Architect of Next, Anne-Catherine: Things you only know about social media when you’re from Germany
It’s been a year since I joined OneFifty as a data analyst and social researcher. As a Bavarian, living in London, analysing conversations from right across Europe, I have noticed that there are definitely unique traits to the German social scene. So, are you wondering whether “Tagesschau”, “Tatort” or “Das Dschungel-Camp” gains more traction on social? Or maybe you have no clue what that means at all? Let me help you out…
So, what are the unique traits only we Germans show in social?
Crafting is not a hobby, it’s a way of life: Or so it seems among the German online crowd. In no country I’ve researched did I come across so many craft, DIY and interior design inspiration blogs and Instagram accounts. Here are two of my favourites: Wohnkonfetti and a collective of German interior bloggers.
Interesting cultural tidbit: Germans are cautious and do not want to give out too much information. “Daten-Sammler”, “Datenschutz”, “Identitätsklau im Netz” (data-collector, data privacy, identity piracy on social networks) are commonly discussed topics around social media usage. They have a deep distrust of data collection by American global players such as Google and Facebook, which became very clear when Facebook owned Whats App got banned from collecting user data.
Is LinkedIn dominating your business and career related connections? I think you should check out Xing before you go to your next Business Trip to Germany. With 8.1M members, Xing is currently the largest professional network by members in Germany. But it’s an interesting race between Xing and LinkedIn (Latest official Xing user numbers here, LinkedIn users from DACH here. ). Looking at search trends, since May 2016 LinkedIn is, in terms of search interest, as popular as Xing. But have a look yourself:
Anyone remember StudyVZ or Lokalisten? There have been quite a few German networks I remember being really popular among my friends in high school. But they have been slowly dying out against the big international competitors…
We all agree how great German football is: But did you know that our biggest YouTuber is currently Konstantin Hert from Stuttgart? His channel freekickerz is 5 million subscribers strong. That’s 3 times bigger than adidas Fussball, Sky Sport Germany and the Bundesliga’s audience together. Shows where the content priorities are…
Twitter – it’s what’s happening: However the network has been struggling to attract the same number of active users in Germany compared to its European countries. Is it because we can’t get a sentence structure into 140 characters? Angela Merkel has a mere 2,977 Twitter followers (whereas she has2.3m followers on Facebook), compared to Donald Trump’s 22.3million!
Now, if you “only understand train station” or want to know more about Germany’s TV darlings that I mentioned at the beginning, you can tweet me… Actually – nein. Tweet weareonefifty, I am too German… 🙂
