Kasi-Blog

Turkstudent.net is a social network for Turkish students.

It was created by Fatih Dogan, Law Student, Gazi Keskin Medical Student, and Suat Imamoglu, Law Student, all three from the University of Freiburg in Germany. TurkStudent.net has 125.000 users and 6 millio page impressions per month. 81% of the users are coming from Turkey. Their press release can be found here.

There are four Ehssan Darianis on Facebook, one of them is presumably the StudiVZ-Ehssan. There are two Mark Zuckerbergs on StudiVZ, none of them are the Facebook-Mark. I received a message from “Mark Zuckerberg” on StudiVZ.

I guess this is the right moment to show studivz what the meaning of grass roots movment is!!! tell people to move to facebook!!! Write on their wall and join the group.

The StudiVZ-profile named Mark’s birthday (14.05.1984) and claimed that he was member of these three groups:

• Facebook is viel toller als studiverzeichnis (Facebook is better than StudiVZ)
• facebook rulez!
• Studivz ist ein billiger Abklatsch vom FACEBOOK (StudiVZ is a cheap copy of Facebook)

Since the StudiVZ team had met in the fall of 2006 with the Facebook team in New York, I assume that the real Mark Zuckerberg would have no intention to disrupt StudiVZ. Facebook does not see StudiVZ as a competitor. In the end it does not matter if a large number of StudiVZ users are transfering to Facebook and using both of the networks.

Why would Facebook want to take over StudiVZ, as Jochen suggested recently. Like Robert, Paul and Carsten I am very skeptical.

On the other hand, just a little bit of guesswork: Imagine if StudiVZ and Facebook formed some sort of agreement that StudiVZ can build up its Social Network based on Facebook technology. Holtzbrinck steps in to get it off the ground, StudiVZ runs for two years to have a stable user base and then they offer to the users an easy transfer of their data and connections into Facebook.

Holtzbrinck never invested something as 85 million Euro in StudiVZ, the sum was linked to a large bunch of conditions and the net investment of Holtzbrinck was considerably lower. So Facebook wouldn’t have to give Holtzbrinck this lump sum.

Anyway, after confronting “Mark Zuckerberg” with this opinion and asking him whether he was real or fake, the creator of the profile replied:

of course I am not the real Mark Zuckerberg. I am a fake account. I was created by somebody that doesn’t like StudiVZ very much and that now would be a good time to start a small grass root movement. As an experiment. If you want, use me and make friends with other people. I guess this would have some impact if a virtual Mark Zuckerberg has got a couple of thousands friends on StudiVZ.

When I checked again this afternoon, only few people had become friends of this virtual “Mark”. So far, the “experiment” does not seem to be very successful.

The creator of this profile send me the access-email and the password. I don’t think anybody wants profiles to be created in his name. Therefore I decided to delete the account completely.

If you want StudiVZ-users to switch to Facebook, then just wait.

The ultimate battle.

Data security is a crucial issue when it comes to Social Networks – not only when suddenly the profile (on the right) of Facebook-Investor Microsoft-CEO Steven Ballmer is published. While Steve Ballmer is probably quite careful what he puts in his Facebook profile, other users might not show the same care, therefore in the following article I want to discuss some data security issues of social networks and Facebook specificially.

Rumours of data leaks seem to have very little impact on the growth of social networks. Yet incoherent data security can (in some situations) can be a reason for terminating a company, especially in Germany when online-data of underage students are collected.

Facebook has extensive privacy options. Users can determine which part of their profile is accessible, they can distinguish between various networks, edit the privacy settings for their widgets, block users or limit the access of certain users to their profile:

Facebook wants you to share your information with exactly the people you want to see it. On this page, you’ll find all the controls you need to set who can see your profile and the stuff in it, who can find and contact you on Facebook, and more.

Internal access to user-data?

However, Facebook is maybe not as rigorous when blocking user data from their own employees. Nick Douglas writes about a case where a Facebook employee confronted a Facebook user with her viewing history:

“My friend got a call from her friend at Facebook, asking why she kept looking at his profile,” says a privacy-conscious source at a major tech company. Turns out Facebook employees can (and do) check out anyone’s profile. Not only that, but they also see which profiles a user has viewed — a major privacy violation.

Currently, it is not possible to see which users have visited your profile – unlike in other social networks like StudiVZ or Xing.

Someone in a company running a Social Networks needs to have full access to all user data, there is no doubt about it. Furthermore, user data are never fully deleted – they are only marked as deleted when a user deletes his profile. However a company the size of Facebook could easily restrict user data access to those employees that are handling complaints and disruptive bevahior. In Nick Douglas words:

Well, Facebook’s privacy policy doesn’t explicitly reserve or waive employees’ right to check out your profile for any reason. Of course, the practice still reeks of skunkery — it’s one thing to check profiles in the course of business, but these people are looking up records for kicks. This is a company with $150 million in projected revenues this year and a gigantic ad deal with Microsoft, not a corner video store.

