Hasselhoff and the tech blogosphere: a strange love affair

Written on 18th August 2008                                                                                                              1 COMMENT
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.

Erick Schonfeld, hasselhof, hoffspace, TechCrunch

1 Comment »