Facebook forced cartoon character to hide his nipples
Nipples and Facebook seems to be a dangerous combination these days. Today, Dagens Media writes that the Swedish tv channel Kanal5 had bought ad space on Facebook for the tv show Myggan ("the Mosquito"). The ad displays a cartoon figure with no clothes on, but he conceals his private parts with his hands. But someone tagged the ad "topless man" which meant that Facebook didn't show the ad as many times as they had agreed to do.
Per Lorentz at Kanal5 says that Facebook suggested that the character's nipples would be covered with small black patches, which Kanal5 agreed to do.
The uncensored cartoon character can be found here. Just outrageous, isn't he?
Tags: facebook, public relations, facebook, pr, myggan. Ping.
Per Lorentz at Kanal5 says that Facebook suggested that the character's nipples would be covered with small black patches, which Kanal5 agreed to do.
The uncensored cartoon character can be found here. Just outrageous, isn't he?
Tags: facebook, public relations, facebook, pr, myggan. Ping.
Facebook messes up in breastfeeding kerfuffle
We recently touched upon the way Facebook handles its own public relations. Now the social networking site is the target of an uproar because it deleted photos of breastfeeding users and even suspended one Canadian mother from her account after she asked why her photos had been deleted.
The Toronto Star writes:
"Last month, Facebook closed the account of an Edmonton mother who had posted breastfeeding photos and the site deleted images many others has put up, claiming they violated rules about nudity and "obscene content." Breastfeeding advocates set up a petition group on the social networking site called "Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene." It hit the news and within days, the petition had more than 20,000 members."
This group has now in excess of 25,000 members.
Now any company can make mistakes. But it's how you handle those mistakes that make the difference in crisis communications. See for example how Southwestern Airlines (eventually) managed to score at least some PR points after almost throwing a female student off a plane for having a too short skirt. In the case of Facebook, blogger and columnist David Wescott took the trouble to ask Facebook about how and why they removed those photos. Read his email correspondence here. I think it's fair to say that Facebook's approach to PR does not include a lot of conversation, which is a bit odd for a social networking site.
[Via For Immediate Release.]
Tags: facebook, public relations, facebook, pr, public relations, krishantering. Ping.
The Toronto Star writes:
"Last month, Facebook closed the account of an Edmonton mother who had posted breastfeeding photos and the site deleted images many others has put up, claiming they violated rules about nudity and "obscene content." Breastfeeding advocates set up a petition group on the social networking site called "Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene." It hit the news and within days, the petition had more than 20,000 members."
This group has now in excess of 25,000 members.
Now any company can make mistakes. But it's how you handle those mistakes that make the difference in crisis communications. See for example how Southwestern Airlines (eventually) managed to score at least some PR points after almost throwing a female student off a plane for having a too short skirt. In the case of Facebook, blogger and columnist David Wescott took the trouble to ask Facebook about how and why they removed those photos. Read his email correspondence here. I think it's fair to say that Facebook's approach to PR does not include a lot of conversation, which is a bit odd for a social networking site.
[Via For Immediate Release.]
Tags: facebook, public relations, facebook, pr, public relations, krishantering. Ping.
Hiccup in Ad Age Power 150
This blog is honoured to be featured on Todd Andrlik and Advertising Age's Power 150 - the list of the world's top media and marketing blogs. The ranking is based on factors such as Google Page Rank, number of subscribers in Bloglines and Technorati rank. Today we've dropped from about #55 to #118. And if the examine the lists we can see that all sites have only gotten 1 point for Technorati rank, so there is obviously some hiccup in the way that Technorati stats are translated into ranking points. Hopefully this problem will be solved soon so that Media Culpa is back in the top 100.
Update, Oct 1: And now it seems to be working again.
Tags: advertising age, ad age, power 150, media, reklam, bloggar. Ping.
Update, Oct 1: And now it seems to be working again.
Tags: advertising age, ad age, power 150, media, reklam, bloggar. Ping.
Non-UK visitors dominate UK papers' websites
Medialife writes that foreign readers make up a large percentage of the visitors to UK newspapers' websites. Non-UK visitors make up 66 percent of the Guardian's online audience and 78 percent of the Daily Mail's.
"Among the U.S. papers, NYTimes.com gets 8 percent of its monthly unique audience from overseas, or about 1.3 million visitors, according to Nielsen//NetRatings numbers for July, while WashingtonPost.com and USAToday.com get about 3 percent from overseas."