Display of data user without consent

Facebook has in the past issued legal statements when data of users were published without their consent. In the Summer of 2006, the blogs Gawker and Wonkette released data of Facebook users and promptly received a cease-and-desist-letter from Chris Kelly (facebook profile), Chief Security Officer, and Rudy Gadré, Vice President and General Counsel. So far, the websites showing the user data of Facebook users are still available, among many other examples.

Facebook Data Security Handling

In a testimony before the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee (from the US-House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, information on the hearing) on June 28 2006, Chris Kelly said:

We have a safety net of protection through both technological tools we deploy to detect misuse of the site and human capital dedicated to potential problems – our 20 person and growing customer service staff, headed by a seasoned veteran and backed up by myself and two other attorneys. Most of our customer service representatives are recent graduates of outstanding colleges, and dedicated Facebook users, so they know the system inside and out. On those rare occasions where someone has attempted to misuse our network, we engage rapidly with the relevant authorities. Because the system is built for accountability with its email validation requirement and segmentation of communities, misuse is both deterred and generally detected quickly. We quickly launch an internal investigation and step in where we receive reports of the misuse of Facebook in any way.

Protections for minors

The distribution of user data is not the only concern of Chris Kelly. In a recent blog entry he writes:

But right now, we want to make clear some of the things we are working on to prevent abuse from happening through Facebook. We are automatically moving complaints about nudity or pornography, and harassing or unwelcome contact to the top of our queue for Customer Support to address within 24 hours. We are limiting certain search functionality as it applies to minors. We are making sure that minors know explicitly when they are in contact with someone who is an adult.

Privacy permissions along user groups

This is a bold step, giving a fixed time for reaction to complaiments. I agree with Josie Fraser that there are no other social networks which have made such commitments.

However, it is unclear whether this will be enough. She argues:

The problems with opening up the Facebook platform to external apps was that [...] many just expanded the Facebook sink into a black hole – eg – more information that I can’t get out.

and insists that the various security settings are maybe not used by all users:

Having your boss included in your contact list as a good excuse to finally get to grips with Dante’s 10th circle of hell – aka the peculiar granularity of FB permissions. [...] It’ll be interesting to see whether the introduction of friend categories makes permissions easier, harder, or no different to navigate.

Data Harvesters

Furthermore, companies such as Rapleaf are aggregating data from social networks, claiming that…

…Rapleaf’s goal is to make it more profitable to be ethical. Rapleaf is the only email-based reputation lookup on the web. We encourage you to lookup people’s Rapleaf reputation before transacting, hiring, or even interacting with them.

But as Stefanie Olsen and Harald Weiss are writing:

By entering an email-adress, it is possible to get information about name, age and other data of a person’s social network. On the website Upscoop, which also belongs to Rapleaf, people can find out in which other social networks are person is present [...]. Through the collection of E-Mail adresses, Rapleaf has saved more than 50 million profiles [...]. These are useful for another subsidiary of Rapleaf, Trustfuse, which sells these data-sets (except for the email-address) to Marketing Companies. [...] All three companies do not violate their data security regulations because they do not transfer the email-address.

Conclusion

Neverthless, my impression is that the overall data security is strong. I am sure that there have been several attacks on the Facebook database and so far it does not seem as if large amounts of user-data has leaked. Unlike other social networks, Facebook seems to take data security very serious. Given their growth, they need to work hard that this attitude is maintained inside the company at all levels. I think one of the big challenges will be how to deal with the data-transfer between certain widgets and the Facebook-Main-Database. This, however, will be covered in a later article on this website.

Within 12 days, a group on Facebook is about to gain 1.000.000 users. The group is called “1,000,000 Strong For Stephen T Colbert”. Stephen Colbert is a famous American TV-host who parodies Conservative TV-Shows.

The founder of the group, Raj Vachhani, created the group to beat other political groups, such as Anti-Hillary and Obama-Support-Groups:

It’s taken Obama’s 1,000,000 Strong Group more than 9 months to get 381,000 members, We beat it in less than 5 days! [...] Furthermore, It has taken the “Stop Hillary Clinton: (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary)” more than 8 months to get over 488,000 members. We beat this within 6 days! Goal: 1 Million by the end of 10 days.

