Today saw a fairly significant deal happen here in Germany between Web 1.0 giant T-Online, Deutsche Telekom’s portal (15 Million users per month) and Web 2.0 hotshot sevenload, a German video community. T-Online will feature selected sevenload content on their portal and leverage the social media functions the video folks provide.

This marks the first partnership of this kind in Germany that brings social media startups together with the big players. The announcement talks about new editorial formats that both will work together on and put live once sevenload has revamped its platform (due anytime soon). In my view, this deal pays tribute to the fact that online publishing and communities are inseperable and big publishers – online and (still) offline – will have to acknowledge that fact rather sooner than later if they want to survive.