Some of the reasons behind this picture, the article says, may be:
- that British papers offer a far more global perspective
- that British papers operate in a crowded home market, which forces them to offer compelling content
And just like oscarh comments on Vassa Eggen, another reason could be that the US simply is a significantly larger market than the UK and therefore naturally has more local readers.
Top 10 UK Newspaper Sites by Global Unique Audience
Ranked by % that is overseas audience
1 Financial Times 80%
2 Evening Standard 79%
3 Daily Mail 78%
4 Independent 68%
5 The Observer 67%
6 Guardian 66%
7 Telegraph 63%
8 Times 59%
9 Scotsman 55%
10 Sun 44%
And if anyone is interested, Media Culpa is up there with the Times in terms of foreign readership. 58 percent of the readers of this blog are from outside of Sweden.
Tags: UK, newspapers, media, tidningar, storbritannien. Ping.
"Among the U.S. papers, NYTimes.com gets 8 percent of its monthly unique audience from overseas, or about 1.3 million visitors, according to Nielsen//NetRatings numbers for July, while WashingtonPost.com and USAToday.com get about 3 percent from overseas."
Some of the reasons behind this picture, the article says, may be:
- that British papers offer a far more global perspective
- that British papers operate in a crowded home market, which forces them to offer compelling content
And just like oscarh comments on Vassa Eggen, another reason could be that the US simply is a significantly larger market than the UK and therefore naturally has more local readers.
Top 10 UK Newspaper Sites by Global Unique Audience
Ranked by % that is overseas audience
1 Financial Times 80%
2 Evening Standard 79%
3 Daily Mail 78%
4 Independent 68%
5 The Observer 67%
6 Guardian 66%
7 Telegraph 63%
8 Times 59%
9 Scotsman 55%
10 Sun 44%
And if anyone is interested, Media Culpa is up there with the Times in terms of foreign readership. 58 percent of the readers of this blog are from outside of Sweden.
Tags: UK, newspapers, media, tidningar, storbritannien. Ping.
Corporate blog not the place for GM strike
One "downside" of having a corporate blog is that your customers/clients/readers etc may have gotten used to having a dialogue with your company and their expectations on your communications probably have increased. In a situation like the ongoing national strike against GM, many people would probably hope to find comments from the auto maker on one of its corporate blogs. Now, there are of course situations when it is difficult to be as open as you would wish and this appears to be one of them.
Christopher Barger, Director, GM Global Communications Technology, therefore made a short comment on the GM FastLane Blog:
Via Shel Holtz.
Update: What GM does, however, is link to other blogs. For example, Trollhattan Saab is an independent blog that comments on the strike here.
Tags: gm strike, gm, corporate blogs, strejk, gm, bloggar. Ping.
Christopher Barger, Director, GM Global Communications Technology, therefore made a short comment on the GM FastLane Blog:
"We've seen a number of comments coming in regarding this situation, and we appreciate the interest and opinions that you, our readers, have about this matter. But as I am sure that you can appreciate, these are sensitive times involving sensitive negotiations; a public blog is not the appropriate place for us to be commenting about them, nor do we think it's constructive to entertain a discussion of labor issues here.Although one could always hope for more openness, at least this is a good way of managing expectations.
This afternoon, we issued a statement regarding the UAW's decision; to this point, that is our only statement on the topic. Any future comments we have will be issued via press statement, and not here on FastLane. Thanks for understanding."
Via Shel Holtz.
Update: What GM does, however, is link to other blogs. For example, Trollhattan Saab is an independent blog that comments on the strike here.
Tags: gm strike, gm, corporate blogs, strejk, gm, bloggar. Ping.
Fired via email? At least it's not SMS
You may have read about the US consumer electronics retailer RadioShack that laid off 400 employees via email a year ago. "The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated," the ominous message supposedly read.
And it seems that this practice is not uncommon in the US as a way to avoid face-to-face conflicts. According to a survey (pdf) by the Marlin Company, 10 per cent of employees say their company has used email to fire or lay off employees.
In the UK however, they do it via text message. Chelsea owner Roman Abramovitj apparently fired coach José Mourinho via SMS. What's next, getting fired via Facebook? Maybe you should think twice before accepting that social network invitation from your boss...
Via Shel Holtz.
Tags: epost, sms. Ping.
And it seems that this practice is not uncommon in the US as a way to avoid face-to-face conflicts. According to a survey (pdf) by the Marlin Company, 10 per cent of employees say their company has used email to fire or lay off employees.
In the UK however, they do it via text message. Chelsea owner Roman Abramovitj apparently fired coach José Mourinho via SMS. What's next, getting fired via Facebook? Maybe you should think twice before accepting that social network invitation from your boss...
Via Shel Holtz.