He didn’t quite make it, but user growth is an interesting example of the power of viral growth in Facebook groups:

• 5,000 Members at 4:59 PM (EST) 10/17/2007
• 10,000 Members at 10:22 PM (EST) 10/17/2007
• 20,000 Members at 5:26 AM (EST) 10/18/2007
• 30,000 Members at 12:41 PM (EST) 10/18/2007
• 50,000 Members at 4:48 PM (EST) 10/18/2007
• 75,000 Members at 7:30 PM (EST) 10/18/2007
• 100,000 Members at 12:54 AM (EST) 10/19/2007
• 170,000 Members at 4:58 PM (EST) 10/19/2007
• 200,000 Members at 9:43 PM (EST) 10/19/2007
• 250,000 Members at 11:58 AM (EST) 10/20/2007
• 300,000 Members at 7:44 PM (EST) 10/20/2007
• 350,000 Members at 4:43 AM (EST) 10/21/2007
• 400,000 members at 5:11 PM (EST) 10/21/2007
• 450,000 Members at 12:16 PM (EST) 10/22/2007
• 500,000 Members at 5:11 AM (EST) 10/23/2007
• 550,000 Members at 3:59 PM (EST) 10/23/2007
• 600,000 Members at 8:06 PM (EST) 10/23/2007
• 650,000 Members at 11:24 PM (EST) 10/23/2007
• 700,000 Members at 11:34 AM (EST) 10/24/2007
• 750,000 Members at 5:31 PM (EST) 10/24/07
• 800,000 Members at 9:40 PM (EST) 10/24/07
• 850,000 members at 4:22 AM (EST) 10/25/2007
• 900,000 Members at 3:24 PM (EST) 10/25/200

Even the Washington Post reported about the group:

At the moment, the candidate of the week on Facebook, where Obama and Paul have ruled for months, is author/satirist/pontificator Stephen Colbert.

Another group called “I bet I can find 1,000,000 people who dislike George Bush!” has reached 500.000 users.

Yesterday almost every single German online newspaper and even the daily print newspapers reported about the Facebook-Microsoft-Deal. Sebastian Matthes, journalist and blogger from the German Wirtschaftswoche (Weekly Economics) has written a lengthy eulogy on Facebook, claiming that Facebook will be a huge success. His reasons (slightly shortened and translated) are:

1. Facebook is not only for students any more.
2. People need an international social network.
3. In other countries, the numbers of Facebook are already exploring.
4. Facebook is fun.
5. Unlike Xing, Facebook functions are free.
6. Facebook will appear in Germany.
7. Facebook keeps the user’s attraction.
8. Facebook is open for developers.
9. Facebook is easy to use.
10. No international social network grows faster.

In addition to that, I think that Facebook is growing because it has experience in scaling the network, the users can organize their privacy more efficiently than in other networks, they can determine what information they want to spread, they can efficiently organize their pictures, the number of user groups and users in groups are exploding, Facebook is used as a political tool and a marketing tool, and with Microsoft they have an experienced partner in growth.

The German blogosphere has discussed Facebook intensively, a short list was made by Doc Benedikt Köhler (thanks for the link). Meanwhile the “first” German-language Facebook-blog started, combined with Google-Ads to keep the money flow going from Google via Facebook to Nico Lumma

Meanwhile Robert Basic’s readers are critical as never before. Hugo E. Martin believes that the 240 million US-Dollar were paid as entrance fee to do the marketing for Facebook, and not necessarily to own equity in Facebook. Terrence Russell has the whole picture:

Let’s face it — a $15 billion valuation for Facebook is just as pretentious as a monocle. With today’s alliance, Microsoft most likely chose a figure it was willing to spend ($240 million) and then invested accordingly. Even though Facebook can claim that it’s 1.6% of $15 billion, it will always be $240 million to Microsoft. At the end of the day, the social networking site is probably just happy to have a lighter load for generating revenue, and Microsoft is glad it didn’t dump $750 million into what could be the next Skype.

Together with the news that two hedge funds invested another 500 million US-Dollars into Facebooks, it is quite clear why Steve Ballmer writes in an internal memo:

Great job you really pulled this together unbelievably.

Microsoft Press Release:

Facebook and Microsoft Corp. today announced that the two companies would expand their advertising partnership and that Microsoft will take a $240 million equity stake in Facebook’s next round of financing at a $15 billion valuation. Under the expanded strategic alliance, Microsoft will be the exclusive third-party advertising platform partner for Facebook, and will begin to sell advertising for Facebook internationally in addition to the United States.

Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft scrambled to keep Facebook from falling into Google’s hands. In recent weeks Mr. Ballmer personally courted Facebook’s Mr. Zuckerberg, meeting in Silicon Valley to press Microsoft’s interest in the young company.

Microsoft’s discussions continued Thursday night in San Francisco. Still Google as recently as Friday seemed to be close to winning Facebook, say people familiar with the matter. Over the past few days and in a meeting that ran late last night, Microsoft clinched the deal.

Josh Quittner:

At this valuation, each of Facebook’s 50 million users is worth $306.12.

Peter Kafka:

What is Facebook going to do with the money? Fund innovation and growth, of course. Expanding employee base dramatically. Going to 700 employees. Better tech infrastructure to handle boom in users, usage.

