Computer flea market
The Computer Flea Market ( CF for short ) was a popular German-language classifieds paper on computers in the 1990s . Publisher was the Thomas Eberle publishing house in Maulbronn .
concept
The CF saw itself as a “computer magazine for free classified ads ”. It appeared every two months and was - as is typical for small advertisements - subdivided into sections that mainly covered computer topics. The sheet was roughly subdivided into computer systems and platforms. Within a platform there were again categories for buy and sell advertisements and discussion forums for exchanging experiences. In these forums, readers could post private messages and questions - in the style of Usenet newsgroups or web forums - and discuss them with other readers.
In contrast to the usual, more regionally distributed advertising papers, the CF was distributed nationwide as a specialist offer journal . Private listings were free business ads have been running for a fee and with the letter G in. A typical edition of the paper offered space for several thousand classified ads.
Writing culture
At first glance, the format of the computer flea market seems unsuitable for the exchange of private messages. This applies in particular to conducting Usenet- like discussions - the waiting time between a " posting " and the recipient's response was between two and four months. The restriction to a few lines also resulted in the need to write advertisements in the telegram style .
Due to the format, important meta information such as the sender of a message was also missing . The readership made do with giving contributions with a nickname ( pseudonym in reader jargon , pseudo for short ).
Despite these shortcomings, the format was very well received by the readership . The style of discussion was usually brief and pointed, but mostly friendly. The concept quickly led to the formation of an active offline community . This also contributed to the further development and preservation of the scene idea.
Readers and typesetters
A curiosity was the participation of the typesetters employed by the publishing house in individual discussions. Their task was to enter the classified ads, which were mostly handwritten by post, into the editorial system. Some of the Säzzer (reader jargon) were known by name to the readership and were quickly integrated into the community. They influenced the course of the discussion through sporadic comments, but also through the censorship of individual messages if they missed the topic of the rubric or were criminally relevant.
In the mid-1990s, the acquisition of advertisements was partially automated through the introduction of acquisition software . This was sent to interested readers at cost price and enabled them to submit their anzis (reader jargon) on disk by post.
The "Tanja Letters"
In the IT world of the 1990s, the relevance of copyright infringements increased sharply. This was soon expressed in a bizarre way in the computer flea market. Some software companies suspected declines in sales due to illegal copies of software and commissioned the lawyer Günter Freiherr von Gravenreuth to take action against illegal software exchange.
Freiherr von Gravenreuth then hired several test buyers to search the CF and other magazines for suspicious advertisements. The test customers then sporadically sent bait letters by post to the advertisers. In it they pretended to be female teenagers - under different false names like "Tanja Nolte-Berndel" - and asked for certain computer programs to be sent. If you responded, a short time later you received a warning with a declaration of cease and desist with criminal penalties.
In some cases, Baron von Gravenreuth obtained a court order for CF readers to be searched .
Discontinuation of the magazine
Over the years, the computer flea market declined as the use of online services and the Internet increased. In 1999 Eberle-Verlag stopped selling the CF. The rights to the brand name were given to the publishing house Dr. Heide & Partner GmbH transferred.
The new publisher soon announced that it would revive the computer flea market. The first new edition appeared in 2000, but it disappointed the majority of the readership from the very beginning. This was not only due to radical conceptual changes, but also to qualitative deficiencies in content and appearance. In the middle of 2001 there was a short joint venture between the CF and the GO64! , a print magazine about the Commodore family. Both magazines were produced together on a bi-monthly basis. This double issue brought the advantage for the subscription magazine GO64! , now also available at the kiosk. After the cooperative was dissolved, the CF magazine finally disappeared from the market.
Offshoot
The Thomas-Eberle-Verlag also published two offshoots of the CF: the C64 magazine Brotkasten Live and the PC magazine PC-Heimwerker . In contrast to the CF, these magazines did not contain classified ads, but were pure forums.
After a while, the PC DIY enthusiast started trying to distribute the editions in digital form on a floppy disk. For this purpose, the texts were saved in dBase III files and could be displayed using a program with a graphical user interface . Both magazines were discontinued after a few issues because they were not commercially successful.
Another magazine that was published by Thomas-Eberle-Verlag was the music flea market , which was very similar in concept and presentation .
various
- For typographical reasons, the name of the magazine was put on the title page without a hyphen.
- The retail price for a copy of the CF was initially 4 DM , in the end it was 7 DM.
- The CF positioned itself - not least because of the way it was published - as a magazine. Nevertheless, due to its appearance, printing technology and paper quality, it is more of a hybrid of newspaper and magazine .
- In the section for discussion of the handheld - game console Game Boy , the jocular established custom , messages with tips, tricks and cheats to fictitious to publish non-existing games.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Frank Möcke, lawyers favorites. In: c't 8/93, p. 56f.
- ↑ critical commentary of a parent reader about the new edition of the CF . 2001.
- ↑ GO64! Magazine
- ↑ Computer flea market (private website of a reader) ( Memento of June 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive ).