Month: February 2007

Convicted journalist writes news article about his own court case

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has been using his blog very actively to defend himself against the current storm of criticism from media the last few weeks, much to the chagrin of the journalists that are after him. Expressen’s Per Svensson can’t hide his disappointment and writes in an article full of war metaphors, that Bildt “uses his blog as a weapon against one of the institutions of the liberal democracy – investigative journalism”. This is obviously a situation that Svensson is not used to, but if journalism can’t compete with the blog of an interviewee, then maybe it’s not the blog that is the problem, but journalism in itself.

A fantastic example that journalism doesn’t need blogs to destroy itself comes today from Dagens Media. One of its reporters, Niclas Rislund, used to work for Expressen. Last year he was fined for posing as a police man. Today the Supreme Court announced that it denies Rislund a new trial. And when Dagens Media writes about the story, Rislund himself is the author of the article in which he refers to himself as “Expressen’s former star reporter Niclas Rislund” (Expressens tidigare stjärnreporter Niclas Rislund).

Martin Jönsson at Svenska Dagbladet calls it “some kind of record in poor judgement”. It is hard not to agree.

But it’s not all doom and gloom in mainstream media today. The small Swedish company Primelabs today announced that the South African daily Sunday Times will display links from the blogosphere to its articles using Primelabs’ service Twingly. The two Swedish dailies Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet just recently added Twingly links to their online articles.

Colin Daniels, New Media Strategy Manager at Sunday Times said in a press release:

“Twingly is the most exciting product to hit the Blogsphere since RSS became an established Web technology and I believe its real potential lies in its ability to gain acceptance and link Bloggers and the mainstream media.

We are very excited about integrating Twingly into our future news site and making it an integral part of our online strategy. We believe that this is a big step forward in engaging with our readers and creating ‘link love’ with the small but growing number of Bloggers in Africa. It’s a win-win strategy!”

Tags: , , , . Ping.

Buy hot fake friends for your MySpace profile

Does your MySpace/Friendster/Facebook profile look dull? Only have ugly friends or lack friends all together? Now you can buy good-looking fake friends to your social networking site at FakeYourSpace. The site offers you “hot models” for 99 cents per model and month and will give you 2 comments a week. Here’s how the site describes its services:

“FakeYourSpace is an exciting new service that enables normal everyday people like me and you to have Hot friends on popular social networking sites such as MySpace and FaceBook.”

“You can have our Models leave you any type of customized message you may wish. Want to make an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend jealous? No problem. Have one of our Models personally flirt with you on your comment wall.”

What people will do to become popular…

FakeYourFriends is currently closed for a few days because it had used photographs of models from iStockPhoto.com without permission.

Tags: , , , . Ping.

IKEA in PR gaffe over sponsored links

The Swedish furniture giant IKEA is in a bit of a trouble in Norway. IKEA had bought sponsored links for “Stressless”, which is a registered trademark for sofas and armchairs owned by the competitor Ekornes. On a search for Stressless on Google, a link to IKEA came up on top, which of course upset Ekornes. IKEA pulled the ads and apologised to the competitor.

When the Norwegian news site E24 asks the Communications Manager of IKEA Norway if they had bought links to other brands owned by competitors, he hasn’t got the facts straight and handles the crisis situation very poorly.

– No, I am not aware of any, he says. But E24 does a few searches and finds that IKEA has also bought links for “Tripp Trapp”, a brand owned by Stokke.

Now, do you know if someone is mooching off your brand?

[Via Börje.]

Tags: , , , , . Ping.

Mainstream media blogs are absent on top lists

Via BetaAlfa I found this interview with Fredrik Virtanen, journalist, tv-show host and blogger. He calls himself, I guess a bit tounge-in-cheek, “the Blogfather of Sweden”. Well, he can call himself whatever he wants, but it made me go to the blog portal Knuff and see how well journalists who blog at MSM sites are really doing. And the conclusion is that they aren’t exactly at the epicenter of the Swedish blogosphere.

A few journalist blogs are very popular, like Isobel, Niklas Svensson and Gudmundson. But the blogs who are published under the umbrella of a mainstream media site are almost completely absent from the top lists. Only Linda Skugge (at #30 of the most linked blogs and at #50 using Knuff’s own ranking system) and Helle Klein (#49 of most linked blogs).
Nerikes Allehanda is also on the list, but it doesn’t count since the URL is for its main site and not their blogs which it is supposed to.

Peronally, there is only one blog in that category that I make sure to read everyday, and that is Martin Jönsson’s blog at Svenska Dagbladet. He is on top of things, his comments add value to the stories and he is generous in crediting other bloggers.

Tags: , , , . Ping.

Lufthansa to sponsor Washington Post’s blog ad network

In January, Washington Post invited local D.C. bloggers to participate in a blog advertising network where the Post would share revenues with bloggers from ads sold by the paper’s sales staff. Now Mediapost reports that Lufthansa has signed up as a sponsor of the travel category and Lufthansa’s ads will run on all 100 travel blogs in the network. This makes the airline the first advertiser to sponsor an entire vertical category.

Swedish companies the most trusted in the world

The last few days, Swedish media have been reporting about brand consultant Simon Anholt who talked at a seminar in Stockholm this week. Mr Anholt called Sweden “a Switzerland with sex appeal” already three months ago. And it turns out you can be both sexy and trustworthy. Edelman, one of the world’s largest PR agencies, have just published the 2007 Edelman Trust Barometer and it contains a number of interesting findings. The survey revealed that “companies headquartered in Sweden and Canada are the most trusted globally; Brazilian, Mexican and Russian companies are the least trusted.”

We can also see that for the third straight year, American brands operating in Europe continue to receive a trust discount. For example, McDonald’s is trusted by 60% of respondents in the United States and by only 26% across the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

Furthermore, according to the survey “A person like me” is the most trusted spokesperson across the European Union, North America, and Latin America. In Asia, it is second to physicians. This underlines the importance for businesses to manage relations with channels where “persons like me” meet, like blogs and community sites. And with physicians…

Tags: , , , . Ping.