Via Blogtrainer and Robert Basic.

Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody.

No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds.

Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.

Neil Gaiman

“The Economist” has this week an interesting article about the value of Social Networks and big bubble “Facebook”. The authors claim:

There’s less to Facebook and other social networks than meets the eye.

At Dinner, an interesting discussion erupted between my classmates due to that article. “So, how does Facebook make its money?” – “How much is the company worth anyhow?” – “Can ads really earn that much money?” – “How will the Internet be in ten years?”

What we know about Facebook

Let’s get the facts straight: Facebook has a little bit more than 30 million unique visitors per month. It has an estimated turn-around between US-$ 100-150 million per year. More than 5000 external widgets are running on Facebook.

About 75% of Facebook users are not in College anymore, but 60% have college education. The age-group between 15-24 is the biggest one followed, by 25-34, but the age group of 35+ is growing rapidly. A detailed discussion of Facebook demographics can be found at Beth Kanters blog-post.

Yahoo offered 750 million US-$ in 2006. Some claim it could be worth 100 billion US-Dollars See Jason McCabe Calacanis for a detailed discussion..

Facebook not suited for marketing?

The ability of journalists and bloggers to predict the future is clearly limited. Om Malik (Gigaom) for instance wrote in March 2006:

From what I have heard is that the company is considering opening up its network to the non-core audience, aka young people who are not in colleges etc. I think doing so would be disastrous for the company.

The disaster has not struck yet, has it? The Economist points to two innovations that Facebook has made:

Facebook has made two genuine breakthroughs. The first was its decision to let outsiders write programs and keep all the advertising revenues these might earn. [...] Facebook’s second masterstroke is its “mini-feed”, an event stream on user pages that keeps users abreast of what their friends are doing—uploading photos, adding a widget and so on.

Apparently, Facebook knows how to make users stick to its platform. Does that translate into big money right away? Certainly not. Andreas Göldi calculates turn-around through ads per unique visitor:

• Facebook: $4.45
• MySpace: $11.70
• CNET: $12.33
• Yahoo: $49.17
• eBay: $84.94
• Google: $104.48
• Amazon: $226.14

He says that comparing Google and Facebook is like comparing Apples and Oranges. In his view, companies like Google or Amazon are much closer to the intention of users to make financial transactions. The chart on the right explains his reasoing. Horizontal axis being Transaction-Probality, vertical axis being Target-Group-Focus, he places several online products inside these two dimensions with Google Ads ranking high and Social Networks ranking low on both scales.

The Economist uses a similar strand of reasoning:

On Google, advertisements are valued; on Facebook they are an annoyance that users ignore.

The big online-sellers are already on Facebook.

Without disputing this fact, but what should keep Ebay or Amazon to write small widgets for Facebook where people can monitor their Ebay-sales or recommend and order books through Facebook? What should keep Facebook from entering strategic coalitions with these large online companies to send traffic both ways? What better marketing engine than a vibrating social network can be found for Online-Sellers?

What should keep them? In fact, they already have done it. Ebay has its marketplace turned into a widget and some features of Amazon (like rating your book) can be found as widgets already. If Ivy-League schools are offering Facebook-Widget-Classes, then surely something is happening.

Are smaller networks better?

The Economist also warms up the “smaller-is-beautiful”-legend. They write:

But unlike other networks, social networks lose value once they go beyond a certain size. [...] Already, social networks such as “aSmallWorld”, an exclusive site for the rich and famous, are proliferating. Such networks recognise that people want to hobnob with a chosen few, not to be spammed by random friend-requests.

This is true to some extent that social networks lose its attractiveness over time. But so far no social network has grown too big. Social networks became inattractive because their development was not up-to-date.

If small social networks are so fantastic, how come that from the more than 100 Social Networks in Germany only few are really sucessful?

Maybe targeting a small group and supplying only one nice idea is not enough to initiate massive growth. Social networks grow according to dynamics that have nothing to do with functionality or user-group-targeting.

Social networks grow if the right users discover the network at the right time – as tautological as this statement sounds, it is probably a more accurate description of social networks than what the Economist delivered. A necessarily incomplete but fairly detailed history of social networks was written by Danah Boyd.

People prefer social networks that give them a sense of their real-life community. But that does not mean that the network itself needs be small and specialized – or exclusive.

Exclusivity gets people to sign on, but not use a website frequently. Only if exclusivity meets added-social-value, then people come back.

There is still time until the bubble bursts.

None of this disputes that the hyped-up value of Facebook could be another big Ponzi-scheme with the last byer making the big loss. Are we as close to the bubble, as the Economist portrays it? In my eyes this is higly dubitable.

Mille grazie to Robert and Laberena for providing the links to some of these pages.

All you need is soap, a table, four friends, a frisbee and some practice!

