Google Analytics - How visitors get on my site

These are the keywords people google for and end up on my site. So, just in case you don’t know what to blog about – there’s apparently a lack of content on the web about Lukasz Sebastian Gottwald aka Dr. Luke.
And in case you’re wondering what I’m doing the whole time (apart from trying to manage my university-stuff, and failing desperately with it): I created ca. four hours of video-content about CSS3 & HTML5 (in German unfortunately, but the first video has english subtitles) and will set up the site css3-html5.de, because there is no such site yet in German.

Btw: This post isn’t meant to indicate that I start blogging again. Actually the idea to write this post just popped up in my mind when I was going through the Google Analytics.
Anyway. We shouldn’t forget: Germany just won the football match against England in the World Cup (or “soccer” match as most of my visitors are from the US). Great day. A few impressions of the situation after the match below. In the next round we have to compete against Argentinia…

There's no such thing as football (1/5)

There's no such thing as football (2/5)

There's no such thing as football (3/5)

There's no such thing as football (4/5)

There's no such thing as football (5/5)

Unfortunately the copy wasn’t really successful: They forgot to copy the “Daily Show“‘s quality! It is so totally unfunny and quite dumb! Instead of intelligent, creative, ironic remarks on the absurdity in politics and the media (especially FOX News) they have lame, pseudo-funny lines… come hell or high water. I know that it’s hard to reach the level of Jon Stewart, but this host can’t stand a comparison to him. Yet, I know that it’s also more difficult to create a kind of “Daily Show” in Germany than it is in the USA and the Nazis plays a role indirectly:

heute-show, Oliver Welke, ZDF

After the end of WWII in 1945 the nazi-ideology was still in the minds of many people. The post-war generation however, who were children or not even born when the war took place, learned about the cruelty of the nazi-period and revolted against lecturers, politicians or even their own parents if they had been supporters of the nazi-regime. Since then, since 1968, Germany is getting more and more leftish. Today we have three big left-wingish parties (one at least claims to be leftish) versus one conservative, yet not ultra conservative party. The media is usually non-political, but in case, they’re rather given to the left-wing than to the right-wing. And I’m not talking about one or two channels or newspapers – I mean the German media landscape in general. The German politics are mostly “de-emotionalized” (although now, in the times of Barack Obama, the politicians try desperatly to mobilize the voters and getting their favor by struggling to be rhetorical eloquent and emotionally expressive… of course they fail just as desperatly)…

To put it in a nutshell (is this really the correct idiom?! The dictionary says that..!): We neither have Republicans nor FOX News! We don’t have the Southern States or the “Bible Belt“. We do have absurdity in our politics (the latest example: The introduction of a censorship on the internet with the strange pretense to help children with it… I should blog about this topic, too!), yet not as often and not as prominent as in the USA. We don’t have Gretchen Carlson, Bill O’Reilly or other… let’s call them “simple-minded persons” on television. (uh… No, I think “idiots” is the more appropriate term..!)

So, this wonderful basis for a show like “The Daily Show” is somehow missing in Germany. There were already thoughts in the German Blogosphere about how a German “Daily Show” could be like. One blogger meant that there isn’t enough stuff to fill a daily show with, but maybe it is enough to fill a weekly one. Yet I fancy the idea to create a European “Daily Show”:

Between June 4th – 7th Europe elected the European Parliament. The voter turnout was very low – as it was expected. Because here in Germany you don’t notice that you’re living in a union of states. The European Union seems to be far away. You don’t realize what’s going on in the other European countries. And – according to the post-election-coverage – this is not a German-only issue, but a European one! I believe that this problem is strongly associated with the disenchantment with politics: The European Union is an economic and political union. But as the citizens aren’t really interested in politics and the economy, they are also not interested in this union! The media matters more than ever – especially TV – but you won’t find anything Europe-related on TV (apart from the news, but people are also not interested in the news… except for gossipy news). You’ll find a lot of USA-related stuff on TV! All these American series, movies, singers and bands, coming along with the gossip news about them. To draw a weird conclusion: Europeans are more likely to call themselves “Americans” than “Europeans”! (This sentence is nonsense, but you get the idea)

So, a program which is referred to European topics (rather than to American ones or to topics of a single European nation) would support a European spirit and would probably have enough material to base on. And I think there are probably more righties in the other European countries than there are here in Germany – and maybe there’s even some kind of European “FOX News” somewhere – who knows!

