State of Social Media in Vienna with Austrian Online Influencers

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Austrian bloggers Helge Fahrnberger, Michael Vaccaro and Matthias Wurz discuss the development of social media in Europe, cultural differences between Europe and the US, and what Austrian’s really think about Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Kerry and Bruno.  

00:58 – Helge Farhnberger talks about his experience blogging in Austria, his blog, his work as a social media and social software consultant and a major sociological condition for human cooperation.  

02:45 – Michael Vaccaro talks about his blog which is a platform for promoting unknown, indie artists — primarily in Austria and Germany —  to help them snag record deals and talent representation.  

04:02 – Matthias Wurz talks about his experience blogging, his blog and his objective of explaining Austrian affairs to an international audience.  

05:19 – Austrian bloggers share their opinions on Arnold Schwarzenegger as an actor, a politician and an Austrian and why Austrian’s call him the man without a mother tongue.  

06:43 – Why Austrian’s stripped Arnold Schwarzenegger’s name from a football stadium in the city of Graz that had been named after him.  

08:27 – How Austria’s right wing conservative voters felt about the US Supreme Court’s decision to recognize as president George W. Bush over John Kerry, who was of Austrian decent.  

08:58 – Austrian bloggers react to Sasha Baron Cohen’s portrayal of a fictional Austrian character in the motion picture Bruno.  

10:10 – Austrian bloggers discuss the motion picture “The Sound of Music” and how many Austrians have seen the film.  

11:23 – Austrian bloggers discuss Viennese coffee house culture versus American coffee house culture, Starbucks and talking your coffee to go.  

16:45 – Working hard, hardly working and living to work versus working to live.  

18:02 – Austrian bloggers discuss Austria’s ranking as the best place to live in the world.  

21:34 – Austrian bloggers debate whether or not a clearer delineation between work and play is causing the use of social media to develop differently in Europe and Austria.  

22:17 – Helge Farhnberger on the social demographics of Austria, which has 8 million people: 20 to 30 thousand Twitter uses, he guesses, making the point that Twitter users are influential.  There are 1.2 million active Facebook users in Austria.  And he talks about why innovations are more likely to come out of the US than Europe.  

24:31 – Michael Vaccaro talks about mixing social life and work, social media usage among younger people in Europe, the role social media users play as cultural sign posts and how Austria’s listing as the best place to live reinforces that behavior.  

27:26 – Matthias Wurz offers a counter perspective to Michael Vaccaro’s assertion that laziness is at least partially to blame for social media apathy in Europe and how he uses Facebook both professionally and personally.  Matthias is on Twitter at @matthias_wurz.  

29:34 – Michael Vaccaro is on Twitter @clstrfck   29:42 – Helge Fahrnberger is on Twitter @muesli  

30:17 – Austrian bloggers discuss the differences and similarities between US and Austrian bloggers.  

32:45 – The state of the newspaper business in Austria, whether or not Austrian’s are becoming less interested in newspapers, and the reach and impact of mainstream news media.  

34:43 – How Michael Vaccaro started securing MP3s from labels that he could make available at clstfck.

35:48 – Matthias Wurz gives us the state of the news media business in Vienna, from the perspective of an officially accredited Austrian journalist who has been writing at a magazine for many years.  

39:12 – Which mainstream media channels are most under pressure from advertiser’s defections in Austria and how the advertising spend is changing in Austria.  

40:34 – German start-ups developing products that involve search engine optimization and mapping:  People123, TripWolf, Bikemap (Helge’s) and soup.io.  

43:42 – How people find clstfck.  

45:30 – Michael Vaccaro shares the hottest three (3) Austrian recording artists he’s blogged in the last three months:  MMM Matthias, Database and Micro Trauma.  

46:23 – Matthias Wurz on whether Austrian journalists are considering writing for search and Steve Lohr’s article “The Boring Headline Is Written for Google.”  

50:07 – Austrian bloggers discuss the recent student protest that completely clogged the streets in central Vienna, which was organized entirely through Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag #unibrennt.  The demonstration was estimated to be 20 to 40 thousand students large.   

59:02 — End

Photo by Paavel Liik on Unsplash