ComScore says in march 46,9million Germans did watch at least one online video. The average time a person spent watching online video content raised 34% to 27h during 2011. 35,4million unique visits pushes Googles video services to the pole position (with 99,7% via youtube), far further down the road are 14million uniques on services like private TV channel ProSiebenSat1 or portals like MyVideo and Maxdome. 9,8million uniques make United Internet and Facebook third in row.
Mai 15
Share economy
Salesforce.com published a study on sharing economy, a yet underdeveloped field of business in Germany.
Basics first – 23.000 people were interviewed on their experiences and expectations on institutionalized sharing. As expected, especially amongst us green Germans, sustainability is an issue that is strongly linked to the idea of sharing.
A second big issue are ,economic aspects especially high prized goods like cars, holidays, ect. were amongst the list of goods/services that would be accepted as part of a sharing consumption.
Surprising 72% do expect sharing services to become a part of daily consumption patterns soon – which means to favor reasons for ownership.
http://www2.sfdcstatic.com/de/assets/pdf/misc/Studien-Booklet-Teilen-statt-besitzen.pdf
Mai 15
Penny-pinching Germans prefer ads to pro accounts
German Tech-Association BITKOM published a study that Germans prefer to get exposed to advertisement than to pay for pro accounts. Elder users show a greater acceptance to ads than youngsters. But as content driven sites have big problems monetizing their services through ads, BITKOM’s president Kempf’s demand for maintaining legal frameworks for ads might prove water under the bridge.
Mai 14
Author’s rights debate gains momentum
A group of authors set up a page explaining the author’s (or at least some) view of the recent debate.
In stilted speech they go ‘with concern and incomprehension we witness the public attacks against author’s rights. Author’s rights are a historical accomplishment of civil freedom against feudal dependencies and it grants the material basis of individual intellectual work.’
phew – elaborated, wicked.
Anonymous, as a reaction published a list of artists involved – like Charlotte Roche, Sven Regener, Michael Mittermaier or Till Lindemann – with birth dates, private e-mail and postal addresses, phone numbers on pastebin.com. Not Anonymous themselves, but affiliated net activists say: ‘We are file sharers, we fight a copy fight, and we will win’
Anyhow, the best response was delivered by Sascha Kösch of De:Bug magazine, who says ‘with concern and incomprehension we witness the public attacks against the internet. The internet is a historical accomplishment of civil freedom against feudal dependencies and it grants the immaterial basis of individual intellectual work.’
http://www.wir-sind-die-urheber.de/
http://wirsindfilesharer.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/djbleed
Mai 11
Access invests 200 million in Rocket
According to Gründerszene.de, U.S. billionaire Len Blavatnik bosts the Samwer incubator into the international pole position.
Rumors on such an investment were heard for a long time, but now Gründerszene claims the deal closed and 200 million USD are transfered to Rocket Internet. Len Blavatnik of Access Industries in return will receive an unspecified number of shares at the Berlin incubator.
In March Blavatnik already invested in Glossybox, a product out of the Samwer incubator for a seven percent share.
This sums Rocket’s vault to nearly one billion(!).
Quite some money to spend on international rollouts and copycats, isn’t it?
Mai 11
Sharing Economy reaches fashion
German StartUps fashionlend allows users to lend/borrow fashion from others. (Well, especially in Berlin were most hipsters and fashion victims do rather look like clones anyway I don’t really get this model, but that’s a subjective perspective of an early man.)
‘You can buy your favorite piece and afford to do so, by lending it to others for a decent fee’, says co-founder Karim Saad.
Mai 11
another privacy nightmare
As many are struggling getting their data deleted or back under control, not only for author’s rights, but also for those snapshots of you that you don’t want to share – a new facial recognition app Klik launched out of beta.
Before you can even click the button to take a pic of someone, the app immediately recognizes the face, searching and tagging it, if it matches with one of your contacts or Facebook friends (if you connect it with your account). Of course it comes with a social component — users can view your friends’ photos and see the locations where those pics where taken.
Don’t bother opting out of geotagged and face recognition services or boost your privacy settings – your friends will definitely spoil your efforts.
Klik was developed by Face.com, a facial recognition software company and is available for free in the app store.
Mai 11
German Telekom Lauches it’s incubator hub:raum
T-Kom stock value - time for another good idea?
German Telekom is a synonym for encrusted businesses. But CEO René Obermann caught us all off guard this week at Berlin’s NEXT conference, announcing their plan to cooperate with StartUps in the near future.
German Telekom initiated and launched an ‘interface’ called hub:arum in Berlin, offering up to 15 StartUps per year funding, office spaces and infrastructure and mentors. Founders and StartUps can apply here for initial fundings up to 300K EUR.
Go for it!
Mai 11
author’s have no clue
credit: http://millus.kulando.de/static/illustration
Cologne based Comic artist Miguel E. Riveros Silva made his point in the recent German debate on author’s rights, in an article in the well recommended newspaper ‘Die Zeit’.
He demands that non copy- alterable file formats have to be invented (in his case a work title could be pfd…) and that ISPs and hosting services are in charge to enforce author’s rights.
Web browsers should open with a splash page telling users that copyright infringements are illegal.
Yip – sounds like a plan. And I always thought the tech side has no clue how author’s rights work…
Mai 11
soundcloud reaches 15 million and going ‘next’
SoundCloud reaches 15 million users and announces Next, a complete relaunch of their website, including a more interactive waveform player, better profiles, reposting of your sounds, and above all – a ‘continuous’ player will shift Soundcloud towards a streaming service.
The Next SoundCloud will be available in a private beta immediately. Learn more and request access here:
