Many events in Internet are for many People scary. Because the fundamental change that this new form of Communication brings with it, seems to be one thing above all: uncontrollable. Yet it is tried again and again.

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The reputation management myth

Nevertheless, prominent people in particular try again and again to control the Internet, even to want to dominate it. Maybe she sees Solution Yes, it looks completely different: we simply do without any control at all! This is not as absurd as it sounds at first glance.

In 2003, singer and actress Barbara Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and website Pictopia.com for $50 million. Reason: The website featured an aerial view of her home among 12.000 other photos of the California coast. However, the process really sparked interest in the picture and not only spread it thousands of times on the Internet, but also the world Informationwho lives there. This phenomenon has since been known as the Streisand effect: someone loses control because they want to use force to enforce it.

Streisand effect: fear of losing control

From a psychological point of view, the desire to control what is being spread about us on the Internet arises from the Anxiety from mistakes, Criticism and negative consequences: The misconception with Measures Unfortunately, being able to avoid negative statements about yourself online, such as constant monitoring or legal means, is widespread - among private individuals, but even more so in companies. Probably the most famous example of a failed attempt at control is Nestlé, which bought large quantities of palm oil from an Indonesian company Company who are destroying large areas of rainforest for their plantations.

Nestlé is also complicit in the extermination of the orangutan. Greenpeace uses various social media channels, including YouTube and Nestlé's corporate website I aufmerksam close. What happened then is considered a prime example of the Streisand effect: Instead of facing the criticism and with his customers to enter into a dialogue, Nestlé filed copyright objections with YouTube and thus managed to take the video out of circulation for a short time. As a result, Nestlé also blocked his Facebook- Pages with several hundred thousand fans on which Greenpeace was also active. It was precisely because of this that the story attracted a great deal of attention on the Internet and in the traditional media that Nestlé had actually wanted to avoid.

Online reputation management

The technical term for the attempt to control opinions on the Internet is called Online-Reputation management. The Munich communications and PR specialist is considered to be his masterAdviser Klaus Eck, who writes regularly on this topic. Jeff Jarvis, who likes to talk about the German fear of the Internet and who blogs openly about his prostate cancer himself, is not entirely wrong in criticizing the absurdity of the term: "Reputation is in your hands, not mine," said he was at an event organized by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and was irritated by the notion that one could manage one's image online.

And the two marketingprofessoren Detlev Zwick and Nikhilesh Dholakia have found that technical aids that are supposed to guarantee data protection often only give customers the false sense of security that they are acting autonomously and should therefore be treated with caution. Because even if it is right and important that we can control the information that can be found online about us through the targeted disclosure or withholding of information or, if necessary, through security and release settings in the various online services: Ultimately, neither private individuals nor Companies with even the most sophisticated social media Strategy unable to influence what others do with the information they receive.

Human vs. technology

Nevertheless, many companies rely too much on technical tools - not only for data protection, but also for the evaluation of the data, the so-called monitoring. As the study “Smart Service in the Social Web” by Tanya Dimitrova, Reiner Kolm and Bernhard Steimel shows, they are ideal for finding genuine customer criticism on the Internet and deriving potential for improvement from it.

However, the weak point in monitoring lies in the selection of the data material: Because many posts are counted several times, since there are several keywords in one post. There is also a lack of clarity in the semantic assignment, which significantly affects the entire number structure. Furthermore, customer statements on social media contain opinions, but ultimately little information. But what is even more serious: as a rule, only the tip of the iceberg, usually a small group of dissatisfied people, speak up. Therefore, companies cannot derive a holistic opinion about customers and potential from Scoial Media because they lack the information about the large silent majority. And they can't really assess the exact target group either. The fact that monitoring tools and also online reputation management are perceived by many companies as an opportunity to assess their customer impact in social media in advance borders on oracularism - and is ultimately a mistake in reasoning with serious consequences.

Swim instead of control!

Because instead of swimming intuitively in social media and acting entrepreneurially as part of an uncontrollable dynamic, many companies are trying to transfer their control structures to social media. In this way, all of their actions are not geared to the possibilities of the new forms of communication from the outset, but primarily to risk avoidance. With perfectionist stubbornness, they then pay meticulous attention to not making any mistakes – but they overlook the many opportunities that social media offers them. For example, entering into a real dialogue with your customers and listening to their wishes and needs needs enter into. On the contrary, for large and small companies, social media is often just another, cheaper option Marketing-Channel in which they present themselves more beautiful and better than they really are. Authenticity, rough edges and the willingness to learn from mistakes and experiences? None! It is precisely this humanity and thus the willingness to own up to one's mistakes that accounts for the benefit and success of social media.

