Kasi-Blog and StudiVZ – why it took me 36 hours to tell the story
Last Monday at noon, the StudiVZ staff invited me to their office in Berlin to discuss some of the critique floating around in German media and German blog-o-sphere. I made sure that my role as an independent journalists is clear. I only wanted to get a second opinion on the accusations made by bloggers. I told the StudiVZ founders that I want to write an article about this meeting.
Present was Ehssan Dariani, Michael Brehm, Dennis Bemman and Dario Suter. The contact was initiated through Tobias Walter – all are staff members of StudiVZ. (Registration needed to see the profiles).
We did talk about all kinds of issues, from technical problems to PR problems to Ehssan’s personal PR problems to legal issues. I have included their anwers in my updated Summary of StudiVZ.
In general, I had the feeling that the founders of StudiVZ are extremely overwhelmed by the public reaction to their posts and that they are extremely ill-advised on their PR. They have been supported with money and maybe technical advice, but other than that have been left alone.
I cannot judge their personal characters – and even though we talked for about two hours and a half, it is difficult to judge their motives for their behaviour. I think that the success and the same time the chaos has to do with the same thing: they are talented, outgoing, interactive, but at the same time the fast growth of StudiVZ has lifted their perspective a little bit out of the reality.
For about one hour and half I asked them my questions. For about one hour afterwards I told them what I would do if I were in their shoes. Since I want to keep this transparent, I published my advice also here on my blog. I hope I could help them a little bit to understand what immanent threats they face. The PR and communication already has improved – the recent article by Ehssan Dariani is much more open, transparent and ‘friendly’ then the articles of last week.
We then started talking about my personal involvement with StudiVZ. They made it clear that they need people with PR experiences. I said that I think it would be an extreme challenge to change the PR of StudiVZ given all their problems. I also said that I am very reluctant to give up my reputation as an independent blogger, change the side and that any cooperation depends very much on the conditions. A journalists (or a blogger) can not work at the same time as a PR-consultant – it automatically creates a conflict of interest (see for instance the publications and guidelines published by the German Netzwerk Recherche).
So I am quite happy that what we agreed upon was the following: I remain an independent blogger who has no financial ties to StudiVZ whatsoever. The founders of StudiVZ on the other hand can use the ideas that we together discussed when they establish their own PR strategy. Hopefully it will work out for both sides – I would like to see that StudiVZ turns the wave and if they do, I will report about this here in my blog. If they don’t, then I’ll report as well. However, I hope they make the right decisions.
However, together with the article about the meeting I wanted to revise the summary and tie in new developments. I hope the article is useful to the readers.
