I can't say that I'm extremely impressed by the accuracy in PubSub's LinkRank. A quick check for the last week shows that PubSub is pretty far from being correct. White cells are PubSub stats for my blog, pink cells are Technorati links and actual numbers.

According to the Edelman Trust Barometer 2006, global opinion leaders say their most credible source of information about a company is now "a person like me".

In the U.S., trust in "a person like me" increased from 20% in 2003 to 68% today. Opinion leaders also consider rank-and-file employees more credible spokespersons than corporate CEOs (42% vs. 28% in the U.S.).

Also interesting is that trust in government is low in the U.S. (38%) but high in China (83%, up from 63% in ’05).

Last September, the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten published 12 drawings of the Prophet Mohammed, which sparked anger among Muslims in Denmark and abroad. The degrading caricatures were later reprinted in a Norwegian magazine (in defense of free speech), causing a boycott of Danish and Norwegian products in the Arab world. The Danish-Swedish dairy producer Arla even paid for an ad in Saudi Arabian newspapers, in order to "stop the boycott from escalating". As of yesterday, Arla products were off the shelves in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Lebanon, Kuwait and many other nations.

Late last night Jyllands-Posten issued an apology, not for publishing the drawings, but for the fact that the drawings offended Muslims! It's a hazardous strategy, not to apologize for you own actions, but apologize for the reactions of the offended part. I guess the reason is that an apology for the actual publication would be seen as caving in to external pressure and in the long run a threat to the freedom of speech.

"They were not intended to be offensive, nor were they at variance with Danish law, but they have indisputably offended many Muslims for which we apologize."

The same strategy was used in Norway:

In Norway, a foreign ministry spokesman denied media reports that the government had asked its diplomats to apologize to Muslim countries.

"We have not asked our diplomats to apologize for the publication of these cartoons, but to apologize for the agitation they have created," she said, according to Norway's NTB news agency.

It will be interesting to see if this apology will be enough to make this issue go away.

(By the way, maybe a pop-up for a net survey shouldn't be what greets readers that click on the link to the apology.)

In September 2005 the Swedish government formed a parliamentary committee to do a review of integration politics in Sweden. Now the committee has started a blog about its task and the blog will be active until 1 June, 2007.

What is quite interesting is that the blog is hosted on Blogspot. That's probably ok, but not the most obvious choice. I wouldn't expect an American committee to host its blog on a Swedish server.

The blog also uses Sitemeter for site statistics. Kind of fun to see the adverts for Spongebob Squarepants screen savers on the stat page of a parliamentary committee.

Forget about global warming, famine and poverty. Today is Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day. That's right, your chance to pay tribute to air trapped in plastic is back by 'pop'ular demand. How good it is to be in PR. (Thanks Tess.)

Are you for or against?



Via Erik.

The odd phrase "Du Bist Deutschland" has for some mysterious reason been a top search on Technorati for some time. It turns out that it is a slogan from a German PR campaign with the intent to "tell everyone in Germany that you can achieve something, that you shouldn’t complain and be lazy". The campaign has set the German blogsphere on fire when someone found an old photo from a 1935 public Nazi convention using the same phrase.

It didn't get any better when the head of the agency that created the campaign spilled his guts over bloggers in an email. He was quoted saying:

"Weblogs, the bathroom walls of the internet. What gives every PC user the right to exude [or excrete] their opinions? Most bloggers simply exude."

Way to go, sucking up to a bunch of annoyed bloggers. Nicht.

I was recently approached by a journalist who wished to test a theory that kids and teenagers spend time online to build and maintain relationships but adults primarily go online in search of information. My take was that if there ever was a difference, it has disappeared the last few years and adults connect to communities almost to the same extent as young people. The new study "The Strength of Internet Ties" from the Pew Internet and American Life Project seems to suggest I might be on to something.

From the report, about the fears that social relationships are fading away in America:

"Instead of disappearing, people’s communities are transforming: The traditional human orientation to neighborhood- and village-based groups is moving towards communities that are oriented around geographically dispersed social networks. People communicate and maneuver in these networks rather than being bound up in one solidary community. Yet people’s networks continue to have substantial numbers of relatives and neighbors — the traditional bases of community — as well as friends and
workmates."

"With the help of the internet, people are able to maintain active contact with sizable social networks, even though many of the people in those networks do not live nearby."

In my survey of blog readers last year, I found that a large portion of Swedish bloggers are anonymous (6 out of 10 women), which could suggest that many people are able to maintain parts of their social network online even without revealing their true identity.

Dagens Industri's magazine Diego has had a blog since October and have now revealed some stats for January 1-23.

- 30,000 unique visitors
- 78,000 page visits
- 43,000 visitors
- an average of 1,813 visits per day during 2006

The numbers are quite good, but Diego is still way behind top blogs like Adland which is reported to have about 30,000 visitors per day. And site visits are not the only measure of a blog's success, for example, Diego has 4 subscribers to its feed in Bloglines, I am closing in on 200 (Atom + Feedburner feeds), and since I publish the full post in my feeds, one could guess that I have many readers who never enter my site.

As I mentioned earlier, several leading footballers are blogging on MSN's "Road to the World Cup" page. Via itsmorelikejustadance I notice that the world's greatest player, Ronaldinho, also is blogging. His first post was published on Tuesday this week.

Funny though that there is a link to Real Madrid's web page in the sidebar, and not to Barca.

Technorati tags: Worldcup, World Cup, football, Ronaldinho.

