For the past year I have been following the development of Web 2.0 with a great deal of interest. Blogs were an early example of the potential of Web 2.0, but only a very few blogs were able to attract enough advertising dollars to make them viable businesses. Venture capital began to flow into some start-ups that were building software facilitating social networking and then last month there was the stunning success of YouTube , which Google is now buying for $1.65 billion (incidentally making Jawed Karim from eastern Germany VERY rich).
So what is going on with Web 2.0 in Germany? I found a list of the ten "hottest German start-ups" in the Web 2.0 space on the blog sichelputzer.de.
Of these, StudiVZ – a facebook knock-off – is perhaps the most successful, having attracted a Euro 10 million investment from the venture capital arm of Holtzbrinck. Kasi-blog has very informative report on StudiVZ. The site supposedly has over 1 million registered users but so far has not attracted much advertising. The strategy of StudiVZ (and Holtzbrinck) appears to be one of waiting for facebook to acquire it (facebook itself is rumored to be in the sights of Yahoo!). Is this the business model of German Web 2.0 startups: create a German clone of a US site, attract as many users as possible, and then get acquired by the Americans? A closer look at sichelputzer’s list shows that most these startups are clones: sevenload is a YouTube knock-off, Qype imitates Insiderpages.com while Mister Wong (which I like very much) resembles the tagging service of del.icio.us. But maybe the founders of these German sites will get very rich with this approach: it is an easy way for US sites to acquire German users. On the other hand, are there any start-ups in Germany that are "pushing the envelope" in terms of realizing the infinite potential of Web 2.0?
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Faceplant?
Valleywag has covered the US college-student social network Facebook turning down an acquisition offer from Yahoo! in the $1.4 billion range. See the article here.
Markenwechsel gelungen? Wie es Xing´t und klingt!
Wie ist so etwas zu erklären? Eine gut eingeführte Marke (OpenBC) wird, wie in einem Crash-Kurs, radikal verschlimmbessert. Dabei ist es eher das Gesamtkonzept, das überhaupt nicht mehr überzeugt. Kann man Xing noch empfehlen? Markenwechsel gelungen? Wie es Xing´t und …
Not much profitable creativity in Old Germany…
Is Spreadshirt also a stolen idea?
Does it qualify as Web2.0? It is about user-generated content on T-shirts, not in the internet, but you order your T-Shirt on the internet.
If you would like to run around in a Dialog International T-Shirt with Kurt Tucholsky and everything, go for it… 😉
Many people sell and wear Che- and Einstein-T-shirts, but not Tucholksy…
Infor about Spreadshirt:
“Born from the minds of two German graduate students, Spreadshirt was launched in Leipzig, Germany in 2002. The company quickly became the leading provider of custom, online apparel in Europe and one of the most successful Internet start-ups in recent years. In 2004, just two short years after launching in Germany, expansion became a reality as Spreadshirt decided it was time to take on the American market.”
http://www.spreadshirt.com/
The MP3 audio format was invented in Germany… This revolutionized internet file sharing (is that also Web2.0?).
What do you like about Mister Wong?
Why are there sooo many social bookmarking sites?
What would make sense is a German version of reddit.com
Tucholsky T-Shirt? Great idea! Need a caption, however….thoughts?
For example a cynical quote from Tucholsky: “Wahlen ändern nichts, sonst wären sie verboten”
Or:
Der Vorteil der Klugheit liegt darin, dass man sich dumm stellen kann. Das Gegenteil ist schon schwieriger.
Laß uns das Leben genießen, solange wir es nicht begreifen…
Jubel über militärische Schauspiele ist eine Reklame für den nächsten Krieg…
There are many more great quotes, which would be short enough for a T-Shirt, but I do not remember them right now.