How this works was shown by Udo Vetter, specialist lawyer for criminal law well-known through his blog, in December 2010 on Twittwoch in Düsseldorf. There he was asked, among other things, what his most embarrassing Twitter experience had been. And told a story that personally got my ears red at first: Vetter wanted to buy underpants and complained via Twitter about the scratchy anti-theft devices. But in any case what happened to Vetter, which probably happens to many users: He wasn't himself clear, who reads all along. Because a few weeks later, at a hearing in the district court, he was asked by one of the judges whether it had recently become normal for lawyers to publicly tweet about their underpants online. And Vetter, as he admitted on Twittwoch, was a little uncomfortable. But it turned out that the assessor Humour and was also able to laugh about it - probably because Vetter didn't try to negate his embarrassment or downplay it, but simply stood by it. And the story today can be told loosely and amusingly as an anecdote.

Privacy doesn't help anyway?

According to the blogger Michael Seemann, constantly paying attention to your own data is useless anyway. Because everyone and everything can be found on the Internet, even those who consciously try to stay out of it and are therefore offline or revealing as little about themselves as possible. Because even if you are not active yourself, others write or talk about you or – even worse – post videos and photos online. You only have to look at how much gossip about certain companies is in relevant forums or social media platforms - even if they are not even involved in the discussion. And this information spreads with incredible speed because, thanks to the Internet, the transaction costs for information have fallen enormously - an effect that is reflected in Future will potentiate. Worse still: the individual data set no longer lies dead in its storage space, but is connected to other data using ever new linking methods, so that data links are created that surpass our previous ideas.

According to Seemann, it is impossible to take action against it – but if you try, you will fare like Barbara Streisand. Seemann, better known online as mspro, deals with this loss of control on his blog and in various publications and believes that this can not only be accepted, but also seen as an opportunity. Because in one Welt, in which openness and transparency apply to everyone, no one has to be for themselves anymore privacy be ashamed. Seeman therefore advocates a radical reversal in our relationship to data: Away from constant control by the sender towards filter sovereignty by the recipient. This is how he writes:

“At the same time, these unpredictable, because infinite, queries also liberate the sender of the information. You free him from having to meet expectations. Because the other person can no longer make any demands on the author, because he works in infinite sources with perfectly configurable tools - neither a moral-normative nor a thematic-informational one. The freedom of the other to read or not to read what he wants is the freedom of the sender to be what he wants. "

Naked to the skin: how much do I tell about myself?

The big ones Ask So our time is, for companies and private individuals alike: greatest possible authenticity or greatest possible control? And if control, how can you even keep it? Which data should be disclosed – and which not? The Media Education Research Association Southwest has published the JIM study annually since 1998. JIM stands for "Jugend, Information, (Multi-)Media" and that's exactly what it's all about: the way 12 to 19-year-olds deal with media and information is examined. The focus of the study is on Internet use and mobile communication and it brought to light something astonishing: The young people, who adults like to regard as particularly vulnerable when it comes to the Internet, apparently know relatively well what information they have in social media networks can release - and which not.

For example, three quarters of young Internet users have stored information about hobbies or other activities on the Internet. 64 percent have posted photos or moving images of themselves, four out of ten Internet users show relevant material on which friends or members of the Family are shown. 37 percent have theirs eMail-Address stored a quarter presents the data with which they can be reached via instant messenger. And only four percent give their cell phone or telephone number. With the hype of online communities, the study also recorded a significant increase in the data stored on the Internet. In the meantime, however, the situation has "normalized" again - certainly also because the use of social networks as a communication focus has decreased a little overall. Significantly more young people are now paying attention to how they only release their information to selected people with data protection settings in social networks; And that where these privacy settings are usually difficult to find. Girls (72 percent), adults (71 percent) and high school students (73 percent) use the privacy option more than average.

Is privacy dead?