Speaking of spinning, Mathematician and Trinity Hall Fellow Tadashi Tokaiedo is featured in the following movie explaining the pecularity of spinning objects.

Many start-ups with interesting ideas still think in the wrong box. They think: Oh, I have a great idea, let’s create my own social network. So they set up a database, create a nice design, and then wait for users. A good example is Brian Carr’s website ShareAGoodDeed. He wants to people to share nice stories, he has some traffic, some attention, but no users.

I just started a website called Share A Good Deed (www.shareagooddeed.com) whose premise is to have users sign up and write about the good deeds and random acts of kindness that they see each day. Regardless, I’ve been able to get the site up on Digg’s homepage twice within the last four days, and have had a whopping total of two people sign up.

I was wondering if some of you would be willing to check out my site and tell me what in the hell I’m doing wrong. I mean, over 20,000 visitors and two people sign up? That’s just not going to fly…

What creators of Social Networks don’t realize is that there are so many things that contribute to the success of a Social Network. Starting with a short, memorable URL, a catchy design, an easy user-interface, an unique added value for the user. Sometimes a better strategy is to implement a good idea is to write a user-application for Facebook.

James Hong from the American Flirting and Dating Social Network Hotornot.com wrote how his Facebook-application has increased the traffic to the site:

A significant portion of our Facebook traffic is actually from our Hotlists product rendered as a Facebook Application.

As Facebook-Insider Justin Smith reveals, most of his users are suprisingly not being caught through the viral news displayed on the starting page:

The Product Directory actually drives more installs than I would have thought, though the Add Application News Feed Story drives less than I would have expected.

Josh Catone from the ReadwriteWeb (via Robert Basic) cautions against fast conclusions:

But just how most Facebook apps spread is likely to remain hazy until more data can be gathered from multiple app developers.

Yet as Widget-Analysist Lawrence Coburn writes, the immediate value of developing an application is maybe not the application or the traffic itself:

So how do you take advantage of web publishers’ willingness to pay premium rates to build out their distributed presences? The easy answer is to grow your own app / widget footprint as big as you can, as fast as you can. All things related equal, the bigger your own footprint, the more installs you will be able to drive for other publishers.

The Kasi-Wealth-Kebab Rule says:

The more wealth, the less kebab.

Cambridge is a rich town. There are almost no fast-food place except for a small McDonald’s, a few sausage-booths on market square. Well, you might call the Curry-Take-Away-Restaurants a “Fast-Food” if you consider spending 10 Pounds on Rice and Chicken Massala a good deal for a fast food. And yes, there is a Kebab place.

Unfortunately, I forgot the name. It’s in a side-street from Trinity Lane in the downtown area of Cambridge. It features a Doner Kebab for amazingly 4 Pounds. You can choose whether you want it with fries or salad – if you choose with Friese, they take out the salad and put in fries instead.

And worst of all – instead of using turkey, chicken or beef meat, they use lamb. Minced lamb marinated in an unknown sauce (I hope the picture made by Blogger Eivind Hagen gives a good impression of the look of it). My fellow classmate Tom said that the only way to survive such a dish is by being drunk.

Cambridge is a town filled with students (no kidding). The restaurants seem to make a good business. So there is no doubt why Kebab of half the quality and double the price as in Berlin is sold here: there is no supply and no competition. But maybe there is no demand as well, maybe Cambridge student either eat in their Colleges, go out to restaurants to spend their parents money or cook at home. In Berlin, you can find kebab-places on every corner, but you will find kebab-places in almost every second house only in the “wild” areas of Kreuzberg, Neukölln and Wedding.

Another economic observation: it takes hours to open up a Bank Account here in the UK. Even worse, they charge 6-7 pounds for each transfer from Europe and Overseas. That’s almost 10 Euros per Transfer. I am not sure if British Banks now that the UK also belongs to the European Union. In the European Union, bank transfers according to the law should not cost more than domestic transfers. Certainly it shouldn’t cost a fortune to transfer a fortune? Maybe British Bankers had too much lamb kebab?

… or why Big Ideas have a different impact in German and American Public Debate

What propelled the United States to go to war into Iraq and what kept the American Public from realizing its mistake? In my classes here at Cambridge the theme of the “failed war” transcends every lecture – from “History of International Relations over “War and Society” to “US Foreign Policy” – and it is astonishing to see how uniform the view is in academia.

The class “US Foreign Policy” is held by Dr. Stefan Halper. Dr. Halper has worked with several White House administrations and has been Campaigning with several Republic Presidential Candidates. He also wrote several books about US Foreign Policy, his recent one being “The Silence of the Rational Center” which he co-authored with Jonathan Clarke.

The two authors address many issues related to US-Foreign Policy. More specifically, they discuss how, in American Past and Present, Big Ideas framed public opinion, silenced experts, distorted media coverage of events and led to policy decisions which were not always optimal – to say the least.

