Search engines increasingly play a vital role in how brands are perceived. A study in 2005 showed that 40%, or twenty of Britain’s top fifty grocery brands had negative commentary amongst the top ten results on their Google search page. For some the negative comment is the number one result. This week, Media Orchard wrote about a simple way of illustrating "the impression a brand's Google results are making on potential customers (or investors, or employees)".

By taking all the words in the first three pages of the search results for a brand, and add them into TagCrowd, Scott at Media Orchard got several "brand clouds", this one below is for IKEA.



Here are the results for H&M. Not quite as flattering as for IKEA. Common themes are children, child labour and cotton. TagCrowd doesn't work very well in Swedish, but there is a stop list of Swedish words that can filter out unwanted words.







Tags: ikea, tag clouds, google, hm, barnarbete, taggar, ikea. Ping.

The Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet started to show blog links via its own blog portal Bloggportalen.se on October 23, 2007. I noted on that day, that we should "prepare to see a major increase in blog links to Aftonbladet.se the coming weeks". The reason being of course that bloggers would be more encouraged to link to a high trafficked site that could possibly send them large amounts of new visitors. So was I right?

Well, on the launch day (at 11.45 PM to be precise), Technorati had registered 61,853 blog reactions to Aftonbladet.se. Today, a little more than a month later, there are 69,219 blog reactions (at 9.38 PM), which is an increase with 12%, in just one month. And I may be wrong here, but I believe that Technorati track links during the last six months which means that links that are older than six months do not count any longer (please correct me if I got this backwards). If that is the case, the increase cannot simply be due to a stretched measurement period, but something else is at play. I would not be surprised if the blog linking stategy has paid off already.

If I had had half a brain, I would also have scribbled down the number of incoming blog links to Expressen on Oct 23, so that we could compare, but unfortunately I didn't.

Tags: aftonbladet, technorati, bloggportalen, bloggar, aftonbladet. Ping.

VirtualHosting.com has put together a nice list of what they define as the Top 100 Social Media and Social Networking Blogs. Some very good ones are on it (congrats Neville, for example) and others I haven't read, but will check out. And perhaps if I rename this blog "Social Media Culpa" I'd have a shot at being included next time (I guess having a unique blog name wasn't a criteria...).

;-)

Tags: social media, social networking, sociala medier. Ping.

Swedish companies invest 288 million kronor (45.5 million USD) per year in social media campaigns. Well, actually they don't. But it is an intriguing thought, if they did. According to a survey by Coremetrics called 'Face of the New Marketer', US marketing professionals spend 7.8 percent of their online marketing efforts on social media campaigns in Q3 2007.



During the same period, Swedish companies invested 924 million kronor (146 million USD) in online advertising (pdf). If the same percentage of the Swedish online budgets were spent on social media, that would be about 72 million kronor per quarter, or 288 million per year. Now, I don't believe for a second that we are even near those figures yet but you could look at the number as the potential market for these services in the short term. Then you could start asking yourself questions like:

a) How long will it take for us to get there?
b) What will drive marketing professionals to spend on social media?
c) What type of consultants will capture the lion's share of the spending?

And let me make a quick attempt to answer, just from the top of my head:

a) Probably longer than what is healthy for many brands
b) Communications agencies need to evangelize these services to clients, they need to show ROI and how to measure, and they need to show successful cases
c) I am convinced that PR agencies could be in the driver seat when it comes to social media.

Dagens Media's editor in chief Rolf van den Brink asks this week whether PR agencies in Sweden are ready to handle the social media landscape. And while I think many agencies lack deeper knowledge about web 2.0, I disagree that advertising agencies should be better suited than PR agencies to tackle relations directly with customers. PR agencies are used to managing relations with different audiences and to deal with messages that aren't directly in your control. Previously you needed to communicate via gatekeepers (read: journalists) that could distort, praise or ignore your message. In social media, your message is in the hands of the consumers. If any consultant would be able to advise clients on communicating in a transparent, chaotic, conversational media landscape, then it should be PR agencies. I don't see advertising agencies excel in two way communication, do you?

Björn at JMW adds a few more arguments:
- PR agencies are good at assessing news value, which will also be relevant in new media.
- PR agencies are experts on producing content, which can drive the conversation.

