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Web 2.0 MP3, 2:25 min.

The utopia that Bertolt Brecht described for radio in the 1930s has today become a reality for many with Web 2.0, the collaborative internet. Users are no longer condemned just to receive; they can also broadcast. And in Web 2.0 people no longer need to understand the technical background that makes this possible.

Web 2.0 in Germany

The USA, practically the inventor of the internet, is at the forefront of Web 2.0 developments. Germany is still lagging far behind in this area. Many of the large German-speaking portals on the internet originate in the USA. flickr, for instance, comes from California. The idea of a platform for storing and sharing digital photos arose in 2004 from an online game. Today flickr has around six million users and hundreds of photos are uploaded from all over the world every minute. Anyone can save photos here and share them with friends or with the whole world. In 2005 youtube was developed for moving pictures. It is a platform for small home videos and the site registers a hundred million downloads per day.

For watching videos on the PC monitor or moving about in the virtual world of Second Life you need a high-speed internet connection. In 2003 only just over ten per cent of all German households had a broadband connection. At around forty per cent today, Germany is below the Western European average, but is expected to pass the fifty-per-cent-mark next year.

Sharing and networking

myspace is one of the world’s most popular websites. The German version of this online network is called dugg.de – du gehörst zu meinen Freunden. According to information provided by the site itself, it already has over two million young participants. StudiVZ is aimed primarily at students, the main players in Web 2.0, and is a networking site, student newspaper, discussion platform and bulletin board rolled into one.

Even the marriage market is online. There are as many as 2000 online dating sites, although only a small proportion of these are relevant in terms of size. In general these portals charge a fee and in 2005 this sector is estimated to have generated 76 million euros in Germany, with experts forecasting a further increase, according to a special issue of the Spiegel news magazine. The number of happy marriages resulting from these sites is not documented.

Self-portrayal and protecting one’s identity

The fact that more and more people, in particular young people, are publicising their lives is seen as a problem. For instance, as many as one in five people, and one in two of the 14-29 age group, puts personal information online – either on their own websites, in online communities like StudiVZ, or on dating sites. These profiles with video clips and photos, information about political views and sexual preferences, together with mobile phone numbers, are not always safe on the World Wide Web. Profiles are not easy to remove and hide from public view and opinions given on forums, in blogs and in chatrooms are in principle undeletable. Data protection experts are therefore warning on the one hand of too much openness on the internet, whilst on the other hand, because of the public debates about secret spying on private computers to protect against terrorism, observing a heightened sensitivity to privacy rights.

New media coexisting with old media

The favourite site among Germans is Wikipedia. There are tens of thousands of people around the world writing new entries for this site and adding to or correcting existing entries. There are currently around 580,000 German articles, to which 500 new ones are added every day. For some, this online encyclopaedia is a grass-roots, self-monitoring project that spreads the ‘wisdom of the masses’. For others it is a network of amateurs and know-it-alls and they mourn for a world in which there were clear divisions between author and public.

This jumbling up of consumers and producers, the loss of the traditional opinion-makers – the press and radio – is found especially in the blogosphere and podosphere. Work that was previously the preserve of journalists can now be produced and published by any internet user. This produces a vast array of opinions and even minority interests find a platform. Format and content are no longer decided by audience ratings and circulation figures, and no one is reliant on timeslots and frequencies.

But the coexistence of new and classic media means that people need a high level of media competence. With the vast array of information and entertainment offers available, it is not easy to find one’s bearings. This is why products from established editorial teams continue to be preferred, because they too are increasingly online. They write blogs, make radio and television programmes available as podcasts, and encourage their readers, listeners and viewers to get involved.

Buying and selling

The application most used by Germans however are the online marketplaces. Nearly forty per cent bought goods or services over the internet in 2006. That is an increase of nearly 50 per cent compared with 2003 and puts them significantly above the European average. Experts believe one reason for this development is that offers from consumers for consumers are more credible than information from dealers and manufacturers.

The future

In future the internet will be increasingly influenced by interactivity and will complement and enrich social life, say the experts behind the study ‘Deutschland Online 4’. However, this development is also making the world smaller again: content relating to people’s immediate local environment will increase, so they will surf the World Wide Web to get to the bookshop on the corner.