Germans don’t tweet. The Economist looked at why:

• Germany’s 82 million people have 4 million Twitter accounts. That puts it 22^nd in the world, behind countries such as Turkey and the Philippines
• This is in part because in the German language speakers like to make their points clear and have sentences with multiple subordinate clauses. These are hard to fit in 140 characters.
• Germans are also preoccupied with privacy. There are bitter memories of the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police, which would recruit informants to gather information on the public’s life.
• The concern about privacy is also why the windows on German houses aren’t as big as those in other places.
• Facebook remains successful in Germany because it’s easier to prevent your status updates from being broadcast to the entire world.

Read more about the few German political leaders that do have Twitter accounts, the small role that social media played during Germany’s recent election, and more over here.

Source: The Economist

Via: Marginal Revolution, Amni Rusli