There are extensive reviews (for instance here and here) of their book. I just want to go into four things that I find very interesting: their assessment of the role of arts in framing the Big Ideas, the impact of the Political Economy to allow Big Ideas to streamline a public debate, the role of media in distorting the public debate, and the role of Think Tanks to evaluate policy decisions resulting from Big Ideas. And finally, I want to say what from the point of view of the Republicans needs to be done to regain a little bit of grounds in the political debate – a thought inspired by a recent visit of Grover Norquist to Cambridge. Read on, my friend »

Edwin La Dell, King’s Parade, Cambridge, in the Rain

Yesterday produced heavy Cambridge rain. The kind of rain that forces small aquatic shapes trickling down your back into your pants, soaking your jeans, bags, books and jackets. I managed twice to avoid by hiding in class and at library. Didn’t manage to hide from it on the way home. While storing the bike, a large greenish-brown frog jumped across my path. Today, sunshine again. Must have been the frog.

Karl-Heinz Wenzlaff has released a list of the most popular social networks in Germany. There are certainly some surprises in the list.

StudiVZ, Myspace, ICQ are dominating the German Alexa-traffic, with Facebook catching up. With the strong user base of StudiVZ I can only wonder whether they only receive more users or whether the users are using StudiVZ more often.

MySpace, ICQ, Facebook are increasing more popular because they seem to have crossed the Tipping Point in Germany recently or already a long time ago. What will happen to StudiVZ once Facebook becomes very popular, nobody knows so far. Large numbers of German students are now migrating from StudiVZ to Facebook and I would assume that the same is true for other countries as well.

A smightly smaller number is migrating from the German Xing to Facebook. Linkedin is still not popular in Germany, even though it is receiving more attention in the US/UK, Eastern Europe and in Russia. Xing has made a big jump in page impressions in Germany and we will soon whether they expansion strategy works.

Lokalisten.de is certainly not a newcomer in Germany and seems to be growing at some speed. Growing even faster is Netlog, a Belgian social network which is a combination of MySpace and Facebook. With more than 1.8 million users in Germany and more than 26 million users in Europe, it has grown a strong user base as well.

More surprisingly, Netlog is surpassed by other social networks aimed at flirting and dating. Jappy is a network for singles and has only 500,000 users, but strong community interaction (such as stories and strong support, even a Wiki for its users. Kwick has 1 Million Users, also combines features from MySpace and Facebook and organizes its users into clans.

Knuddels has 2.4 million users but focuses on chatrooms and picture rankings. Wer-kennt-wen.de has profited from its highly mnemonic domain (who-knows-whom) but seems to be focused in Western Germany. Other flirting communties such as Gayromeo, Flirtfever and AdultFriendfinder don’t hide their intentions, but rank at the lower end of the Top 100.

With Livejournal and Odnoklassniki.ru two social networks have found their way into the German Top 100 who have a clear Eastern European Userbase. Livejournal is only slightly popular in the US, but one of the biggest networks in Russia. Odnoklassniki is similar to Linkedin, but targeted at the Russian Market. The larger number of Russians and Eastern Europeans which migrated to Germany seem to have a heavy influence on Alexa-Traffic in Germany.

Spent the whole sunday at Jerwood Library: reading, writing, looking out of the window, juggling during breaks, participating in linguistic experiments, reading again.

I had no internet connection, so I could really focus. It worked partially. The library at Trinity Hall is really nice. It’s 24 hours open and in front of the toilets there is a newsstand with the Economists.

What I like about Cambridge as well is that it has access to almost all online journals in the world, which makes researching very easy. On the other hand, the online catalogue is fractalized into the University Library Catalogue and the Catalogue of the Colleges and Departments. Each college and each department has its own filing system. The one at the University Library is specifically complicated.

The other day I was looking for a book, realized that it was in the Open-Shelf-Section. Only two million out of seven million books are on open shelf, the rest remain in the archive but be viewed in the reading room. I went to the sixth floor, entered the room where the book was supposed to be only to find me in complete darkness. I first had to find the switch for turning on the light. The switch works like an egg-timer, so five minutes later I was in the dark again.

The books are sorted out by size and then by number, so I ended up looking for the book in a completely different section. Nevertheless, I learned it now. Lending a book is is often possible only for a few days, but this at least ensures that books are on the shelf when you need them.

What’s so different about Cambridge? Well, last friday I could observe a ritual which showed me why Cambridge students are like they are.

The ritual is called Super Hall. It takes place at Trinity Hall (my college) in the evening. Unlike Graduate Hall, which is very formal and involves gowns, Super Hall is celebrated wearing Smart Casual (which is a suit for me – unfortunately, Jeans are not allowed even though they are the essence of casualnessity). The food is called Tagliatelle with Smoked Salmon & Dill and Escalope of Turkey Saltinbocca (a fancy name for salmon pasta and turkey steak) and was quite delicious.