Oh, the sweet irony. The delegation of Danish SAS pilots on an unlawful strike were delayed to a negotiation meeting with SAS in Stockholm because (drums please) the flights had been cancelled due to their own strike! They had to wait for a flight with Swedish non-striking pilots and arrived in Stockholm two hours late. (Via DN, not online).

Swedish newspapers that are distributed electronically may be eligible for press subsidies according to a final report that has been presented to the Minister for Education, Research and Culture, Leif Pagrotsky.

Gianluigi Buffon, Michael Owen, Edgar Davids, Claude Makelele, Kevin Kuranyi and Xabi Alonso have all launched blogs on MSN's "Road to the World Cup" web site. Perhaps Kuranyi will have to stop once the World Cup starts. The German Football Federation recently announced that their players couldn't blog during the tournament.

Via Niall Kennedy. Technorati tags: Worldcup, World Cup, football, Germany06.

Jack Shafer, media critic for Slate, is interviewed by PRWeek. His repsonse to the question "How do you feel about PR pros?" is a poor grade for PR practitioners:

"Well, I have found, with only rare exceptions, that PR officers are impediments to journalism. They are the people who man the barricades, who salt the earth before you can get to it to plant your story. The number of times in my career that I have responded to somebody doing outreach PR, trying to convince me to do a story, and turned that overture into a story, you might be able to count on two fingers."

I've read reviews like this many times and they should serve as a wake up call. Sure, I can understand that if you are the head of corporate communications at a company listed on NYSE, there's just no room for mistakes. I've worked with people who acted like that, and they had good reasons. But command/control PR is not the future of our industry and every PR blogger and corporate blog out there serves as good examples of how we can move on to a more conversational model of corporate communications.

Via New Media Musings. Technorati tags: PR, public relations.

The FA fires England's coach Sven-Göran Ericsson and "Svennis" will quit after this summer's World Cup in Germany. In what can only be described as a furious media campaign to get Sven out of the country, English media finally reached their goal.

Well maybe England doesn't deserve a coach like Sven. Sven-Göran Ericsson happens to be the most successful coach ever to head the English team. Eriksson achieved the most successful start of any England coach, including the legendary 5-1 victory away against Germany when England's hopes of qualifying to the 2002 World Cup were close to nil.

Sven has the highest number of points per competetive game (2.30) and no other coach has managed to get 23 wins. He only needs four more points to get ahead of Bobby Robson who currently has most total points, but in 10 more games than Sven.

OK, who's voting for a comeback for Kevin Keegan?



(Three points awarded for a win, one for a draw. Matches decided on a penalty shoot out are counted as a draw. PPG: Points Per Game. It is possible that Sven should have one more point for the penalty shoot out against Portugal in Euro 2004.)

Source: The FA 1 and 2.

In September, the Swedish daily Sydsvenskan became the first media company in the country to purchase a blog when it acquired the fasion blog Manolo. Today the Swedish media conglomerate Bonnier buys 8 theme blogs from founders Roger Åberg and Andreas "Wille" Wilhelmsson who runs a number of "fever" blogs (feber in Swedish is fever).

Bonnier Newspapers which owns Dagens Nyheter, Expressen, Sydsvenskan and Stockholm City, purchases Prylfeber (gadgets), Macfeber, Ipodfeber, Spelfeber (games), Bilfeber (cars), Hojfeber (bikes), Reklamfeber (advertising) and Videofeber.

None of the blogs have had any major income from advertising according to Roger Åberg. Both founders will continue to work with the blogs which will co-operate with Bonnier's dailies.

No financial numbers were revealed.

Technorati tags: media, blogs.

Adland has put together a competition called "Battle of the ad blogs" and I'm honoured to be nominated in the first category. Go on and cast your votes, I'd really like to get my hands on one of those neat Pixies CDs.

Winners will be announced on Feb 10.

Almega, an organisation supporting service companies in Sweden has just launched a new blog called Tjänstebloggen ("the services blog"). The blog will cover such subjects as economic policy, the election and contract negotiations. Almega's President Jonas Milton will be blogging along with Ulf Lindberg, who is responsible for economic policy at Almega.

Metro International today starts distribution in 17 new Swedish cities, reports Resumé. Metro will now have a circulation of 740,000 copies and be distributed in 67 cities in Sweden.

- From today we can finally reach the whole of Sweden with our distribution, Metro's Managing Director Martin Gellerstedt said in a press release.

The new cities are Kalmar, Karlshamn, Karlskrona, Växjö, Falkenberg, Halmstad, Varberg, Luleå, Piteå, Skellefteå, Sundsvall, Umeå, Örnsköldsvik, Borlänge, Falun, Gävle and Sandviken.

A European survey of blogs in PR and communications management will be published tomorrow by Euprera. The survey Euroblog 2006 shows that 68% of PR professionals read or write blogs, but only 36% do it regularly each week. 42% are planning to start a blog within a year, while 32% do not. The survey suggests there is a divide between "converts and sceptics".

"It reveals a clear divergence between enthusiasts who see wide-ranging benefits from weblogs, from tracking competitors and monitoring industry trends to communicating their own messages directly, bypassing journalists, and "anti-bloggers" who fail to see benefits for their companies or clients."

The most enthusiastic users came from Austria, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Germany.

According to the survey, the primary reasons to use blogs are
- to be regarded as being cutting edge in terms of using new technologies;
- that the blog is a cheap and simple communication platform; and
- that it creates commitment among employees.

The most important factors limiting the use of weblogs are the inablity to control the communication content, integrating blogs into communication strategy and creating content.

587 PR professionals from 33 countries participated in the survey. Full results will be online tomorrow.

Sources: SPRA, Mediations.

Technorati tags: research, blogs, PR, Public Relations, marketing.