Anyway. The “heute-show” is bad. That has been the actual topic of this post! Although the producers of the show say that “The Daily Show” wasn’t the only orientation: Rudis Tagesshow (there’s no English version of this wikipedia-article available – read the article about “Die Wochenschau“, Rudis Tagesshow is mentioned there) was also one. And “Rudis Tagesshow” is indeed similar to the “heute-show”… But I think this format is outdated since the nineties when “Die Wochenshau” picked it up and broadcasted it until its ratings were going down!

So (the post is already quite long, I have to come to an end!), there’s still not a good German “Daily Show” and I wished there would be a European one.

German Blog Top 10

10. Indiskretion Ehrensache

One of the blogs by Germany’s leading commercial economy newspaper “Handelsblatt”. This Blog however has just very little to do with the topics of the newspaper. Blogger and Handelsblatt-reporter “Thomas Knüwer” writes often about Web 2.0, the internet and how journalists have to change to get along with this new medium.

Indiskretion Ehrensache - Screenshot

9. medienlese.com

A blog by a well known Swiss blog company called “blogwerk AG”. Medienlese.com is a blog about Media. Since August 2006 they observe developments and innovations in the German-speaking media landscape. It’s a professional Blog by a Team of four bloggers. 

medienlese - Screenshot

8. Spreeblick.com = “spree-view”

Is one of the best known Blogs within the German blogosphere. It was founded in 2002 by Johnny Haeusler and his wife Tanja Haeusler. The actual success came with a post in which business practices of Germany’s mobile content provider “Jamba!” (in English-speaking countries “Jamster!”) were disclosed. In 2005 these two founded the first German blog publishing company to support professional German bloggers. 2006 Spreeblick was honored with the renowned Grimme online award.

Today, many of Germany’s Top-Bloggers are also blogging on Spreeblick.com. They have 13 authors by now and 7000 visitors daily.

Spreeblick - Screenshot

7. netzpolitik.org = “net-politics”

Is about topics of the digital society like governmental control, Open-Source software, telecommunication laws, Creative Commons, a free knowledge-based society… It was founded in 2002 by Markus Beckendahl. It was honoured with several awards. Among others they got the “Freedom Blog Award” by “Reporters Without Borders” in 2005 and the Grimme Online Award in 2008.

netzpolitik - Screenshot

6. Nerdcore.de

Subheading: “This Blog About Very Cool Stuff. Und So.” (“Und so” = “And stuff like that”) It is indeed a very cool blog! It’s made by Webdesigner René Walter who blogs about freaky, weird things he finds on the internet in an indescribable hilarious way! It’s so much fun to read it! He writes 8 to 9 posts every day (for all non-Bloggers: that’s kinda much)! There’s a live visitor-counter in the footer of his site on which you can see how many visitors are with you on the site at the very moment  - and the counter often shows a number beyond 100 – so, Nerdcore is quite visited!

Nerdcore - Screenshot

5. netzwertig.com = “net-worthy”

Another blog by the blogwerk AG. It’s like medienlese, but about Internet economy. Apart from news about current developments on the internet, they also analyze how the internet affects our society and present new internet-start-ups from the German-speaking World.

Netzwertig - Screenshot

4. GoogleWatchBlog

Is a Watchblog about Google and Google’s acquisited companys (like YouTube). It’s not writing in a critical way (as it’s actually common for watchblogs), but rather in a pro-Google way. Nevertheless the blog is independent from Google Inc.! It’s one of the most read German Blogs, but it’s definitively the most subscribed German blog: It has over twenty-five thousand feed-subscribers!

Google Watch Blog - Screenshot

3. Stefan Niggemeier

Stefan Niggemeier is a German mediajournalist. He’s an editor at the notable Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He’s well-known for co-founding the famous “BILDblog” (see below) on which he’s still blogging today. On his personal Weblog he comments and criticizes on processes in the Media landscape. His posts have a very high journalistic quality. In 2007 he recieved the Grimme Online Award for his Blog.

