As the publisher of a print magazine, who is also an IT consultant and one of Munich’s first ISPs, my daily conflict begins at breakfast: Where do I feel more at home, online or in the old printed newspaper? Without question, I can do without the social networking websites like Facebook, Friendster or MySpace: mere playgrounds for exhibitionists, voyeurs and others with social deficits. I often ask myself, what exactly are they doing in these chaotic kiddie playrooms? Don’t they have anything better to do than click around and babble in a Neanderthal language? They say, there are already more than 150 million registered “friends” and 300,000 people join MySpace each day. Well, sure, size doesn’t matter, but this is something that these infantile networkers will have to figure out for themselves! The new social networking sites will only become more likable and more efficient if more attention is paid to quality and content than quantity. The old bulls of the internet have already recognized this trend: Cisco, whose technical equipment is practically the international foundation of IT, recently purchased the technical branch of tribe.net, a tiny networking site that offers categorized mini-communities for websters interested in everything from sushi to poker, science to specific cities.
And so I find myself again engrossed in my local morning paper. Despite eight hours online each day, my social networking definitely still takes place through print. The cultural pages are the impetus to cinema or theater visits, restaurant reviews prompt me to sample new locations. And a report about the latest daffy decision of Munich politicians gives me the ammunition to start a little skirmish with the one sitting across from me at breakfast. No instant message box could hold enough smileys, ACKs, IMHOs, or LOLs to do that without endangering family peace.
CU and killfile and plonk :-)