Releasing data about yourself doesn't have to be negative: Julia Schramm, a former member of the Pirate Party, explained in an interview with Spiegel Online privacy for tot: “Privacy is something of eighties... The effort to control and withhold private data is now disproportionately high. At the end of the day, we can't resist it... So flee to the front... I've found that I get a lot in return, new friendships, suggestions, support." The Berlin communications consultant Thomas Praus sees it similarly: “When I say where I am at Foursquare, I hope to meet those who follow me there. When I discuss with someone on Twitter, I hope everyone who is listening there will benefit from the conversation. When I find out that a friend is also in Colombia and I can meet him years later: I think that's fantastic. All this publicity about my activities on the net has already given me so much ideas, Feedback, impromptu meetings, connections brought that being afraid is absolutely ABSURTHER.”

How Michael Seemann imagines his filter sovereignty instead of data protection settings, he explained in his blog about the introduction of Google+: There to organize the users their friends in Circles. Information that you now post on Google+ can then be made readable for one or more circles or released publicly for everyone. Seemann, however, advocates the opposite approach: It is not the sender of the post who should decide who shares what, but rather the readers Choice have to subscribe to the information from the circles like in Chanels. This, as Seemann concludes in his blog, results in a completely new, voluntary privacy: “And so everyone has various roles. However, these roles are not actively and restrictively enforced in real life either, but are granted to us by others, even demanded of them. It is expected to play these roles with the full knowledge that we - the same person - fill completely different roles in different contexts. Actually want mine Executive because I don't even know that I misbehave in clubs. He just doesn't want me to do it to customers. I'm convinced that I don't have to hide my private life from my boss. He doesn't even want to know. If he has the opportunity to ignore my private life, he will do it."

Post-privacy spackling and data protection

Julia Schramm and Michael Seemann, together with Christian Heller, were among the best-known protagonists of a movement that described itself as a spackeria critical of data protection. The members gave themselves the name after Konstanze Kurz, spokeswoman for the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), looking back at the 27th Communications Congress of the CCC in December 2010, described the representatives of the post-privacy movement as post-privacy spackos. The self-proclaimed spackers did not see the increasing loss of privacy on the web, the aforementioned post-privacy, as Problem but as an opportunity and blogged about it regularly at .

Your critics, including the Digitale Society around Markus Beckedahl, who, among other things, campaign for an improvement in data protection laws, accused the Spackeria of irresponsible generalization. Anyone who wants to put their data openly on the internet can do so, said Constanze Kurz at a re:publicaLecture – but please don't make that a maxim for everyone. And of course it must not be overlooked that complete transparency for consumers and citizens is also important for the state and Economy benefit: the former because they monitor better that way, the latter because they can monitor their potential customers even better manipulate can. Already today there are first attempts with billboards that recognize users and personal Advertising can display. According to Markus Beckedahl, who not only runs Germany's most successful blog "netzpolitik.org" and sits on the Enquete Commission Internet and Digital Society of the Bundestag, privacy enhancing tools can help: "These are anonymization tools, encryption tools and also settings in the social networks which are switched to 'Hide All' by default. So that you first have to consciously unlock everything – instead of the other way around. We have to go further into such technologies invest, this must become the market standard. Germany plays an international pioneering role in this regard. And it is conceivable that, similar to green products, we will soon be exporting privacy-friendly products all over the world.”

Internet celebrities on the retreat

Incidentally, it is no longer just the social media opponents who view the Internet with a certain skepticism. Even people who should actually know how it works with this Internet because they have many years of experience with technology and the Web are now withdrawing from it. Sascha Lobo, whose number of followers of more than 70.000 is only surpassed by Dieter Nuhr and who never missed an opportunity to sing praises on Twitter, no longer tweets several times a day, not even every day. His blog is also dormant. Robert Basic, one of the leading German bloggers, once wrote on Twitter: “Twitter is more or less degenerating into a pure information machine, bleeding out socially. This sharpens the product, while at the same time making it appear increasingly sterile. No investigation, no study, just an impression that has been growing for weeks and months.”Net activist Linus Neuman, author of Germany's currently most-read blog Netzpolitik.org tweets: “Lately I've had less and less Lust in the Internet." Johnny Häusler, the father of Spreeblick, also a well-known German blog, wrote about poor decision-making and concentration, loss of ideas, memory lapses and confessed ironically: "The Internet has destroyed my life." And while every self-proclaimed self-marketing expert rants about how important reader comments are, Kai Müller, operator of the well-known Stylespion blog with more than 15.000 subscribers, simply dismissed them: “I don't talk myself out of it for long. I haven't seen much in the comments here for a long time Sinn. Therefore the comment function is now deactivated. "