Stefan Niggemeier - Screenshot

2. BILDblog

The BILD-Zeitung is the most read German daily newspaper. It’s a tabloid – comparable to “The Sun” in Britain and, uhm, “The Daily News” in the USA?! …Anyway! The BILD is known for straining the truth often times and having a low journalistic quality. That’s why in 2004 Stefan Niggemeier and Christoph Schultheis founded the BILDblog as a watchblog to disclose mistakes, insufficient investigation and product placement in the BILD-Zeitung. BILDblog has become the best known blog in Germany, it’s even known to people beyond the German Blogosphere. Everyday 50.000 people visit the site! The ad revenues are so high that the BILDblog-bloggers (skilled journalists all together) work at their own little BILDblog-office in Berlin (a former butchery)! Since the BILDblog got so much attention, the BILD reacted on it and introduced a corrective slot on page 2 in which they correct themselves every day. In a screenshot that appeared in the BILD-Zeitung you can see that BILDblog is a “favorite” in their browser:

BILDblog is a favorite in BILD's browsers

BILDblog - Screenshot

1. Basic Thinking Blog

This Blog was originally Robert Basic‘s personal blog (That’s why “Basic thinking”). He blogged about technical stuff, the internet and so on. And because there are many other tech-oriented Blogs out there, he became the most linked Blog in Germany’s Blogosphere. This however caused attention and with it a rising number of readers and subscribers. That’s how he became number one of several of those Blogosphere rankings. But suddenly, at the 6th of January 2009, he announced that he wants to sell his blog, because he got bored of it! So, he auctioned it on eBay. This caused a stir and he was interviewed by several Newspapers and TV channels. On 15.1.2009 basicthinking.de was sold for 46.902 Euros to a company called “Plusserver”. They continued blogging about tech-stuff with a whole Team of bloggers now. However, the topics are not as interesting any more as they were in the time when “Robert Basic” was blogging. Nevertheless, they made a very cool campaign three weeks ago when they gave away 1000 free CeBit tickets.

Basic Thinking - Screenshot

So. Now you’ve got an overview of the German Blogosphere: A lot of media-related blogs, a lot of tech-related blogs and some others in between.

The German Blogosphere is of course not as huge as the English/American Blogosphere, simply because the audience is way smaller (there are not as many German-speakers in the world as English-speakers). But apart from this, blogs are not very established in Germany. While in the USA everybody knows about HuffPo and Gawker and the Media also refers to their stories, in Germany Blogs are rather hushed up by Journalists and bloggers are not taken seriously. That’s why many people (and I’m talking about young, internet-active people!) don’t even know what exactly a blog is at all or they believe it’s an (uninteresting) personal internet-diary in which you write about yourself and what you’re doing… So, there’s much potential readership but only little actual readership.

Yet, there’s another “problem” with German Blogs: they aren’t Mainstream! German Bloggers are mostly intelligent, politically active, keen-to-debate, highly educated and rather leftish persons. So: Everything but “normal”! They turn away from mainstream-things like Gossip or Sensations etc. I don’t want to criticize it, au contraire! But this may be another reason why German blogs aren’t as huge as American ones – Look at America’s Top-Blogs: Gawker combines high and low culture, writes in an intelligent way, but about tabloid topics; perezhilton…. uhm, simply Gossip; Huffingtin Post, writes about politics and stuff, but in an sensational way… and so on. Germany doesn’t have any Blog that is even slightly comparable to one of these blogs!

With not being mainstream and just having a small actual readership, German blogs are also not as (financially) valueable as the American “Blockbusters”. According to 24/7 Wall St. the most valueable blog is Gawker with 170 Mio. $. In January Germany’s Top-Blog basicthinking was sold for 46 thousand Euros – a record-breaking prize for a German blog, but puny in comparison to Gawker’s prize.

So, you see: In Germany the blogosphere is quite neglected and the blogs are in comparison to the American heavyweights utterly provincial.

Tomorrow I’ll gonna post Germany’s Top Ten blogs (that’s why this post has the attachment “an introduction”). Or maybe I’ll finish the “Writing Camp”-post and publish it… but that’s rather unlikely. (Sorry to all those of you who wanna read another music-related post)