Babelfish Cafe

Social Networking: What Users Want

If you visited Europe lately, you may have overheard a certain lisp near the water cooler these days: that's because everone is talking about "SN" or "Social Networking." SN refers to websites that allow users to build their on profile, the ability to link with other users’ profiles and the opportunity to swap recommendations or referrals. Next to local versions of Myspace and Youtube, Germany cultivates countless home-grown brands such as the student community StudyVZ or Sport1.

I must confess that it is fascinating to watch these sites grow and to see how community members enthusiastically embrace the tools that these sites offer. After all, the Internet started out as a platform for sharing of news, content and contacts; Social Networking is the purest embodiement of this idea. However, website publishers should carefully ask themselves who their target group is before rigging up their own SN. According to a recent report by Jupiterresearch, 66% of people who use media sites do not expect these websites to to offer SN features. However, SN may change the expectations that users have in terms of the abilty to connect and share with other users, and may expect media sites to offer certain features that can be found on SL sites. The report quotes the ability to share event tipps and other recommendations as one of the top three features that SL users deem important.

Do you agree with the assumption that sharing recommendations is the most important feature in your social community? What features would you like to see emerge in communities such as Facebook or MySpace?

Deutsche Bank Building at Ground Zero

The "Coffin" is about to be pulled down. Almost six years since the destruction of the World Trade Center, the Deutsche Bank building has been standing tall next to the gaping hole that marks Ground Zero. I remember visiting the site last summer, briefly before my departure to Germany. It was on a week night and someone had pulled a light chain around the building, one of those pretty chains that illuminate beer gardens and wedding parties. It was a weird yet somewhat moving sight. At the beginning of this year, the city finally started dismantling the building. They had reached the 40th floor when a fire broke out inside the building and killed two fire men. For those who live close to Ground Zero, it must have been a brutal reminder of the ordeal that they went through six years ago. I searched for information about the incident and was astonished to find that the website of the Deutsche Bank hasn't mentioned the fire with one word. Maybe the bank is afraid of adding to the emotional upheaval that people close to 9/11 are already going through. What do you think? Should the Deutsche Bank make a statement online about the incident, or should it simply approach the families of the deceased fire fighters directly and keep its website qiet?

Bart Simpon, a Free Man Indeed

It’s been a great month for animation fans in Germany: after years of watching The Simpsons on TV, they were finally able to enjoy Matt Groening’s cult show in feature film length. I confess that I was a bit nervous when I watched the roll-out, considering how many animated shows did great on TV but didn’t do well on the silver screen. Groening however managed to turn the Simpsons story into an 86 minute success that got hailed even by the acclaimed German news magazine Der Spiegel („A Masterpiece in Yellow“).

It was a thrill for my ex-pat soul to see the movie skyrocket, for a particular reason: Ever since I worked with the animation artist Allan Neuwirth, I had thought of the animation business as one of the last resorts for artistic and political freedom in America. What do I mean by that? Well, Allan is the author of Making Toons, the behind-the-scenes book that celebrated the rebirth of animation. Through him, I got to meet some of the people who have been involved with the great animated movies of the past years: The Lion King, Sponge Bob Square Pants, Shrek and others. Like everyone else, I thought that animation artists must be exceptionally, imaginative people. But these people were much more than that: they were often highly intelligent and politically conscious. Many of them were gay. And many were extremely watchful of the Big Cover-Up that the United States, from the European viewpoint, have undergone in recent years.

By that, I mean the nudity is stripped from your TV shows and. Or children in the ultra-Christian states who are kept in the dark about anything that has to do with sex ed, AIDS, or contraceptives; or creationists trying to turn curricula and public institutions into a battlefield for medieval values. And here is Bart Simpson, completely aloof of the political correctness and ideological wars around him, poking with his finger into the very issues that „proper“ people try to ban from the public consciousness.

Imcompetent schools, religious hypocrisy, political greed, perversion, abortion, drug addiction, no topic has been too touchy fort his show about a dysfunctional family from „Evergreen Terrace.“ I even remember seeing a Simpsons show where the entire family gets highjacked by a boat full of gay pirates. Gay pirates! I cannot think of a German or French TV show that talks about any of the above issues, not to mention the fine sense of observation and social commentary that fuels this show.

For people here, Bart Simpson & Family are a nice reminder that Americans are not the dumbed-down, brain-washed couch potatoes that we often imagine them to be. As long as Bart Simpson is allowed to subvert your TV and movie screens, there is hope that American democracy is alive and kicking. :-)

Dancing without Travolta

It’s been fun going out with J. She is a friend who loves dancing and who takes modern dance classes three times per week. And so we ended up going to a performance where a whole bunch of modern dance teams from Munich performed. The show was a lot of fun to watch but what was even more fun was the dancing aftewards. The DJ played the songs that make even the most inhibited people from 20 to 50 rush to the dance floor and groove their hearts out, which we did for three hours straight without missing a song.

I went home at one am and thought a bit about the evening. This dance experience has been so different from what I've been enjoying in New York. For one thing, Munich doesn’t have a „cabaret law;“ it’s ok to dance anywhere you want without the bars or cafes having to own a carabet license. And it doesn’t cost a fortune to go to a real „club“ with a designated dance floor: six bucks during a week-night easily get you into a decent place, and the bars/clubs are still less crowded than most of the places I visited in the East Village or in W-Burgh.

What's more, many people don’t go to the clubs by train or cab, they ride bicycles. In other words: forget that frilly dress that looks so awesome on the dance floor and wear something that won’t get caught in the chain of your bike...Overall, glamour is not what you will find here. If you are looking for glamour, go to Berlin, or try to get invited to a private party by someone from Munich’s large pool of Young & Wealthy. What you will find here, on a lucky night, are people who dance with complete abandon.

Man or woman, people here will let all their quirkiness and high spirits and joy of life move with the music, no matter if they look silly or out of step. It’s not exactly a sexy or cool way of dancing; remember, we don’t have a John Travolta over here. And we never created movies like Saturday Night Fever or Footloose. On the other hand, being without Travolta leaves a lot of room for improvisation...Needless to say, I cannot say what I like more: the individualistic dance style over here or a good Travolta impersonation. But a transatlantic party certainly sounds like a good idea... :-)

Mamiweb.de

I just did an interview with Torsten Pinkert, the founder of a website called Mamiweb. A friend of mine had told me about this former colleague who had turned into a full-time internet entrepreneur and so naturally, I was intrigued. Mamiweb was founded actually by a group of people, many of them mothers with small children, who felt that the existing online offerings for young mothers were simply not addressing their needs.

You may ask yourself what is so difficult about serving young mothers and those on their way to giving birth -- after all, it's a pretty well defined target group. But what these parent sites were missing, according to the women, was a concerted effort to nurture a community, i.e. to facilitate the encounter and exchange between young parents. And so the Mamiweb Team went to work and created a platform that focuses first and foremost on creating a strong community: a place where parents from 25 to 35 can chat, exchange tipps for activities, offer first-aid advice and submit their own stories.

Whenever they plan to introduce a new interactive feature, the group talks at length to the women who visit the site, making sure the new feature really hits a nerve with the community. Mamiweb's concept is working out pretty well so far; the community is experiencing a healthy and continuous growth and the members seem to be happy with the site.

What's interesting is that 70% of Mamiweb's content is USER-GENERATED (and of rather solid quality). Even more astonishing, almost none of the content undergoes any editing. According to Pinkert, the quality is pretty high and the tone never off track. That goes both for the magazine articles and the forum posts.

Why do I mention this story? Because many markteing people here in Germany are talking about "community" and "user-generated content" or "citizen journalist" as if it was an obscure formula that required a whole army of marketing advisors to make it work. Here is a bunch of (sorry Torsten!) rather inexperienced entrepreneurs who make it all happen without losing many words over it. Maybe that's what having a baby does to people: they focus on what needs to get done and just do it.

