By Siobhan O’Leary
The seventh annual DLD conference is underway in Munich and one book that is sure to land in the spotlight is the German edition of The Facebook Effect by journalist and author David Kirkpatrick.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TuFkupUn7k
Publisher Carl Hanser Verlag has teamed up with DLD Media to publish the German edition of the book (Der Facebook-Effekt), which bears both the DLD and Hanser logos and represents the launch of the DLD Edition series. The series will focus on “innovative thought leaders of the digital world.”
DLD (Digital Life Design) is an invitation-only, three-day conference that brings together hundreds of digital pioneers from the fields of media, technology, art, etc. It should come as no surprise that Kirkpatrick and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg are hardly strangers to the event. In fact, the 2009 program was highlighted by Kirkpatrick’s interview of Zuckerberg while the book was still a work-in-progress.
According to Dr. Marcel Reichart, director and co-founder of DLD, “The DLD Edition partnership with Hanser and author David Kirkpatrick is the first partnership with a publisher and aimed for the German speaking market.”
And it’s a logical starting point, given Facebook’s exponential increase in users and visibility, particularly overseas. Facebook now boasts more than 500 million members worldwide (70% of whom are located outside of the US) and more than 10 million members in Germany alone, a marked increase from the fewer than 2 million Germans registered on the site when the Kirkpatrick-Zuckerberg interview was conducted at DLD in 2009.
It remains to be seen how many titles will be published under the DLD Edition line, but DLD’s other co-founder and director Steffi Czerny added, “Based on the current editions’s experience, DLD will assess further initiatives”. When asked whether DLD would look to publishers overseas for similar partnerships, Reichart noted that this might be an option if a particular title fit “the DLD brand and community”.
According to DLD organizers, this year’s attendees include Facebook co-founder Sean Parker, Randi Zuckerberg (sister of Mark), and Accel Partner and Facebook investor Jim Breyer.