself working here for a while.

Anyway, as soon as I have some more time (and a slightly bigger keyboard), I’ll write proper wrap-up. Maybe I’ll be able to post first thoughts on some of the brainstormings we’ve been doing already as well.

I’ll be in the Bay Area until Thursday; if you’re around and would like to meet up, drop me a note!

Presentation: print is dead, at least to the young

The print vs online discussion is as old as the internet, and I can’t even recall how often I’ve heard that print is dead. However, it’s not quite as common to also deliver the necessary data to back up this statement. One person who really has the science pat down and can back up his theories is Steffen Büffel, German media consultant and blogger. And he’s spot on in this presentation (which sadly we only have in German as of now):

(This version includes audio. If you’re looking for a slide-only version, you’ll find it here.)

My favorite point? Newspapers are the medium of our great grandparents, TV maybe the medium of our parents. But we live in the web.

Also, Steffen gave this presentation at a cross media seminar. Judging from the audience’s questions and feedback, they felt quite uncomfortable with his ideas. Which, of course, leads us right back to the main problem traditional media are facing these days: The media makers, or at least the decision-makers, largely belong to a different generation of media users than following generations. This development isn’t just going to go away, so big media: Why don’t you just come talk to us? You are familiar with good ol’ Cluetrain, are you? So come out and play!

Disclosure: I’ve been working with Steffen on Blogpiloten.de and may be biased.

Forrester: Online Community Best Practices

Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang shares this great presentation about Online Community Best Practices. It’s 51 slides packed with useful advices for those of you who are planning to launch an online community of any kind. Note that this presentation won’t save you proper consulting and/or experimenting. But it contains excellent guidelines and is a good point to start from.

Looking into social networks, forums and blogs and other ways of communication to leverage the power of your community? Look no further, or at least have a look at this presentation first.

(Thanks for sharing, Jeremiah!)

On Bebo.com, and why it’s important to make invitations opt-in

Web companies of the world, if there is one lesson to learn, it’s this: Be careful when sending out invitation emails.

I just spammed, by complete accident, my whole Gmail address book through Bebo. This is something that may never happen, ever. So how could it?

Given the recent acquisition of the Social Networking Site Bebo.com by AOL (for the bargain of USD 850 million), I had another look at the successful and popular British site. I did so with a new account. Clicking through the features, I also had a look at the Friends tab, which is where you manage your connections and invite friends.

To get your social network together quickly, there’s also the option to have Bebo check your webmail address book (on Hotmail, Gmail etc.), which is a fairly standard feature. Sadly, often all contacts are pre-selected, so if you click to confirm, everybody gets an email from this service with your name. However, usually there’s also an easy way to unselect all of your contacts, so nobody gets an invite in your name.

With Bebo, when you enter your credentials so the service can check out who’s in both your address book and on Bebo, you get a long list of your contacts divided in three parts (all contacts are checked in each part):

• Friends found on Bebo who are in your address book
• Friends of friends on Bebo who you MAY know
• Invite friends to Bebo from your address book

What’s missing? An “uncheck all” button. You can skip this step, but the relevant button it’s not exactly featured prominently.

Despite being quite savvy with this kind of thing, the last part of this list slipped my attention, which resulted in Bebo sending out invitation emails to all of my contacts in my name. Just how horrible this is I don’t even want to go into. Just imagine the same happening to you: All of your friends and family receiving this odd email they know nothing about, bad enough. But it’s also all your current and former colleagues and clients. To all these recipients, it looks like you endorse this service.

I do not endorse Bebo.com.

Bebo is harmless enough, although in my opinion not very well executed compared, for example, to Facebook. Also, it was clearly my own fault to enter my email credentials. Then again, this has become a standard procedure for most Web 2.0 services.

I just finished writing an apologetic email to at least some of my contacts, mostly clients. I don’t ever want to have to write a humilitating email like this again; it caused my friends and clients, and myself, a lot of unnecessary trouble.

While I understand that user numbers are easiest to grow by endorsements and mass emailing, this can’t be the right way to go.

So web companies, get this step right! Opt-in is the way to go, not opt-out. (And don’t even think about doing this Bebo-style, with a multiple opt-out.)

To all who received this email, again, I’d like to apologize. Don’t click the link, it’s not worth the trouble.

My Masters Thesis On Weblogs And Political Journalists: Now Available On Amazon

Exciting news (well, for me): My masters thesis on the Relevance of Weblogs for the Work of Political Journalists just went into print. (It’s German only, sorry, but you’ll find the abstract at the end of this post.)

The thesis is now available through amazon.de:

Author: Peter Bihr
Publisher: Vdm Verlag Dr. Müller (March 2008)
ISBN-10: 3836464292
ISBN-13: 978-3836464291
Pages: 228
Price: 79 Euros

A bit of a steep price, if you ask me, but that’s not my decision. On the other hand, props and thanks to my publisher VDM for being so open-minded when it came to using Creative Commons. They’ve been incredibly supportive when we negotiated the licensing details, so the full text is also available as a free download under a Creative Commons license here (PDF, ca. 1MB, 227 pages).

If you have any questions or feedback, please get in touch through email (peter@thewavingcat.com) or through the contact form.

And here’s what the thesis is about:

Abstract
As either competition or partners of traditional media, weblogs are assumed to become increasingly relevant for journalism (see Gillmor 2006, Neuberger 2006b, Bucher/Büffel 2006, Benkler 2006): In US election campaigns, bloggers have long since become heavyweights in their role as political commentators, and in Germany corporations and political parties also increasingly use weblogs as a means of communication.

How relevant are weblogs for the day-to-day work of political journalists in Germany? For this study, I interviewed political journalists working at German newspapers (print and online) as well as news agencies about the relevance of weblogs for their work.

The interviewed political journalists attested weblogs to be of little relevance for their work. Weblogs were attributed more relevance for international political reporting than for domestic political reporting.

Keywords: Weblogs, Blogs, Blogosphere, Political Journalists, Citizen Journalism, Participatory Journalism, Web 2.0, Journalism

Upcoming: Valley Trip. Wanna meet up?

Most of you live in the States - that’s what my blog stats say, and that’s my experience from talking to you, too. Also, with quite a few of you I’ve emailed, chatted, or talked during the last couple of years. (I just realized: This blog is turning two years old just about these days.) It’s always good (and great fun) to get to learn the faces behind those blogs and screen names.

So, to cut a long story short: Starting 18 March, I’ll be on a trip to the Valley region. I’ll be staying in Palo Alto with a Stanford friend, but trips around the Valley are (yet to be) planned. (Exact dates, see the Dopplr badge below.) Wanna meet up? Drop me a line: peter@thewavingcat.com.

Also, which events are you going to that I definitively shouldn’t miss? I’m looking for all things along the line of Social Media Breakfasts, Twitter Meet-Ups, or great concerts. Again, please drop me a line to peter@thewavingcat.com. Thanks!

Looking forward to putting more faces to all those names.

ps. Connect via Twitter for easy coordination: http://twitter.com/thewavingcat

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