As you probably know, they've found low traces of a radioactive substance onboard two British Airways B767s which operated, among other routes, the route London Heathrow - Stockholm Arlanda and back. A third aircraft has also been taken out of traffic due to forensic examination. As it happens, I was originally booked on flight BA 786 from Heathrow at 7.50 PM on 16 November but I managed to get onboard an earlier flight which according to the travel agent probably was BA 784. None of these are on the list of affected flights.

On several places I read that BA are trying to locate passengers that were on these flights and in a press release the company says:

"The airline is continuing to make every effort to contact 33,000 customers who travelled on 221 European flights operated by the three aircraft identified by the investigation."

Media report about passengers that have not yet been contacted. I'm sure it is a challenging task to locate all these passengers in a short period of time. Some estimate the number of affected Swedish passengers to about 2,000.

Dagens Nyheter has interviewed several passengers that are critical against the way BA have handled the situation. The treatment from BA's help line is described as "cold".

Rest assured that there is major crisis management going on at British Airways today and I can't help but feel a bit sorry for them because as far as I know, this incident is not the airline's fault. Nevertheless, by not managing the crisis properly they run the risk of damaging their brand. If the gap between what the company says and what it does is too large, customers will take offense.

Tags: Alexander Litvinenko, British Airways, crisis management, polonium,polonium, krishantering. Ping.

Which books about public relations do PR bloggers (and others) praise? Well, Constantin Basturea has been innovative again so you simply go to Crispynews and check out the Digg style PR list. Or add your own favourite.

Tags: PR, public relations, PR, böcker. Ping.

After social media comes social media spam. Niall Kennedy tells the story about how bloggers are gaming the system on sites like Digg in order to generate clicks on Google Adwords for high-paying words like teeth whitening, weight loss and dental plans.

Tags: adwords, teeth whitening, dental plans, sociala medier, spam. Ping.

The number of free papers in Stockholm just keeps increasing. Today I got three (3) papers in my mailbox: Täby Danderyd Tidning (still free, who's surprised?), Mitt i Täby and now also RedPages Sthlm. The latter is launched as a new paper about culture and entertainment in Stockholm, distributed 8 times per year. Although one could easily question whether this is a paper or just direct marketing dressed up as a paper. The overall quality is quite poor and RedPages' webpage adress is published on the front page, but the URL doesn't work. Instead one has to go to www.redpagesmedia.se to find more info.

Dagens Media also speculates today about a new free daily from Metro that is supposed to be launched next year. Sound of Stockholm will be about culture and have a circulation of 40,000 copies.

Add to this, the three free dailies City, Metro and Punkt SE that is handed out on my way to work and you realize that something's got to give, soon. All the multitasking in the world can't support all these papers (I also have Dagens Nyheter and Dagens Industri in my household). One definition of fatigue is "a feeling of excessive tiredness or lethargy, with a desire to rest, perhaps to sleep. Often it causes yawning." That's the feeling I get from this flood of freesheets.



Footnote: Additional artwork on Mitt i Täby by my oldest daughter.

Tags: RedPages, freesheets, free dailies, RedPages, media. Ping.

Phil Askey runs a site called Digital Photography Review, or DPReview, and seems to be on such good terms with camera manufacturers that he gets preview information and products to test before news are introduced to the public. These sneak previews are often under an embargo which means that DPReview has agreed not to disclose information before a certain date. Now Phil has become very annoyed by the fact that news, photos and rumours constantly "leak" from Nikon and Canon. According to Moderskeppet where I picked this story up, this is done intentionally by these companies in order to build a hype before a product launch.

DPReview posts about the rumours of a new digital Nikon D40 camera on Nov 6 and cannot confirm it until Nov 16, the date when the official press release is distributed. In the meantime such sites like Gizmodo and Engadget had already published detailed info and photos of the D40.

The effect on DPReview is that everyone already knows about this new product and the site that is supposed to be the expert now looks like a fool for not commenting. When they finally can, it's already yesterday's news.

So by trying to have it both ways, these companies are making bloggers happy, while they are destroying relations to other important stakeholders. A strategy that most likely will backfire.

Tags: Nikon D40, Nikon, Canon, photography,foto, digitalkameror. Ping.

What does it take to become a successful blogger? Hard work is a good start. Many of the most linked to Swedish blogs post several times per day. This will not be a discussion about quality vs quantity, but an analysis of statistics from the blog portal Knuff.se tells us that the most linked to blogs are very frequent bloggers.

The trend line suggests that the very top blogs post more often than those lower down ont the top 50 chart. The average number of weekly posts among these 50 blogs is 17.59 posts per week, which is quite a lot. But there are huge differences between for example piratbyran.org (average 1 post/week) and the hardest working blogger in Sweden: Beta Alfa 2.0 (average 67.1 posts/week).