Tags: epost, sms. Ping.
"What did people do at work in 2002?"
Jan Gradvall reflects (not online) over the five years that have passed since the launch of DI Weekend. Many phenomena that today dominate our daily lives did not even exist five years ago.
"MySpace opened in August 2003, Facebook in February 2004, YouTube in February 2005. What did people actually do at work in 2002?"Tags: myspace, facebook, dagens industri, youtube. Ping.
NT up for award, but its RSS feed is a disaster
The Swedish media publication Medievärlden has nominated Norrköpings Tidningar (NT), Helsingborgs Dagblad and Aftonbladet.se to the award as Editorial Staff of the Year. NT, which is Sweden's oldest newspaper, founded in 1758 and one of the world's ten oldest newspapers, has been nominated for its multi-channel focus. A news editor, a tv editor and a web editor together decide what will be published on the paper's different news channels.
- TV brings emotions, in the paper we give facts and on the web we have the speed, says Charli Nilsson at NT.
NT's ambition to work across multiple platforms is worthy of praise, but the paper's RSS feed is far from a success, to put it mildly. Once you click on a link, you get an error message telling you that the page has been moved (even if it is brand new) and that you need to click on a second link to find it. But that link doesn't work either. All you get is a message that the article could not be found.
It's a miracle that NT has even 5 subscribers to its feed on Bloglines. If the paper plans to continue to publish an RSS feed it needs to make it work properly.
Tags: newspapers, media, dagstidningar, nyheter. Ping.
- TV brings emotions, in the paper we give facts and on the web we have the speed, says Charli Nilsson at NT.
NT's ambition to work across multiple platforms is worthy of praise, but the paper's RSS feed is far from a success, to put it mildly. Once you click on a link, you get an error message telling you that the page has been moved (even if it is brand new) and that you need to click on a second link to find it. But that link doesn't work either. All you get is a message that the article could not be found.
It's a miracle that NT has even 5 subscribers to its feed on Bloglines. If the paper plans to continue to publish an RSS feed it needs to make it work properly.
Tags: newspapers, media, dagstidningar, nyheter. Ping.
100-year old Swedish paper to shut down
Declining circulation forces the Swedish daily Skövde Nyheter to shut down at the end of the year, writes Resumé. The paper has been published since 1907, at first under the name Billingen, and after 1958 as Skövde Nyheter.
The paper does not publish news on its site.
Tags: newspapers, media, tidningar, nyheter. Ping.
The paper does not publish news on its site.
Tags: newspapers, media, tidningar, nyheter. Ping.
(s) in Valdemarsvik wants to introduce holiday tax
The Social Democrats in the city of Valdemarsvik, Sweden, has come up with a brilliant idea. Let's charge owners of holiday houses (that aren't registered as residents of the city) 4,000 SEK a year without giving anything in return. Lars Beckman who is the brain behind the suggestion thinks that such a fee would not discourage anyone. To the contrary he says that people would probably have sympathy for such a move.
Since we happen to have a house in Valdemarsvik I feel I have the right to opine. And my response is - this is ridiculous. Beckman argues that the city has costs for holiday residents regarding water, sanitation, roads, electricity and "vård", which I suppose means health care.
I have no trouble to pay for services that I use, but it is hard for me to see the legitimacy in charging for the services stated above. Let's take a closer look at our own expenses for these services:
Water: we spent 60,000 SEK this summer to drill our own well. We do not use any part of the municipal water system.
Sanitation: we spent several tens of thousand SEK to build our own sewer system. We do not use the municipal system.
Roads: we spent 60,000 SEK to build a road to our property since there wasn't any road. About ten houses spent that much each. Apart from that, of course we use the roads in the city, just as we use it in Söderköping, Norrköping or any other town we happen to travel through. It's not like we drive around incessantly.
Electricity: former owners of our house paid a hefty fee to connect electricity to the property.
Health care: have not used any local facilities yet (knock on wood).
The situation for the other 2,200 holiday houses in the city of course varies, but I expect they all already pay a municipal fee for the services they use. At least do we get a bill every year for waste disposal, for example.
On top of that, we have only used local entrepreneurs in all of these projects (except for the well, which was from a nearby town). And, we have built a new house, using only local entrepreneurs. What Valdemarsvik needs is not to scare away summer residents with illegitemate fees but instead welcome and encourage tourism. I heard one local real estate agent claim that today one out of three summer houses are sold to people living in Stockholm. When they spend time in Valdemarsvik they will also spend money to the benefit of the entire city. The local grocery store in Gryt has been forced to close during off season because of low sales. Perhaps a strong holiday season driven by increased tourism could give enough revenue to stop further decline. Take a holistic view and look at both revenues and costs from summer residents.