An Invitation

Dear Friends,

Yesterday, I realized with a shock that it had been more than a year since I left New York and returned to Germany. And that I have been pitifully out of touch with most of you. What had happend? Does the process of reintegrating yourself in your own country taken up so much time and energy?

The truth is, I had made a conscious effort not to think too much of life in New York and the people I have been close with. I know it must sound odd to you but I felt that I would never „arrive“ over here if I thought too much about the days that we spent together in the Apple. So my plan was to turn back into a German as quickly as possible and put all my energy into building a new life here.

Of course the plan didn’t work at all. According to my friends, I spent the first months after my return constantly talking about life in New York (I could swear that wasn’t the case). I got restless when I spent more than two hours at a sit-down dinner – and a good Beergarden „Brotzeit“ (our equivalent to Tea Time) can take up to four hours! What’s worse, I ran into people who made me understand that I was „too American,“ i.e. too friendly, too energetic or too bold for their taste. They in return were too reserved, too introvert and too unpolite for my taste!

Things changed gradually in April, after I had finished my online journalism program and finally found the time to reflect a bit upon my situation. I now feel that, one year after my „exodus,“ I have finally made peace with the way people think and behave over here. I can see how the German way of questioning everything can be a good thing, because it means that people do not buy into every fad that comes their way. I can see that the lonely-fighter mentality that I have watched in many people my age and older is steadly being replaced by a sense of connectedness and mutual support. And I am actually enjoying the slower pace of life that makes itself felt everywhere in life, professional or private.

Ah, and the blog. You may have noticed that I have been writing about a wild choice of topics and in various styles and even changing the subtitle of my blog several times. That is a pretty acurate reflection of the mindset that I have had in the past months -- chronically out of focus and taking everything in at the same time.

I appreciate those of you who have kept reading my blog for jumping through all these hoops with me. And yes, please bear with me if I tell you that I’d like to change the focus of this blog one more time. I’d like Babelfish Cafe to be a place that where me and my German friends explain some of the odd, fascinating or simply incomprehensive things that are happening in my country (and other places outside of the US). In return, I’d like to talk with you about people and events in the US that upset or intrigue the rest of us.

We need to talk about whether or not Harry Potter is a metrosexual from Germany. ☺ We need to discuss why Arnold Schwarzenegger had no choice but to immigrate to the US and why we are so fortunate (or not!) to get Brad Pitt in return. And we need to discuss the civil liberty issues that keep threatening democracy on both sides of the Atlantic. Substance and fun stuff, the high- and the low-brow. Whatever you favor, I’d like to chat, debate, speculate, inquire, muse (and sometimes bitch) with you the way we do when we get together.

This was a rather longwound way of saying „I miss your wonderful company“ and „sorry for not having kept in touch.“ I hope you will get back to me one way or another, so that I don’t have to post more longish explanations here. ☺

Love and lots of good thoughts from Munich,

Birte

USA Erklärt

Link: USA Erklärt. I am on my way to the zoo but did want to post this link so my German friends could see it: it's a blog called "Explaining the US" and it was just nominated for a major online media award.

Little Brother is Watching, Too

At a big political assembly in Berlin. Several members of a minority party disagree with the speaker. A dispute enrolls, the party members leave the room in rage, insults are being shouted, doors slammed. "Unruly behavior" - such was the comment of an American radio moderator that I was listening to years ago, when I was on a plane ride from Frankfurt to New York. Astonished by the emotional outburst of these protestors, the moderator mused that such a scene would have never happened in a similar setting in the U.S. It's true: us Germans live in a country that accepts aggressive behavior, exhibitions of foul mood and grudge even in a political context. We proudly call this our "culture of dissent", and we deem it a crucial token of our democratic society, even if if this dissent results in "unrulyness." However, looking at the recent events that have taken place in the realm of national security here, I wonder if this culture of dissent is not on the verge of changing.