But that's in theory. How it is in practice, is a completely different ball game. Some agencies are already working with these matters, while others are many steps behind. So, who's ready to make 288 million kronor?

Tags: social media, public relations, public relations, pr, sociala medier. Ping.

During the IFRA Expo, the content management company Polopoly asked 3,000 European executives in media about their thoughts on user generated content. The respondents said that they believe that 40 per cent of their content could be user generated within three years (in Swedish here). Earlier this year an Accenture study said that "media and entertainment executives see the growing ability and eagerness of individuals to create their own content as one of the biggest threats to their business".

Disclosure: I used to work at Accenture.

Tags: user generated content, media. Ping.

The US bank Washington Mutual positions itself as an informal, friendly and fun bank. But Shel Holtz' experience with the bank when he needs to send some cash to his son, who is in the army, is neither friendly nor fun. He concludes his story by saying that "The Stanley Cup Playoffs will be held in hell before anyone in our family has anything to do with WaMu again."

When the gap between rhetoric and reality becomes too big, today's consumers spell it out on their blogs or on social networks, which may seriously hurt a brand. Companies, are you listening?

Tags: brands, kommunikation, varumärken. Ping.

Are Apple spying on iPhone customers? This site claims to have proof that Apple secretly track iPhone usage and IEMI numbers of all their iPhones worldwide.

"Hidden in the code of the "Stocks" and "Weather" widgets is a string that sends the IMEI of your phone to a specialized URL that Apple collects."

"This let[s] Apple know which app you are using when connecting with your iPhone. Obviously, they know the IP address you were using, the stocks companies you are interested [in], and so they can track down their customers all around the world. This also proves that there are probably other apps that do the same. Weather.app is also acting the same way."

Of course, from a corporate perspective it is good to know a lot about your customers, but this seems to be a big no-no.

Tags: apple, iphone, privacy, widgets, integritet, apple, iphone. Ping.

I've made some changes to the way this blog gets published. In order for the social bookmarks (below) to work, every blog post now also gets published as a separate page, which they weren't before. That means that the permalinks now look like this:

http://www.kullin.net/2007/11/media-culpas-top-10-blog-pitch-pet.html

instead of this:

http://www.kullin.net/2007_11_01_mc.html#1862016548464840488

Both new and old URLs seem to work so hopefully you won't notice any difference. But if you find som bugs, please let me know (I wouldn't want every link to this blog to become invalid).

Tags: blogger, bloggar, media culpa. Ping.

The photo sharing site Flickr launched in February 2004. Yesterday the 2 billionth photo was uploaded to the site. The first billion took about 3 and a half years. The second billion took about three months. Now that's consumer generated growth!

I made the following chart based on when certain photos were uploaded to the site and double checked with my own photos to see that the dates matched reasonably.



Tags: flickr, photos, flickr, fotografering, foto. Ping.

Finland's largest daily, Helsingin Sanomat, today became the first paper in the country to connect online articles to blog comments via Primelabs' service Twingly.

Martin Källström, CEO of Primelabs, says that the company currently tracks 35,000 Finnish blogs.

Tags: finland, twingly, helsingin sanomat, bloggar, twingly. Ping.

I like the way U2 are talking directly to their fans via Facebook. All users that have listed the band as favourites on their Facebook profile got a video message from Bono yesterday. Bono wants to get feedback from fans on a sneak preview from the upcoming re-release of The Joshua Tree album. Bono sings and explains Wave of Sorrow, a previously unreleased song.

By the looks of the clip, even the rest of the band haven't heard the current version of the song. The interview has a very spontaneous and genuine feel and it is a good example of how to build a hype around the release of an album with a minimal budget.

The video was posted late last night and has already attracted more than 2,000 comments on Facebook.



Update: TechCrunch has more details. "1.2 million fans have signed up specifically to get new U2 news and were notified as soon as the video went up two days ago. So far, over 2,000 fan messages have been left on the video.

This was an experiment, says a representative of the company. No press was notified when the video went live - they wanted to see how fast it spread virally and without any promotion."

Tags: facebook, u2, facebook, u2, musik. Ping.