What you see below is not a summer house. It is an income source for Valdemarsvik. Don't tax it to death.
Footnote: Fortunately, the parliament has not yet given the municipalities the right to charge fees on property without any counterperformance.
Tags: taxes, skatter, turism, valdemarsvik. Ping.
Since we happen to have a house in Valdemarsvik I feel I have the right to opine. And my response is - this is ridiculous. Beckman argues that the city has costs for holiday residents regarding water, sanitation, roads, electricity and "vård", which I suppose means health care.
I have no trouble to pay for services that I use, but it is hard for me to see the legitimacy in charging for the services stated above. Let's take a closer look at our own expenses for these services:
Water: we spent 60,000 SEK this summer to drill our own well. We do not use any part of the municipal water system.
Sanitation: we spent several tens of thousand SEK to build our own sewer system. We do not use the municipal system.
Roads: we spent 60,000 SEK to build a road to our property since there wasn't any road. About ten houses spent that much each. Apart from that, of course we use the roads in the city, just as we use it in Söderköping, Norrköping or any other town we happen to travel through. It's not like we drive around incessantly.
Electricity: former owners of our house paid a hefty fee to connect electricity to the property.
Health care: have not used any local facilities yet (knock on wood).
The situation for the other 2,200 holiday houses in the city of course varies, but I expect they all already pay a municipal fee for the services they use. At least do we get a bill every year for waste disposal, for example.
On top of that, we have only used local entrepreneurs in all of these projects (except for the well, which was from a nearby town). And, we have built a new house, using only local entrepreneurs. What Valdemarsvik needs is not to scare away summer residents with illegitemate fees but instead welcome and encourage tourism. I heard one local real estate agent claim that today one out of three summer houses are sold to people living in Stockholm. When they spend time in Valdemarsvik they will also spend money to the benefit of the entire city. The local grocery store in Gryt has been forced to close during off season because of low sales. Perhaps a strong holiday season driven by increased tourism could give enough revenue to stop further decline. Take a holistic view and look at both revenues and costs from summer residents.
What you see below is not a summer house. It is an income source for Valdemarsvik. Don't tax it to death.
Footnote: Fortunately, the parliament has not yet given the municipalities the right to charge fees on property without any counterperformance.
Tags: taxes, skatter, turism, valdemarsvik. Ping.
Blogs nominated for online journal award
Politikerbloggen, the political blog that TV4 yesterday purchased, has been nominated for the award as the best Swedish online journal. The award was established by FSN, Föreningen för Sveriges Nättidskrifter (The Association of Swedish Online Journals), and will be handed out on Sept 28 at the Swedish book fair 2007. Interestingly enough, that is also when FSN will decide if it shall cease to exist as an association.
The other nominees are:
Bisonblog (Go Fredrik!)
Bloggywood
Forskning.se
NummerSalongen
Tags: online journals, Politikerbloggen, tidskrifter, bloggar. Ping.
The other nominees are:
Bisonblog (Go Fredrik!)
Bloggywood
Forskning.se
NummerSalongen
Tags: online journals, Politikerbloggen, tidskrifter, bloggar. Ping.
TV4 buys political blog
Swedish TV4 recruits the former Expressen journalist Niklas Svensson and buys his new political blog Politikerbloggen for an estimated 1 million kronor (about 108,000 euro).
The site has 20,000 visitors per week, according to Svensson and has sold advertising space since May for 450,000 kronor. The blog has quickly established itself as a political force to be reckoned with and it is currently the fifth most linked to Swedish blog according to Bloggportalen.se.
Politikerbloggen has been quoted with several scoops in traditional media, but not very often by TV4 - only once (online that is). Dagens Media (29), Expressen (23), Resumé (21), Aftonbladet (15) and Metro (15) are the media that most frequently mention Politikerbloggen.
Tags: tv4, Politikerbloggen, tv4, bloggar. Ping.
The site has 20,000 visitors per week, according to Svensson and has sold advertising space since May for 450,000 kronor. The blog has quickly established itself as a political force to be reckoned with and it is currently the fifth most linked to Swedish blog according to Bloggportalen.se.
Politikerbloggen has been quoted with several scoops in traditional media, but not very often by TV4 - only once (online that is). Dagens Media (29), Expressen (23), Resumé (21), Aftonbladet (15) and Metro (15) are the media that most frequently mention Politikerbloggen.
Tags: tv4, Politikerbloggen, tv4, bloggar. Ping.