Here is the top 50 list (numbers are for number of blogs that link to this blog, and average number of posts/week):

50 Videofeber 54 : 17
49 Johan Ingerö 56 : 12
48 Bloggfrossa & Mannen som blev trött... 58 : 3.1
47 Annica Tigers Blog 58 : 10.3
46 kulturrevolution.se 58 : 24.9
45 The Libertarian In Room 101 61 : 8.9
44 Mickey J Barczyk 62 : 9.8
43 mymarkup.net 62 : 16.5
42 Blog Dizz! 62 : 3.6
41 Martin Jönsson om reklam och medier 63 : 15.8
40 Shopping 64 : 17.1
39 piratbyran.org 65 : 1
38 Det Ljuva Livet 65 : 9.6
37 deep|edition 65 : 31.6
36 Enpartistaten 67 : 2
35 NMI 69 : 3.6
34 Legally blonde 72 : 35.9
33 Linda K 72 : 40
32 Joel Malmqvists blogg 72 : 3.7
31 Sänd mina rötter regn 72 : 14.3
30 gudmundson 72 : 17
29 Camilla 73 : 7.1
28 $akine 74 : 11.2
27 stationsvakt 77 : 36
26 Det Progressiva USA 77 : 36.7
25 Media Culpa 77 : 5.4
24 SANDRA 78 : 18
23 Kulturbloggen 82 : 4.6
22 hotspot 85 : 20.9
21 sigrid 86 : 14.3
20 Oscar Swartz :: Texplorer 86 : 2.1
19 louisep.com | frihetspropaganda - 86 : 6.5
18 Henrik-Alexandersson.se 95 : 33
17 Beta Alfa 2.0 97 : 67.1
16 Linda Skugge 100 : 30.4
15 Stockholm Street Style 103 : 20.9
14 Liberalism-Capitalism-Globalisation: JohanNorberg.Net 105 : 10.6
13 Ytligheter 115 : 37.5
12 Frihet, Fildelning och Feminism 116 : 12.4
11 Engla´s Showroom 117 : 42.6
10 Ett liv i exil 122 : 15.7
9 Federley 122 : 16.7
8 Magnus tankar 124 : 6.7
7 Jinges Web och Fotoblogg 131 : 24.4
6 Copyriot 132 : 6
5 Isobels text och verkstad 133 : 9.9
4 Jonas Morian | PromeMorian 138 : 14.9
3 Karolina Lassbo - en glamourprinsessas dagbok 139 : 28.9
2 Esbatis kommentarer 147 : 17.6
1 Tjuvlyssnat 380 : 23.7



Footnote: Stats are for top 50 as of Wednesday this week.

Tags: A-list bloggers, posts, bloggare. Ping.

Hitwise has published a very interesting report about CGM - Consumer Generated Media. The report provides a detailed picture of social networking and video sharing websites.

Some of the findings include:

- In September 2006, the market share of visits to the top 20 social networking websites accounted for 4.9% of all Internet visits. This was an increase of 94% compared to September 2005.
- Photobucket is the leading image hosting website, and its market share of visits has grown by 43% from March 2006 to September 2006.
- The market share of visits to YouTube increased by 249% in the six months from March to September 2006, and in September was the 26th most visited website by US Internet users.
- MySpace remains the king of social networking sites with 81.92% market share.

We also see that these sites are driving traffic into commercial websites:
- The share of upstream traffic from MySpace for the Telecommunications category was 89% greater in September 2006 than it was in March 2006.
- An apparel and accessories websites like Hot Topic received 17.4% of upstream visits from MySpace, which was its leading source of traffic.

Quite impressive numbers and a clear sign of the impact social networking sites have on consumers and businesses.

Did Lunarstorm miss the boat?
With these impressive figures at hand, you've got to wonder how the Swedish success community site Lunarstorm has been able to miss the social networking boom, or maybe they just peaked early. I did a comparison with Friendster which shows a depressing decline in usage of Lunarstorm. Now, I don't know if Alexa's numbers are anywhere near correct, but if they are, Lunarstorm is losing the battle. Statistics from KIA Index at least support the theory that Lunarstorm had more visitors in early 2006 than they do now. Does anyone know what the long term trend looks like?



Tags: MySpace, cgm, Friendster, social networking, Lunarstorm. Ping.

I recently blogged about a fake blog by AMF Pension where a blogger claims he travelled through time. I think most of us got that this was fake from the very start, and that might be fine, although I would never recommend stealth blogs as part of marketing campaigns. But if it was slightly interesting at one point, it's just embarrassing now that even AMF Pension's Vice President admitted it was not true in his own blog. When the cat is out of the bag, it's time to end it, guys.

Tags: flogs, flog, fake blogs, bloggar, AMF. Ping.