At what point does pitching a blogger become spam? Well it doesn't take much, if you ask me. I have been biting my tongue for very long (I don't want to be like Chris "Long Tail" Anderson), but now I feel it's time to let off some steam. So, without further ado, here are my top ten blog pitch pet peeves.

1. Don't send me press releases about stuff I don't blog about.
You would be amazed if you knew the kind of press releases I get. I have been on the Swedish Christian Democrats mailing list since the last election. Hello! I don't write about politics and I have no intention to start now. Read my blog for a while so you get a sense of what topics I cover.

2. Don't send me press releases from a generic sender.
Who on earth is "mediaservice"? Answer: the Swedish Christian Democrats again. I would rather have a dialogue with an identifiable human being.

3. Don't send me attachements.
It's bad enough if you send attachements to someone's job, but you are sending me this stuff to my home computer. If this thing breaks, I'm toast. I don't have an IT support to call if I get at trojan or a virus. I can't afford to open anything with an attachement if it's not from a trusted sender.

4. Don't send me press releases with nothing but attachements.
How dumb are you if the only thing there is in the email is a jpeg file? Do you really expect me to open this crap? One of Sweden's largest media corporations should read this and be ashamed. Bonus pet peeve: the attachement is 5 MB or more.

5. Don't send me press releases with vague headlines.
Same company as above. Don't send me an email just telling me to "hold the date" and forcing me to open an image file to find out what the date is about. I won't do it.

6. Don't send the same personalized letter twice, from different people.
Leading PR agency advises leading software company. Sends very nice letter to bloggers, asking if they can send a press release about a news story. Same "personalized letter" comes slightly adjusted from a second person at the same company a few weeks later. That makes our "dialogue" feel fake.

7. Don't send me yesterday's news.
Same PR agency as above. Sent me a press release dated the day before (yes, really!). And besides, the whole story had already been covered the same morning by the leading business daily, which made it not so interesting for me.

8. Don't send me the same release twice within ten minutes.
This happens more often than you could imagine. Oh please, check your mailing lists for duplicates, would you? Bonus pet peeve: if you mess up and need to send out a new corrected press release, don't demand that the blogger who just blogged the story shall update his blog post within minutes. I take responsibility for my own content and reputation, thank you very much.

9. If I tell you to stop, please do.
If you wonder why I have chosen to only name the Christian Democrats on this list, it is because they are the absolute worst on blogger relations. When I finally got tired of observing them making fools out of themselves, I sent them a polite email telling them to remove me from their mailing list because I wasn't interested. That's exactly one week ago and I still get their press releases. Nike was right: just do it!

10. Don't send press releases at all.
Get to know me. Build a relationship. That's why there is a 'social' in front of 'media' when we talk about blogs.

So what to do? A good start would be to check out the "pitching bloggers" section of the NewPR Wiki and this list of links.

Tags: pitching bloggers, blogger relations, bad pitches, kristdemokraterna, bloggar, pr. Ping.

Read/Write Web has some interesting statistics from Rapleaf about Facebook users compared to users of five social networking sites on the OpenSocial platform. Turns out that 62% of Facebook users are on MySpace. Other intersting stats include:

- The greatest overlap between OpenSocial container sites exists between Myspace and Hi5, in which 43% of Hi5 users also use Myspace.

- Facebook users are 63% female and 36% male whereas the sites integrated with the OpenSocial platform are 61% female and 38% male.

- 52% of Facebook users are 18-25, whereas 40% of the users are 18-25 for the five container sites on the OpenSocial platform.

- Facebook users tend to use 2.9 major social networking sites on average whereas users of OpenSocial container sites tend to use 2.7 major social networking sites.

It was quite interesting to see that Facebook and Plaxo users are far more often also users of the other social networks listed in the research, than MySpace users. Although MySpace users on average are using 2.4 major social networking sites, they are not keen on using Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster, Plaxo or Hi5 (see graph below).



Read the graph like this: the horizontal axis are users of the respective site, the graph shows how many percent of them are also using other social networks. 20% of Plaxo users are also on Facebook for example.

So does that mean that you can cover most Facebook users if you are on the OpenSocial platform? I don't know, you would probably need to ask whether or not they are really active or just passive members.