I was a few minutes late, so I received disaproving looks by Joseph. I don’t know his complete job title, but during Dining Halls he directs the kitchen staff and makes sure that everything is in order. During Super Halls, he delivers so-called “fines”. Joseph bangs on a large bell, waits till everybody is quit and reads out the content of small slips of papers given to him by the students, saying “I fine the second-year student who had sex in the library” and other interesting revelations. The targeted person then gets up, downs his glass of wine and sits down accompagnied by the cheers and jowls of his fellow classmates.

People are fined for everything. I was fined for putting whiskey into my tea (don’t ask) and for being late at rowing practice. Needless to say that these rituals get into people’s heads. If you are still sober afterwards, the next turn is the College Bar. Surely, it is possible to enjoy a quite beer there, isn’t it?

Well, not really. British students invented the fine tradition of Pennying. The tradition goes that the Queen should be save at all times. If someone puts a penny (which has the Queen’s lovely silhouette on one side) in your glass, you have to empty it as fast as possible before the “Queen drowns”.

On a more serious note, I think these rituals help a lot to shape a College Identity. With several thousands students in Cambridge, the Colleges and the hundreds of societies help to get to know people. It’s amazing how through parties, formal receptions, scarfs, traditions, sports etc a strong sense of group identity is created. There is a tight network of support, from your academic supervisor in your department to your graduate tutor at College.

The activities of the Graduate Students in the first weeks are amazing to get to know people. Cook-outs and pub crawls, tea afternoons and port-sessions. The architecture of the graduate accomodations help to get people to know each other very well very soon – simply because you run across them all the time. Last night I went with three other graduate students to see the new Disney Movey Ratatouille which is well worth seeing.

Back to the College System at Cambridge: the Colleges are like small tribes. They all have their chiefs – normally called the Master of College. But then there is a plethora of smaller Chiefs, Senior somethings, Presidents, Vice-presidents, Head of this and Head of that. The same in the student organisations and academic departments: Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Secretary, Under-Secretary. Hierarchies carefully defined. They all have their well-developed rituals. And sometimes, just sometimes, these rituals are fueled with a little bit of alcohol.

Boaties are those men and women which are members of the Boating Club. Boating refers to Rowing and should not be confused with Punting. When Rowing or Punting you push long sticks of wood into innocent water, but Rowing needs several people to push the blades (or the oars) simultaneously and slightly more elegantly into the water. There is also Skulling, which is Rowing on your own with two blades.

The Colleges in Cambridge take a big pride in their rowing. Probably you have heard of the famous Boat Race between Cambridge and Oxford every year. All Colleges have their own Boating House down at the river Cam which meanders through the city and out into the meadows surrounding the city. The Captain of the Men’s Team, Fergal, even gets his own appartment in College. The Trinity Hall Boating Club has a beautiful boat house down at the river.

Unfortunately, today was the fourth time in a row that something prevent me from getting on the water indeed. On Tuesday the lack of knowledge about the whereabouts of the House prevented me from joining the lads.

On Thursday I got up at 6am after returning home late from Graduate Hall, searched my key for half an hour, fell asleep I again, woke up two hours later, found my key under the bed (I don’t know how it got there, but I guess my subconscience was strictly against getting up), look at the schedule and saw that it was not even my turn anyway.

On Friday morning, one of the four people in the boat did not show up. Today I made it to the Boat House on time, only to discover that the river was banned for College boats until noon and only City boats were allowed to go. Instead I went cycling along the river, discovered herds of cows grazing the river banks, found myself a bench and a Financial Times and enjoyed the morning.

It seems rowing is much more than just a sport. There is a social dynamic underneath that is hard to grasp. Sharing the experience of getting up before sunrise in the middle of the night, cycling through the foggy and empty Cambridge streets, sitting around on old benches in the Changing Room and forcing yourself to do some warm-up exercises creates a good group feeling.

Most of the lads take rowing very seriously. Apparently in Spring, when the races are coming up, people will practice ten times per week, plus exercises on the Ergometers (Rowing Machines), running and cycling. Another graduate student, Steph, who is trying to get on the University’s Women Team, is rowing every morning and every evening. I already find it difficult to put the three ‘outings’ (going out on the river) plus the various fitness exercises into my schedule. With four lectures, four seminars and large reading lists, I will most likely cut down my rowing commitment drastically. It’s a pity though, because I really enjoyed rowing when I did it the last three years of High School.

Terry Pratchett came to Cambridge today to present his newest book called “Making Money”. The plot features Moist von Lipwig, Post-Master General of Ankh-Morpork and former fraudster, taking over the Royal Bank, inventing paper money and reinvigorating the economy.