Case 1: Internet Search. The Federal of Office of Criminal Investigation has recently been accused of searching the harddrives of several "criminal suspects" accused of terrorist activities. Now the Federal Court has ruled such investigation illegal because the FOCI had failed to secure the legal basis that was necessary for such an investigation. In response, our minister of the interior is now calling for a law that extends the use of online investigations beyond the status quo. His justification: the Internet as a "long distance university and training camp for terrorists." Several members of our parliament disagree with him and have tried to discuss the matter in the Lower House, but the ruling parties are trying to move this discussion to a special committee, away from public discourse. Yes, we need legislation that is in tune with the lastest technological evolutions and the extended playingfield that they provide to criminals. But there is no doubt that the FOCI overstepped its authority and that it should realize its mistake.

Case 2: G8 Protests. As the New York Times reported today, German police have conducted a raid on offices and homes of left-wing campaigners who are considered enemies of the G8. The police claimed to have received word that several people from this alliance planned to commit acts of terrorism against the impeding G8 summit, which will meet in Heiligendamm in Eastern Germany in June. - Yes, there have been violent riots surroundig the G8 summit in the past, yes, people have been killed on this occassion. But does this justify a "preemptive act" of this dimension?

There is a growing concern here in Germany (and I am not referring to myself alone) that our democratic liberties are being increasingly frayed by national security concerns, much in the way that we seem them frayed in the U.S.

Feminism Exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum

I came across this exhibit when skimming through Artkrush, a weekly newsletter on contemporary art. My first response was amazement: to have an exhibit on Feminism in this day and age and with such a lightness seems unthinkable in Germany. Or at least it was until recently. When I returned from my first trip to the US in 1997, I joined my friend Simone in an effort to start a women's group, at our Alma Mater the University of Bamberg/Bavaria. It was the first group of its kind at that school and was met mostly with scorn: by the women who were heading the Office of Gender Equality and Women's Rights as much as by the local Lesbian group. People then said that we were too extreme or too soft. But in reality there was something else at work: once the 80s were over, nobody in Germany wanted to talk about Feminism any more. The men were sick of the Men's Groups that they had joined years before and intimidated by the few truly aggressive feminists that this country has seen. The women were tired of having to be "twice as good as men" to win their share of the good jobs and salaries, plus, they didn't want to be singled out any more. This state of mind lasted until the year 2006, when Ms. Chancellor Angela Merkel seized power and the media started to talk about a "new brand of Feminism." At this point in time, there are daily discussions about the need for more equality and, first and foremost, about needing more daycare and kindergarden spots for our young. A new law has been introduced that grants new mothers a stipend equaling 80% of their previous salary during the first 12 months that they stay at home with their babies. In a way, we are living Feminism these days, but we still avoid the term itself. Maybe that's as good as it gets. But I do miss a strong movement and language that talks about the equality of men and women in positive terms.

Speaking Germany

Munich's residents have been passing them probably a thousand times in the past weeks: huge billboards covered with talk. Snippets and tidbits of talk, as if taken from a random conversation. They were too random and too raw to be advertising and they carried a url: www.speaking-germany.de. Behind this url is a young woman named Sharone Livschitz. The website doesn't say much about her, but it talks about the making of these billboard dialogies: Sharone had been posting classified ads in the personal section of newspapers and magazines all over Germany. The text always read the same: "Young Jewish woman traveling in Germany would like to have conversation about nothing in particular with anyone reading this." Sharone got thirty to forty responses out of each ad and she ended up meeting with three or four of the people who had responded. To talk about "nothing in paricular." With some of them she is still in touch, others she has never seen again except for their words on the billboards that adorn Munich's sidewalks and train station. Of course I am dying to figure out who she is and what made her come up with this idea. Wouldn't you? And yes, it gives me, a German, something to think about when a Jewish woman, out of the blue, decides to reach out to people in Germany. In the most human, non-chalant and easy way there is: through conversation.

Link: Speaking Germany.