Tags: social networks, opensocial, myspace, facebook, opensocial sociala medier. Ping.

[The following post was written for Aftonbladet's blog panel and is therefore only in Swedish]

År 2012 når den sista årskullen från generation Y (födda 1977-94) 18 års ålder. De utgör nästan 23% av den svenska befolkningen och deras beteenden kommer att få allt större påverkan både socialt och ekonomiskt. Det är förstås en grov generalisering att placera 2 miljoner människor i en kategori och hävda att de beter sig på ett likartat sätt, men några särdrag lär dock gå att utskönja till exempel när det gäller mediekonsumtion. Yngre mediekonsumenter har en tendens att i hög grad använda flera medier samtidigt, populärt kallat multi-tasking (jo, män klarar av att göra två saker samtidigt). Till exempel tittade 7,3 miljoner av de 9,4 miljoner amerikanska tonåringar som var online 2006 på tv samtidigt som de var uppkopplade på nätet. 6,9 miljoner lyssnade på radio när de surfade. Det ställer nya krav på medier att nå ut med budskapen.

För unga vuxna mellan 15-29 år gäller redan idag att internet är det största mediet (tillsammans med tv). De lär också vara överrepresenterade i den grupp människor som allt oftare föredrar att konsumera medier i små bitar (s k "media snackers") istället för långa reportage eller filmer. Lägger vi sedan till utvecklingen på både hårdvara och mjukvara så kan vi nog se tillräckligt många indikationer för att våga påstå att svenskarnas genomsnittliga mediekonsumtion om 5 och 10 år har förändrats rejält mot idag.

En kvalificerad gissning är att internet om 5 år är vårt primära medium, och det är mobilt, öppet, peer-to-peer och skräddarsytt efter mina behov. Mobilt dels i betydelsen internet i andra apparater än dator, dels i att innehållet bryts ner i bitar och sprids ut över webben.

Mobilt
Idag har 93% av svenskarna mobiltelefon men bara 16% använder mobilt internet. Men med kraftigare telefoner och bättre uppkopplingar kommer den andelen att öka. Googles inträde på mobilmarknaden med mobilplattormen Android är ett exempel på att det kommer hända kul saker. Android kommer att göra det lättare för utvecklare att skapa innovativa program och tjänster till mobilt internet vilket i sin tur ger användarna större incitament till att koppla upp sig. Tjänster kommer att uvecklas som är unika för mobilt internet, inte bara mobila varianter av existerande tjänster. Internet kommer också att kopplas ihop med fysiska objekt. I morse läste jag i DI en notis om att Google kopplar ihop 3 500 bensinpumpar i USA med internet. Samtidigt som man tankar får man möjlighet att t ex leta efter hotell och restauranger.

Även innehållet kommer att bli mer mobilt. Mediesajter och andra innehållsproducenter, dit räknar jag t ex bloggar och sociala nätverk, låter i högre utsträckning sitt material "flyta fritt" på webben. Man bygger widgets för att bygga in favoritbloggens rubriker i sin Netvibes-sida (en typ av skräddarsydd personlig portal), för att få CNN-nyheter in på sin profilsida på Facebook eller upp på sin egen blogg. Innehållet sprids för att skapa största möjliga kontaktyta mot användarna, som i sin tur får ett flexiblare sätt att hitta favoritinformationen där det passar bäst. Se t ex trenden att allt fler mediesajter lägger till sociala bokmärkesknappar för att man ska kunna dela innehållet på del.icio.us eller Facebook. Dessa "mediala munsbitar" mixar vi sedan efter eget huvud till en personlig informations-pytt.

Öppet
Medieföretag kommer troligen få allt svårare att låsa in material utan kommer tvingas öppna upp betaltjänster. En av anledningarna är att vi i framtiden allt mindre kommer att surfa in på en webbplats direkt för att läsa artiklar utan att vi oftare kommer att nå information via sökmotorer av olika slag, t ex bloggportaler, Twingly eller vilken tjänst som helst som scannar info och länkar. The New York Times angav en explosionsartad sökmotortrafik som ett skäl till att släppa material fritt på sajten. Vi kommer också att nå information genom att bli tipsade av vänner (på sociala nätverk mm), genom olika bokmärkessajter som Digg eller genom RSS-prenumeration på särskilda sökord ("Arsenal" eller "konkurrensrätt"). Material som då befinner sig bakom betalmurar riskerar att hamna utanför denna spridning helt och hållet.

