Social Media in Berlin

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In preparation for my second German-American Social Media Boot Camp in Berlin, I assembled an expert panel of digital communications professionals to discuss the state of social media in Germany, and the start-up scene in Berlin.  

Germany has come a long way since Fredric Lardinois wrote on ReadWriteWeb that the country is still 5 years behind with lots to learn.  But that may not be true for all companies.  

Big organizations are hiring big agencies and jumping in feet first. But privacy concerns among small and medium sized businesses have stymied adoption.

In fact, Xing’s compliance with local privacy laws has allowed the service to lure more users in Germany, despite a veritable lack of features and some municipal officials are still scared to launch Facebook Pages.  

Berlin’s start-up scene, including SoundCloud and Etsy, is creating jobs for the digitally literate, but the post industrial generation is still left out, because they lack the skills to compete in the digital communications marketplace and almost now formal trainings opportunities exist for them to learn these important new job skills.    

Our Panelists:

Thomas Praus (@stylewalker), managing director of Panorama 3000, a member of Box Network Europe and an advisory board member for Social Media Week Berlin 2011 Oliver Gassner, (@oliverg) conversation evangelist and Blog Coach at carpe.com communicate GbR. Sebastian Vasta (@sebastianvasta), Australian expat, former digital strategist and community manager, most recently for @Optus.  

This episode also includes a tribute to the great Liza Minnelli and her inimitable performance in the Oscar winning film Cabaret.

Photo by Stefan Widua on Unsplash