The Next Web

Hasselhoff and the tech blogosphere: a strange love affair

Written on August 18, 2008 – 12:36 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

ReadWriteWeb reports that German tv star David Hasselhoff left MySpace and started his own space this week: Hoffspace. Surprisingly, the network already counts 10,000 users. For some reason, they weren’t scared by the hilarious welcome blog post by the Hoff:

In my travels round the world I have always been surprised that no matter where I go people recognize and know me, from Europe, Australia and India to the Philippines and the Zulu Nation in South Africa. This got me thinking… I realized that while two people from two entirely different countries and backgrounds may seem to have nothing in common, the only thing they might have in common is me… So I decided to start a network where people from across the world might come together and get a conversation started over me. Where it will lead, I don’t know but the world would be a better place if everyone talked a little more to each other…

The sad thing is that he doesn’t want to be funny at all. But, truth to be told, I have to give the man some credit though. In June I wrote about Hasselhoff’s attempt to create an Internet hype by starting his own lip-syncing competition. I wrote it works the other way around. You see, mr. Hasselhoff misses the point here that eighties stars are only cool when other people - not yourself - start a hype. Like Soocial did. This Dutch start-up uses David Hasselhoff as some sort of ridiculous mascot. It worked, ’cause Erick Schonfeld raved about it on TechCrunch.

Well, Hasselhoff has proved me wrong. Because this time, he started his own hype in the blogosphere: Hoffspace was already featured on TechMeme, ReadWriteWeb, and some other blogs. Hasselhoff and the tech scene, it remains a strange love affair.

I hope you like that post!

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Erick Schonfeld, hasselhof, hoffspace, TechCrunch

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TheNextWeb2008 Update: The Next Techcrunch Conference?

Written on March 28, 2008 – 10:15 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,

In only 5 days The Next Web Conference 2008 will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. We will post short daily updates about speakers, initiatives and events here.

Erick Schonfeld
Formerly editor-at-large at Business 2.0 and currently Co-editor Techcrunch.com.

We proudly present you the Next Web Conference 2008 moderator. He is a well known, respected and very connected journalist and blogger. His name is Erick Schonfeld.

If you don’t recognize the name right away don’t worry. Changes are you read his articles regularly but just didn’t notice his name before. He has been the co-editor of Techcrunch since September 2007 and has been contributing to the world famous blog (700.000+ RSS readers!) on a daily basis ever since.

Quoted from Techcrunch:

Erick has been covering startups and technology news for 14 years. At Business 2.0 he wrote feature stories and ran their main blog, Next Net, which has nearly 50,000 RSS subscribers. He also does a lot of video work and hosts regular panels of industry luminaries called Disruptor Round Tables. Prior to Business 2.0, Erick was an editor-at-large for eCompany and a contributing editor for Fortune.

In 1999, Schonfeld won the prize for best information technology submission at London’s Business Journalist of the Year Awards, and in 2001 he won the prize for best space submission at the Aerospace Journalist of the Year Awards in Paris. In 1996 and 1997, Schonfeld was recognized in the TJFR Business News Reporter’s list of the “best and brightest financial journalists under the age of 30.” He appears regularly on CNBC, CNN, and NY1, and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. Schonfeld graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University in 1993.

Next to Erick Schonfeld we also have writers from Techcrunch France (Ouriel Ohayon) and TechCrunch UK & Ireland (Mike Butcher) who are also both media partners of The Next Web Conference. In other words: you will never get a better chance to meet representatives from every Techcrunch publication in one event. Maybe we should rename the conference “The Next Techcrunch Conference”? ;-)

Haven’t registered yet? Do it now before we are sold out…

Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch, thenextweb2008

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