Det innebär i sin tur att nätannonseringen blir allt viktigare. Vi kommer också att få ta ställning till om vi är villiga att ge upp en bit av vår integritet (viss personlig info) mot att i gengäld få en bättre surfupplevelse = mer relevanta annonser, bättre shoppingtips etc.

Peer-to-peer
Tidigare var medierna "gatekeepers" och filtrerade informationen åt läsare/tittare. Det kommer de fortsätta med, det finns idag ett stort behov av att filtrera alla nyheter men skillnaden är att vi i stor utsträckning kommer ta andra nätanvändare till hjälp för att skapa ordning och reda. Vad blir då journalisternas roll i framtiden? Ja, det är svårt att säga om och hur den rollen förändras men medborgarjournalistiken har hittills inte visat några större färdigheter i att gräva fram några större djupa avslöjanden. Det händer då och då, men det finns på det stora hela inga andra än journalisterna som kan avsätta tiden att riktigt gräva i en story. Därför ska det t ex bli spännande att se vilket genomslag kvalitetsmagasinet Fokus nya sajt får.

Skräddarsytt
Vi är just nu inne i en hysterisk hype kring begreppet web 2.0, ett samlingsnamn för sajter och tjänster som underlättar för nätanvändarna att dela information med varandra och medverka till produktion av innehållet på respektive sajt. När nästa stora generationsskifte kommer är omöljigt att säga, men jag läste en rätt bra definition av vad som skall komma som gick ut på följande:

web 1.0: Ni
web 2.0: Vi
web 3.0 Jag

Med det menas att i den första generationen var vi passiva användare av material som andra producerat. Nu är vi inne i en fas där vi tillsammans delar information och producerar innehåll. Nästa steg blir att jag själv skräddarsyr webben för mina egna behov med hjälp av web 2.0-tjänster. Jag får själv stor frihet att pussla ihop min egen webb.

Om det blir så återstår att se, men jag är övertygad om att ett mobilt internet är själva kärnan i vår mediekonsumtion om fem år och andra medier kommer att hitta smarta sätt att koppla ihop övriga produkter med nätet. Ett bra exempel på att medierna expanderar in på nya kanaler är att Dagens Nyheter igår var den enda tv-kanal (!) som sände Sveriges damlags kvalmatch i fotboll mot Danmark.

Läs också:
Björn Jeffery: Tre förutsägelser om framtidens medier
Beta Alfa: Med en fot i framtiden
Jonas Carlsson: Några ord på vägen
Nina Åkestam: Därför är mediet verkligen inte budskapet
Joakim Jardenberg: Papperstidningens död – mediehusets framtid?
Alter Ego: Framtiden i nutid

Tags: media, predicions, sweden, media, 2012, aftonbladet. Ping.

Electrolux gets mostly praise for the launch of its social media newsroom. Read more at Shel Holtz and Richard Gatarski.

Tags: social media, newsroom, electrolux, sociala medier. Ping.

The Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet has been very successful in attracting visitors to its website. Aftonbladet.se is Sweden's second largest website, second only to MSN.se. It was one of the first papers (although not the first) to take blogging seriously, both with their own blog service and the acquisition of the blog portal Bloggportalen.se. But when other major media sites like the New York Times are unlocking content that was previously subscription only, Aftonbladet.se has chosen the opposite direction.

"What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

“What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” Ms. Schiller said."

Today, Anders Westgårdh writes a column on Aftonbladet.se in which he states that Facebook is a fad that will soon disappear. Quite obviously, this is the kind of article that readers would blog about, comment, post to social networks etc etc which will attract new readers. But the article is behind a pay wall so none of that will happen.

Sure, its just one article, but to me it indicates that Aftonbladet is determined not to follow the path of the New York Times and the others. Personally I am not convinced that it is the correct thing to do, but then again I don't have access to Aftonbladet's site statistics.

