This is what I see on about a third of all my friend’s profile pages on StudiVZ - the very successful German rip-off of the even more successful Facebook website. What happened?

Apparently my friend has changed his or her name to Ajatollah of Rock’n'Roll and the picture to a low-res copy of a shirt designed by Paul Snowden. So far I have no idea who that is or what message is supposed to be delivered through this action.

The reason why this was done is easy to explain. Long story short: Students set up cool website, everyone goes crazy and signs in, students sell it for millions, investors want to make money and start to advertise and scan the content, now people get angry but still want to use the free services, so they change their names.

Note: I’m even not so sure about the first part in which the cool students set up a website. Maybe there was lots of money involved in the first place? At least I heard the name Samwer in this context.

Anyway, I’d like everyone just for a second think about what happens here. Let’s break this down to the essentials:

A. Why are people starting to obscure their identities? The reason is supposedly that they want to avoid being spied by advertisers. That they want to stay private and share their ideas and communication with their friends alone.

B. How do those nasty people make their money? This is quite obvious. And it is from the marketing point of view the great achievement of a Mark Zuckerberg, that he created a virtual environment in which people are encouraged to make true statements about themselves. I don’t have to explain that to anyone who uses Facebook or StudiVZ or any other of those websites. But it is essentially all about the fact that if I join a group, write a message or upload pictures I do make a statement about what I do or what I like.

So here is where the money is made. With access to all this information I can scan the messages, the group-titles, the profile page, the home university or city, and so on. Based on this information ads can be placed explicitly on those user’s screens who are the target group of the advertiser. Very efficient and as advertisers like to say: it is in the interest of the users, as they only see ads that they actually want to see.

C. Conclusion Changing your name on any social network website will only affect the website’s usability for your friends. The advertisers don’t give a f&%§ about what your name is. As long as you go on using the platform as usual, they will scan your data and provide you with suitable ads. The only way out is canceling your account or at least taking out all personal info, unsubscribing from all groups and avoiding to use the message functionality (which comes quite close to canceling the whole account). The only thing that doesn’t make any sense at all is changing your name.

Here’s the deal: maintaining a complex social network platform in the web costs a lot of money. This money is paid by advertisers. And it is paid for information about the users of such a website. If changing names would cause this system to break down, this would probably already have happened to StudiVZ.

I think it’s ok to give away some information about yourself. Millions of people do this every day by using their GMX or GMail accounts. Or even the Google search. Otherwise you should start searching for weird things on Google so that they won’t be able to figure out what you’re really searching for.

Maybe that’s a bit hard but it’s certainly the bargain. And if you’re uncomfortable with this, it is really easy to avoid: Stop using free services on the net!

Warum sagt mir eigentlich niemand bescheid wenn es was neues im Netz zu sehen gibt?

Wahrscheinlich bin ich auch einfach selbst schuld an dieser Misere. Ich sollte einfach mal anfangen Netzeitung zu lesen, oder? Werd’s mir mal anschauen. Allerdings konnte ich mich in meiner krampfhaften Internationalitätsfixiertheit noch nicht dazu durchringen ausgerechnet im Internet, das ja schon per Definition eine gewisse Globalität an den Tag legt, lokale Nachrichten zu lesen. Zumindest dachte ich, dass ich davon daran abgehalten werde, da ich die Netzeitung bislang für ein Berliner Lokalmedium hielt. Aber wie dem auch sei.

Nun fragt man sich wahrscheinlich schon als geschätzter Leser dieses Blogs warum ich mich denn wohl so gewunden ausdrücke. Ganz einfach: zuviel Kuttner geguckt!

Die Netzeitung beschert jetzt endlich auch Freunde und Familie zugezogener Wahlberliner mit der weithin geliebten Mischung aus intellektuellem Humor und Berliner Schnauze. Wobei ich korrekter sagen müsste: seit einiger Zeit. Nur ist es eben so, dass ich den Videoblog gerade erst entdeckt habe.

Bitte demnächst ein kurze Mail an mich, wenns was neues im Netz gibt. Danke!

Für alle denen es bislang genauso ging wie mir, hier noch der link und eine Kostprobe zum sofort anschauen:

http://www.netzeitung.de/entertainment/kuttner

Viel Spaß!

I’m not sure if you realized this yet but the world is currently getting a bit darker and considerably sadder then it was before.

Here’s the story: Today I strolled into a Berlin town hall to apply for one of those shiny new passports when this was abruptly put to my attention. I handed over my passport photos and the almost friendly woman behind the counter told me that they couldn’t use them for a passport. The main reason for that was the fact that on this photo you can probably spot a slight expression of polite happiness on my face. Instead of just assigning me to one of their service desks she send me to a photo booth to make new ones.

The result you can see below: While the first on says things like: ‘Hey, I’m a bit too shy to smile. But you may laugh at my ridiculous expression. And at least it’s summer, the sun is shining and I feel happy from the bottom of my heart!’, the other one looks just sad, hopeless and as if I had lost my soul on the way to the photo booth.

Note that my hair doesn’t fit on the second picture. This is in fact also against the regulations. But guess what? I didn’t even consider cutting my hair for this.

Suddenly again this 1984 Apple ad came to my mind and I was thinking I really look like those soulless guys marching. But of course I felt being like the cool (and multi-colored) rebellious woman with the sledge hammer. Hell Yeah!

Me myself not being very happy with this development, there’s a certain group of people that have my utmost sympathy on this: the passport inspectors of the world!

At least they are the ones who have to look at pictures of the undead for the rest of their doomed lives. And I guess their chronic depression will spread all over the globe in the course of say, a year! Wow. That’s a dark and straightforwardly pathetic vision…

Anyway, here comes my alternative suggestion on how to make the world a happier place to travel:

As all this biometric data is stored on a digital chip anyway let’s just put another picture in the passport to look at! I imagine it could be anything. Not even necessarily a portrait of the holder but maybe something that expresses his/her character or mood. Why not even let it include a message to anyone checking it like: ‘Hello! I’m so excited about visiting your country and I’m looking forward to learning more about your culture and language within the next two weeks.’ That would make the entry a convenient and happy event, I guess.

The next step then could be letting people customize the designs of their passports, but let’s not carry this to excess and solve the world depression thing first.

Have a nice day everybody!

On Sunday I produced my first independend photo series ever. I did photo jobs before but this was different:

Together with Nicole Glur, one of the two graphic designers of tapmag, I went to a flea market in Berlin and interviewed people on everyday choices. We did the whole concept and production together and I shot the photos.

See the whole story on the upcoming printed issue of tapmag!

I’ve just been at a formidable vernissage. The title, as you can probably guess, was: Berlin Haushoch meaning something like ‘Berlin high as a building’ and suggesting anything that would be related to architecture. In fact it was much more than that. Maybe it was more about the people than the buildings. More about the character of Wedding (which is a quarter of Berlin) than about its architecture.

The project Berlin Haushoch is done by three undoubtfully talented Berlin designers who share both a sense of professionalism and exhibitionism. What they do is move to some quarter of Berlin and stay there until they have finished a whole magazine issue on it. Their first one was based on Marzahn, the second one on Wedding was just published tonight. What I found most interesting about it was the way they connected aesthetics and design with the most adorable average joeism in town. Invest six Euro in a good magazine on www.berlinhaushoch.de!

Lovely!