Year: 2005

SVT’s guide to the blogosphere

SVT, Swedish public service television, today launched a blog initiative called Bloggat (“Blogged”), where bloggers are invited to debate about political topics. The articles are published at svt.se/opinion in a “chain letter” format. Dick Erixon will today start with an article about national identity and on Friday, Maryam Yazdanfar, president of SSU (youth organisation of the Social Democratic Party) will reply.

The purpose of the initiative is that Bloggat shall be a guide to the blogosphere and not a traditional blog, according to an article in Resumé.

– Blogs are a part of the public debate and it is only natural for us at SVT Opinion to cover this area. And we believe that it will drive traffic to the SVT website, Jessica Lindroth, editor of svt.se/opinion tells Resumé.

Visitors to the website are able to discuss and comment in an online forum. Another feature that would have been nice to see is some sort of trackback feature so that visitors could see what other bloggers say about the articles, pretty much like the way Washington Post collaborates with Technorati. That way SVT would be able to show a deeper version of the blogosphere than just the A-listers who get invited. It is the long tail of the blogosphere that makes it really interesting.

Ogilvy checks out blogs

I’m glad to see that my blog is one of seven blogs about branding that the good people at Ogilvy PR are reading. “The Ogilvy PR BlogFeeds are our feeds from some of the most influential blogs out there. The ones we’re reading every day.”

Here is the description:

Mea Culpa: Two Swedish Eyes on Media and Public Relations
This Swedish blog from two public relations professionals offer good reports of what’s out there and a valuable international perspective, including posts on topics like Chinese brands you should know and PR Blogging in Iran.

Two tiny corrections about the presentation though. The title of this blog is Media Culpa, nothing else. And it’s written by me. Two eyes, one guy.

Blog ads drive online traffic

For those of us who still pay to blog, this story give us some hope of future riches. Audi recently ran an online campaign and spent 0.5 percent of their budget on blog ads. Those ads accounted for 29% of the traffic sent to the Audi’s web page. Highly effective, in other words.

MP3 player with a hard drive – that’s so 1999

Laura Ries writes about the Apple brand:

“Then Apple introduced the iPod, the first MP3 player with a hard drive.”

It’s not the first time I’ve read this misconception. In August, Jan Gradvall wrote an article in Dagens Nyheter about the iPod:

“iPod is the first technical gadget that makes it possible for someone to carry around a piece of his cultural heritage.”

Although he doesn’t say it explicitly, I interpret him as saying that the iPod was the first mp3 player that could store thousands of songs (he goes on to talk about that later in the article). Either way, the iPod was launched in October 2001 and is not the first hard disk based mp3 player. Instead, a product called the Personal Jukebox was introduced in November 1999, two years prior to the birth of the iPod. Other brands launched similar products in 2000 and 2001, like Creative’s Nomad Jukebox that was introduced in November 2000 (I bought one myself). The iPod is undoubtedly the most successful mp3 player ever, but it was not the first to sport a hard drive.

The Haier, the better

How many Chinese brands do you know? Well, chances are you’ve heard about Lenovo’s acquisition of IBM’s PC division, but apart from that there are few other known examples in our part of the globe. Considering that China is expected to become the world’s largest exporter in 2010, maybe it’s time you learn some of China’s top brands, according to Financial Times (via the Globalist).

1. Haier (electronics)
2. Lenovo (computers)
3. China Mobile (cell phones)
4. Tsingtao Brewery (brewing)
5. Ping An (financial)
6. Bank of China (banking)
7. CCTV (television)
8. Air China (airlines)
9. Huawei (telecommunications)
10. Sohu.com (internet)