Tags: facebook, sweden, facebook, aftonbladet. Ping.

The debate about integrity and social networks continues in Sweden, but surprisingly without much participation from Facebook. Maybe that's why Facebook is looking to hire a Manager, Corporate Communications to:
- Protect and enhance the reputation of Facebook’s technologies and platform
- Educate users, analysts, journalists and bloggers about Facebook products and platform
- Drive positive coverage in the business and technology press

Helsingborgs Dagblad has digged deeper into the topic and reviewed the terms of use for a number of social networking sites, but without drawing any conclusions from the information. Read more in Swedish here.

Furthermore, ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency, recently presented a paper called Security Issues and Recommendations for Online Social Networks. In the paper the agency lists a number of potential threats that may arise for users of Social Networking Sites (SNSs) and suggests actions to address them:

• Recommendation 1.1 Encourage awareness-raising and educational campaigns
• Recommendation 1.2 Review and reinterpret the regulatory framework
• Recommendation 1.3 Increase transparency of data handling practices
• Recommendation 1.4 Discourage the banning of SNSs in schools
• Recommendation 1.5 Promote stronger authentication and access-control where
appropriate
• Recommendation 1.6 Implement countermeasures against corporate
espionage
• Recommendation 1.7 Maximise possibilities for abuse reporting and
detection
• Recommendation 1.8 Set appropriate defaults
• Recommendation 1.9 Providers should offer convenient means to delete data
completely
• Recommendation 1.10 Encourage the use of reputation techniques
• Recommendation 1.11 Build in automated filters
• Recommendation 1.12 Require consent from data subjects to include profile tags
in images
• Recommendation 1.13 Restrict spidering and bulk downloads
• Recommendation 1.14 Pay attention to search results
• Recommendation 1.15 for addressing SNS spam
• Recommendation 1.16 for addressing SNS Phishing
• Recommendation 1.17 Promote and research image-anonymisation techniques
and best practices
• Recommendation 1.18 Promote portable Social Networks
• Recommendation 1.19 on research into emerging trends in SNS
[Via Adam Erlandsson]

And while we are on the subject of Facebook, Anders Mildner, Sydsvenskan, earlier this week wrote an interesting piece about friends and "friends" on Facebook (in Swedish).

Tags: facebook, integrity, facebook, sociala medier, integritet. Ping.

Now that's a bad start. TechCrunch writes that it took only 45 minutes for the first OpenSocial application to get hacked.

Tags: opensocial, hacking, opensocial, sociala medier, google. Ping.

Just a quick note to those who might be interested. Media Culpa now has its own Facebook group and you are more than welcome to join and discuss how digital media affect traditional media and public relations. Posts have so far just been in Swedish but the aim is to expand the dialogue to English as well. Welcome.

Tags: facebook, media culpa, pr, facebook, media culpa, applikationer. Ping.

Primelabs issued a new report (pdf) this week about the Swedish blogosphere, ranked by number of incoming links from other blogs. Twingly Report Sweden outlines the most influential Swedish blogs between May 1st and Aug 31st, 2007. Among other things it shows that 13 of the 20 most linked to blogs are about politics, 4 blog about everyday life experiences, 3 write about media and 2 about culture.

The ten sites that Swedish bloggers link to most are:

1. Dagens Nyheter
2. Svenska Dagbladet
3. Aftonbladet
4. YouTube
5. Swedish Wikipedia
6. English Wikipedia
7. Expressen
8. Flickr
9. Internet Movie Database
10. Technorati

Only four out of ten are MSM, and five (YouTube, 2*Wikipedia, Flickr and Technorati) could be categorized at user generated content sites.

Listed below are the ten most influential Swedish media blogs. And since influence isn't easy to measure, I added these blogs' Technorati rank, inbound links via Technorati and Technorati authority (a higher number means more authority). To my knowledge, Twingly/Primelabs do not measure international blog links but are mainly tracking pure Swedish blogs. I also added Media Culpa as comparison at the bottom of the table and as you see it has higher authority than any of the blogs on the list.



Tags: technorati, twinglyreport, twinglyreport, bloggar, media, primelabs. Ping.