Three Trinity Hall students, Bettina, Christine and me, were only waiting for about 2 hours and 30 minutes before we got to meet Terry – while about six thousand people were still standing in line behind us. Poor boy. Terry was very charming indeed and took his turn of time for each individual.

I told him that my thesis topic is related to International Finance. Now, International Finance is only interesting to few nerdy people like me. Quoting scholar Susan Emmeneger…

“…topics such as capital adequacy or credit risk modelling are brain-teasers for anyone active in the field of study, its formulas unspeakably dull for anyone else.”

Nevertheless I find Financial Markets very interesting indeed. Even more, I am convinced that often simple truths formulated by interested amateurs like Terry Pratchett are much more acurate in describing the world of finance than books written by experts on the field.

Therefore I have decided to make use of Terry’s book as much as possible by introducing some of his wisdom into my thesis. You want to have a taste for this wisdom? Well, let’s see, this is a dialogue between Moist von Lipwig and Topsy Turvey, the widow of the former chairman of the Royal Bank who has become Chairwoman of the Bank herself and teaches Moist a few lessons about how a bank works:

‘I don’t know how banks work’ [said Moist].
‘You never put money in bank?’ [said Topsy]
‘Not in, no.’
‘How do you think they work?’
‘Well, you take rich people’s money and lend it to suitable people at interest, and give as little as possible of the interest back.’
‘Yes, and what is a suitable person?’
‘Someone who can prove they don’t need the money?’
‘Oh, you cynic. But you have got the general idea.’
‘No poor people, then?’
‘Not in banks, Mr. Lipwig. No one with an income under a hundred and fifty dollars a year. That is why socks and mattresses were invented. My late husband always said that the only way to make money out of poor people is by keeping them poor. He was not, in his business life, a very nice man.’

Terry Pratchett is a nice man, though. I asked him if I could make an interview and he asked whether bankers would be really interested in his thoughts. I think so. He maybe does not know how economics work. But he knows how economists work:

Economists are like alchemists, but less messy.

The first week in Cambridge is over, in a few hours my classes start. The week was very eventful, filled with introductory lectures, a diagnostic test and a start into the complicated library system at Cambridge.

Last night the students of International Relations and European Studies went to Madingley Hall which is a Victorian mansion outside of Cambridge. The idea was to gather informally and get to know each other better. The background and the research areas of the students are very impressive – some have worked in government offices, some in the private sector, some in academia. We have former rockstars among us as well as government consultants, heads of military bases, participants in the Saddam tribunal in Iraq. A great mixture.

Earlier in the week, “A Mandatory Diagnostic Test” was scheduled. The test was aimed to assess the strength and weaknesses of the students. It consisted of two parts, in the first part we had to choose three out of five given words and write about two pages for each of them. I chose Genocide, Globalisation and Deterrence. I don’t know how well I did, I know that I am clearly lacking a systematic knowledge in political science. My knowledge of political events is a blend of newspaper articles, books and history classes in High School, I wouldn’t be able to put into the context of certain theories.

The second part consisted of stating the Research Proposal again. My research interest had changed a little bit, I still want to write about the G8 and its Global Governance capability, but I want to narrow it down considerably. I was thinking of discussing the G8 and its aim to create Local Bond Markets, but in the last couple of days I have thought that it would be maybe more interesting to look at how the G8 goverments reacted in the Global Credit Crises. I will meet my supervisor tomorrow and ask him how he thinks about these topics.

Since Tuesday we had introductory lessons to all classes. I have to choose four classes, and the choice is very hard. After each intro I make my changes. I went to International Political Economy, Middle-East Politics, International Theory, US Foreign Policy, International Economics, History of Political Thought, War and Society and European Economics. Tomorrow I will have a visit to International Law and European Law.

The thing is that I have to reconcile three things: brushing up my gaps, finding classes related to my Thesis, and choosing courses that are interesting. The lecturers are all great and have fascinating backgrounds. Dr. Stefan Halper for example, who is doing US Foreign Policy, has been working in the Bush and Reagan government. Dr. Barkawis lecture (War and Society) was immensely fascinating: in just twenty minutes he deconstructed the notion of “national vs. international” and explored the thick international space that links various domestic policies across the globe. I still have some time to ponder over the decision.

Social Networks are increasingly diversifying. However, it is not yet clear if Social Networks for each target group can grow rapidly. I have the impression that the first 500 users are the crucial ones in a given social network, they have to be those which are also highly connected in the real world. That is why StudiVZ started with WHU students, and Facebook started with Harvard students.

www.azubister.netis a network for Azubis, the German word for Trainees. It was developed by Andreas Diehl in Cologne, who is an alumni from the university of Cologne. He is supported by Daniel Goihl and Thorsten Siel, also from Cologne. They maintain a well-informed blog that informs about the start-up but as well about the situation of trainees in Germany. Read on, my friend »