Recently, one of the better-known German bloggers told me the reasons for his withdrawal. I am not allowed to name him because he would like to be less present on the web and in the media. For reasons like this: He was approached at the airport by a person who greeted him like an old friend, asked how he was and seemed to know him well. The only problem was: the blogger had no idea who was greeting him so happily. And found the experience pretty scary. Flirtatious internet celebrities or real overwhelming? Maybe both! Perhaps completely normal from a certain level of awareness - just think of how stars treat paparazzi, on whom they are dependent in a kind of symbiotic love-hate relationship.

Fast food vs. Slow food

Sometimes, however, our desire for control simply fails because of human convenience – or to put it another way: the desire to save time. Most people would probably agree that while saving time is a good thing, fast food is actually bad for your shape and health in the long run Health is. It is not for nothing that there is now a slow food movement and organic food is also available at discounters. Now what does this have to do with social media? Well, it's not much different there: many people grab a bite of fac here and there in passingebook with or nibble on Twitter, it's supposed to be after all fast and walk comfortably. And then they wonder why they don't get enough and still get fat. Because as in most other things, the same applies to social media: good things take time. Recently, the PR chief explained to me a more traditionally oriented one Companythat one is also active in social media. That meant in this case: A Facebook-Site with around 40 fans, on which there was hardly any interaction. That it is precisely the marketing strategy of Facebook corresponds to making it easy for its users, as I have already mentioned. And the spiegelt exactly the same thought that many cling to: Social media is usually called Facebook and Twitter, these are also the most successful channels worldwide. Most people know that there are also other important platforms such as blogs, YouTube or Flickr; but the entry barriers seem too high for most. Because a blog that runs well cannot be pulled up in passing. Of course there are providers too where you get a ready-made layout for free and then just get started (you still have to write text, of course, but that's the same everywhere). But as always, when things have to go fast: The result is never what you want it to be. And from years of experience, I can say that a good, user-friendly design is extremely important for success. Because not only does it give you a certain recognition value, but you can also make people much more aware of the important things. Because experience shows that readers only take what is in front of their noses. You have to hold the things that you absolutely want to be read right in front of your eyes, like the rabbit the famous carrot. For example, by designing the start page of a blog accordingly. That would be a reason for me to never use fast-blogging tools and even less would I have my own page in favor of Facebook give up: You simply have too few setting options there.

Data security on your own side: find things easily

The other important reason for a blog for me is privacy and data security. Too often in the last few years I have seen platforms close and people have a hard time saving all the texts they have come to love. That also has the advantagethat you can still find things after years. For example through the search engines. Because think about it: if you are looking for anything, the first thing you are probably looking for is google. And how often do you find entries from Facebook-Pages or Profiles? But rarely. Blogs, on the other hand, tend to appear fairly high up in search results. I was interviewed this way about posts I had written years ago - they just Googled me. And what's more: You can also find old posts, comments, and discussions in this way - all the more if you keep a clear structure when blogging and tag the posts sensibly. Imagine you read an exciting article somewhere years ago and thought about it a few years ago. If you do that on Twitter or Facebook you have little chance of finding the article again, because you have long since disappeared into nirvana. In the blog, on the other hand, depending on the order, just a few clicks or a good search function are sufficient. For me, my blog is not only a communication tool, but also my personal topic archive, in which I collect topics and contacts that I can refer to again afterwards. That being said, I don't have to worry about someone reselling the photos and information I put on my own server for promotional purposes. Blogging is therefore safer and, after the initial effort, even saves time. In a word: it's more sustainable. It is only with the insight that many people still harp: Recently someone explained to me that print media also have newspaper archives in which old articles can be found again. The fact that only a few people take this effort to find information in the age of the Internet - my conversation partner probably didn't think of that at the moment. Google goes faster!