Swedish dailies look at blog links and mashups
Daily newspapers in southern Sweden will start to link articles to blog comments with the Twingly service. At least if Joakim Jardenberg gets his way. Jardenberg is Managing Director of Mindpark, a new development corporation owned by Bonniers in Skåne, Gota Media, Helsingborgs Dagblad and NWT.
- We should take the blogosphere seriously. SvD (Svenska Dagbladet), DN (Dagens Nyheter) and IDG have all seen positive effects of using Twingly, he tells Medievärlden.
Joakim Jardenberg also says he believes strongly in mashups with existing services developed by other sites like Google, Facebook and Wikipedia.
Tags: mashups, newspapers, twingly, facebook, media. Ping.
- We should take the blogosphere seriously. SvD (Svenska Dagbladet), DN (Dagens Nyheter) and IDG have all seen positive effects of using Twingly, he tells Medievärlden.
Joakim Jardenberg also says he believes strongly in mashups with existing services developed by other sites like Google, Facebook and Wikipedia.
Tags: mashups, newspapers, twingly, facebook, media. Ping.
Bad timing for MySpace "maintenance"
Sweden's leading business daily Dagens Industri today publishes a large article about the launch of MySpace Sweden tomorrow. With such great publicity, the timing couldn't be much worse for the launch page to be "down for maintenance". The Myspacesweden site, with information about tomorrow's MySpace LIVE launch party is currently down, along with several other functions of the site. At the moment I can't even log out of my account.
UPDATE: The event page is up and running again but it isn't possible to log in to your account at the moment.
"Det går inte att logga in just nu, eftersom vi håller på att fixa ett problem med databasen. Det fungerar snart igen. 9/12/2007"
Tags: public relations, myspace, pr, myspace, sociala media. Ping.
UPDATE: The event page is up and running again but it isn't possible to log in to your account at the moment.
"Det går inte att logga in just nu, eftersom vi håller på att fixa ett problem med databasen. Det fungerar snart igen. 9/12/2007"
Tags: public relations, myspace, pr, myspace, sociala media. Ping.
Danish journalists don't consider reading blogs part of their job
Kristine Lowe blogs about a survey made by Cision (formerly Observer). The survey shows that only one out five Danish journalists feel that it is a part of their job to read blogs. News journalists are the ones who are least inclined to read blogs, only 10 per cent do.
Earlier this year, Maria Grafström and Karolina Windell of Uppsala University, published a paper called “Blogging and Business Journalism: News Production in Transformation” in which they explore if and how blogs influence the production of business news. The authors made a quantitative survey among Swedish business journalists (79 responded) which showed that only 14% agree with the statement "I reference blogs in my work" while 86% disagree (63% disagree strongly). Only 25% agree with the statement "I read blogs in my daily work" while 75% disagree (42% disagree strongly).
Tags: blogs, journalism, bloggar. Ping.
Earlier this year, Maria Grafström and Karolina Windell of Uppsala University, published a paper called “Blogging and Business Journalism: News Production in Transformation” in which they explore if and how blogs influence the production of business news. The authors made a quantitative survey among Swedish business journalists (79 responded) which showed that only 14% agree with the statement "I reference blogs in my work" while 86% disagree (63% disagree strongly). Only 25% agree with the statement "I read blogs in my daily work" while 75% disagree (42% disagree strongly).
Tags: blogs, journalism, bloggar. Ping.
Tackling social media at the Economist
A short presentation about social media at the Economist. Via Kevin Dugan.
Tags: social media, sociala media. Ping.
Tags: social media, sociala media. Ping.
Social media popular among Swedes
When the PR agency JMW asked 1,325 Swedes between 15 and 65 years of age, four out of ten used social networks of some sort. MSN is the most popular choice (72 per cent), with Facebook skyrocketing up to second place (36 per cent) ahead of troubled Lunarstorm (32 per cent) and MySpace (21 per cent).
The survey included several different types of media that may not always be associated with the term "social networks", such as chat, text messaging, blogs, communities, social networks, downloading and filesharing (of images, music, videos), email, online games, virtual worlds like Second Life, and wikis.
15 per cent of the respondents had their own blog.
Tags: facebook, social networks, facebook, myspace, lunarstorm, sociala media. Ping.
The survey included several different types of media that may not always be associated with the term "social networks", such as chat, text messaging, blogs, communities, social networks, downloading and filesharing (of images, music, videos), email, online games, virtual worlds like Second Life, and wikis.
15 per cent of the respondents had their own blog.
Tags: facebook, social networks, facebook, myspace, lunarstorm, sociala media. Ping.