What does this blog have in common with Washington Post, Business Week, New York Times, news.yahoo.org, LA Times, Fox News and Jerusalem Post? We are all listed as top breaking news on Tailrank.com. Tailrank lists the news stories that are currently most linked to in the blogosphere. The Swedish portal Knuff.se does the same conversation tracking among Swedish blogs, but this is the first time I've noticed that Media Culpa has been picked up internationally in a similar context.

Apart from the sheer fun of being noticed, I think it demonstrates well how any source can be part of conversations online, regardless of financial muscles.

Footnote: Tailrank's breaking news are continuously updates so you won't find these sources on the front page for more than a few minutes.

Tags: media, tracking, bloggar, media. Ping.

If you know your Thomas Dolby history, this quote from Dolby's blog will amuse you:

"I nearly missed my plane the other day – I lost track of time and when I got to the gate it had already closed. But I could see the plane had not left so I banged on the door. A polite stewardess opened it and said ‘ah Mr Dolby, the captain was just wondering what happened to you!’ And as I sprinted down the ramp and onto the plane I heard blurted out from the cockpit ‘SCIENCE!’ (True!)"

Tags: Thomas Dolby, music, science, musik, media. Ping.

20%, or 40 million Americans, rely on the internet as their primary source for news and information about science, according to a new 42 page (phew) report from Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Television is cited by 41%, while newspapers and magazines are each cited by 14% as their main sources for news.

Tags: Pew, science, research, vetenskap. Ping.

In the aftermath of the Working Families for Wal-Mart debacle, there has been a lot of talk about WOMMA's code of ethics for online communications. Now PR Week writes (subscr. req.) that "Dell is becoming the largest company ever to formally adopt the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's (WOMMA's) code of ethics for online and blog communications".

And while we are on the Wal-Mart topic, the bad luck for Edelman doesn't seem to come to an end. Via For Immediate Release podcast #190 I hear that when Edelman set up the organisation Working Families for Wal-Mart they didn't register the domain with the same name. The organisation's website can be found at www.forwalmart.com. The most logical domain, www.workingfamiliesforwalmart.com, was instead kidnapped by an anti-Wal-Mart organisation that launched a pretty good parody site. Particulary worth noting is how all the smiling faces in the original are replaced by sad ones in the parody.



Tags: WOMMA, edelman, public relations, astroturfing, pr. Ping.

Famous last words: If I would decide to quit updating this blog, I would quote Erik Stattin:

"I'll be back when everything is better."
"Jag kommer tillbaka när allt är bättre."

Now I suspect that Erik is just sick, and if so, hope you get well soon, Erik. [Or maybe he is actually taking a blog break?]

Tags: quote, citat. Ping.

The kerfuffle surrounding Google News in Belgium might repeat itself, this time in Norway. Norwegian Media Businesses' Association (MBL), which represents more than 160 newspapers, has sent a letter to Google demanding that the company stops using its members' photos in the Norwegian version of Google News. And MBL is supported by Pressefotografenes Klubb (PK), the Press Photographers' Association in Norway.

Terje Bringedal of PK tells Journalisten.no:
"If you haven't got permission from the copyright holder, it's just pure theft."

A legal counsel at MBL says that they're fine with the linking but that Google needs to obtain permission for photos. Bringedal encourages all media that find their photos on Google to take action.

Tags: Google News, Google, Norway, Belgium, google, Google News. Ping.

Europe's best designed newspapers can be found in Belgium, Norway, Finland, Portugal and Spain, according to the European Newspaper Award 2006. One of the category winners is Norway's Bergens Tidene, which in September 2006 changed format to tabloid.

The jury writes:

"Bergens Tidende stands out against all other regional papers submitted to the competition by their use of white space - not only in the culture, sport or fashion section, but also and most consciously on news pages. Because of its tabloid format and the generous white space this newspaper looks very much like a magazine. In future we will certainly see more of those newspapers in this North European style."

Tags: newspaper, tabloid, Norway, Europe, media, Norge. Ping.

Spine. Spine. No spine.

Tags: taxes, Linda Skugge. Ping.

Jonathan Schwartz, the chief executive officer of Sun Microsystems, suggested to the SEC that his corporate blog could be used as an approved channel to disclose corporate information. Although the response is not entirely positive, the Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox leaves the door open for further discussion, according to CFO.com.

"The Commission encourages the use of websites as a source of information to the market and investors, and we welcome your offer to further discuss with us your views in this area," Cox wrote.

Tags: corporate blog, Sun, bloggar. Ping.

Håkan Nordkvist either,
1. travelled through time;
2. is completely wacko; or
3. is blogging to create a buzz about a tv ad for AMF Pension.

I'd go for #3.

I'm not a big fan of marketing stunts that pose as real stories but hey, it's Friday and I'll be nice. This is so far out that hopefully most people will see through it. Even a flog can have some charm to it.

Via Reklamfeber.

Tags: flogs, fake blogs, amf, reklam. Ping.