The crux with instant gratification

And yet we are increasingly experiencing that people are doing without their own medium out of convenience. Web designers get to feel that too - some time ago I tried to show students at a German university the advantages of having their own blog. The topic of my presentation was: Job Search and networking on the Internet. And this time, the audience wasn't aspiring journalists, but economists. The enthusiasm left a lot to be desired, to say the least. To Facebook one could just get through. But the objection is that there is simply not enough time to blog. And nobody believed that potential employers could become aware of job seekers through their own online presence. Apart from the fact that I have the attitude “It won't do anything, so I'd rather leave it!” think it's pretty stupid in any way, you have to ask yourself: Why do so many people spend hour after hour at Facebook and Twitter, but do you think it's too time-consuming to start your own blog, something really useful? So why do so many private individuals and companies use Twitter and Facebook do you prefer and do without your own blog despite all the advantages? It cannot be due to the sheer time saving, because as we have already seen, you can also save a lot of unnecessary time through social networks verlieren. The real reason might be something else, as Robert Basic analyzed so aptly. And Basic knows what he's talking about. He has been blogging himself since 2003, also commercially successfully: In 2009 he sold his successful blog basicthinking.de, which was number 1 in the German blog charts at the time, for 46.902 euros with the highest bidder on Ebay. In his opinion, Twitter and Fac promiseebook an instant gratification, a kind of immediate reward or satisfaction: “Operating a FacebookPage and a Twitter account leads to a supposed sense of achievement quite quickly. In contrast to a blog and the barely comprehensible readers, on Facebook and Twitter conveys a different feeling: the likers and followers are more tangible, feel look more real... It's no surprise that companies like to peddle their follower/like numbers. They can do better internally merchandise as anonymous blog readers who cannot be caught.”

The apparently better selling

besser merchandise – this is exactly the sticking point for many companies: especially at Facebook with its 750 million members worldwide, it seems attractive for companies to be represented. After all, you want to be where the customers are. And who wouldn't want the chance to reach so many potential customers? Especially since there is a Facebook make it really easy to collect customers, followers and supporters with the Like buttons or Twitter with the Follw button. What really comes out of this, how many people are really interested in a person or a company, is a completely different matter. So it's nice when a company can claim tail comparisons, 10.000 fans on Facebook to have – or followers on Twitter. The proportion of those who really deal with the company and with whom one can build a long-term relationship is in fact much lower. Just think of the FHM example. Getting instant gratification by taking the quick, easy route may seem short-term to some positive bring results. But sustainable success is not enough. The psychologist Walter Mischel impressively demonstrated this in the 1960s and 1970s. In the preschool at Stanford University four-year-olds were given a task: they were offered a marshmallow because they could eat it immediately. But if you waited a few minutes and were patient, you would get another one. The reactions were very different: Some children ate the marshmallow right away. Others had to distract themselves or the Eyes locked so that they could control themselves. 14 years later, Mischel found out: the children who grabbed it immediately were more than stubborn, impatient and envious, even as adults. Those who could control themselves back then, on the other hand, were stress-resistant and social competently and more reliable. In short: you were also more successful in life. The popular news site Mashable.com, one of the most well-known places to go for technology and internet topics, has taken the trouble to evaluate how many of its 2,2 million followers on Twitter and around 460.000 fans on Facebook really take a look at the page. The result shows: Only a small part of the fans and followers actually clicks on the site. And: The success is on Twitter and Facebook very different.

Idealism vs. reality

Back to the question: Post privacy or data protection? The truth between these polemically arguing groups is likely, as is so often the case, in the middle. Or as Marina Weißband, formerly the political director of the Pirate Party, sums it up: “Post-Privacy says: 'A person must be able to release the data he wants.' Data protection says: 'A person only has to be able to share the data he wants.' ”

On the one hand, the post-privacy prophets are certainly right when they say that it is becoming increasingly difficult to control one's own data on the Internet. And presumably the huge changes brought about by the Internet will certainly become social ones in the medium term rethink (must) lead. This is already shown by today's data protection law, which is based on ideas from the 70's and 80's, as Thomas Stadler explains so appropriately: "The current situation is characterized by the fact that data protection law is not fit for the Internet age and many real existing services used by millions of citizens and businesses are not privacy compliant. At least not if you take the understanding of professional data protection officers as a basis. This is leading to the emergence of post-privacy movements that go far beyond that Objective overshoot, but ultimately rightly complain about the current situation. So we can continue to fool ourselves or finally do an open inventory.”

On the other hand, their hope for a more transparent, more open society is quite idealistic. And the question arises whether resignation, according to the motto “We can't control it anyway, so let's leave it” is actually the right way and whether it is not worthwhile to advocate stronger protection of the individual data - how the following examples show.