Two days ago I blogged about how the Swedish National Tax Board is investigating new areas where there is a risk that individuals have income that they withhold from taxation, one of these areas being blogging. Now it doesn't seem that blogging has become such a big problem yet. Of the total of 420 million kronor that the investigation found were withheld from taxation, 59.9 million were found in the category that include as diverse areas such as:

Dating, SEO services, international web services, internet- and SMS loans, blogs, astrology, electronics/satellite tv, weight control/gym products.

In total, the tax authorities say they have 156 million kronor to claim in taxes.

Bloggers should be aware that tax authorities are looking into the area and that they actually are spidering web sites to find suspects.

Tags: taxes, sweden, skatter, bloggare, skatteverket. Ping.

Med anledning av rapporten BloggSverige 3 som jag skrev om igår, så vill jag tipsa om att det går att ta del av graferna via ett Flickr set här. Du får använda dem icke-kommersiellt, men du måste hänvisa till källan (dvs hit) då bilderna är licensierade enligt Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike.

De bilder jag lagt upp visar svaren från bloggare i enkäten.

Tags: social media, surveys, enkät, sociala medier, bloggsverige3, bloggar. Ping.

This press release made me curious. The Swedish National Tax Board (Skatteverket) will host a press conference tomorrow to report about the first year results of a three year project regarding e-commerce. One of the topics during the meeting is "new risk areas such as sms loans and bloggers" (Nya riskområden som sms-lån och bloggare). Should be interesting to hear how bloggers could be of interest to the tax authorities. The handful of bloggers that actually make money from blogging should not be too hard to identify, but maybe this could be a growing problem?

Tags: taxes, sweden, skatter, bloggare, skatteverket. Ping.

Mellan den 1 och 2 januari genomförde jag en online-enkät där 1000 svenska bloggläsare och bloggare svarade på frågor kring bloggar och sociala medier. Rapporten BloggSverige 3 är den tredje i ordningen och en uppföljning på BloggSverige 1 och 2 från 2005 och 2006.

Här redovisas nu svaren från de personer som själva har minst en egen blogg (totalt 806 personer).

Den typiska svenska bloggaren i enkäten är:
• kvinna
• 16-20 år gammal
• läser 1-5 bloggar dagligen
• spenderar 1 timma per vecka med att läsa bloggar
• läser oftast bloggar på kvällstid (ca 18-24)
• använder aldrig en RSS-läsare för att läsa bloggar
• läser helst bloggar om vardagsbetraktelser
• läser bloggar för att bli underhållen
• har aldrig klickat på en annons på en blogg
• är medlem i ett socialt nätverk för att hålla kontakt med kompisar
• har de senaste 12 månaderna laddat ner musik från internet, lyssnat på radio eller podcast på internet, tittat på eller laddat ner video från internet, har gjort bilder tillgängliga för andra på internet, har kategoriserat innehåll på internet
• har de senaste 12 månaderna inte gjort videofilmer tillgängliga på internet, sparat länkar med hjälp av bokmärkessajter eller besökt virtuella världar
• bloggar för att hon gillar att skriva
• uppdaterar sin blogg varje dag
• har inget emot att bli kontaktad av företag i sin egenskap av bloggare
• är inte anonym
• har inte egna annonser på sin blogg

Kvinnorna är nu i klar majoritet bland bloggarna.



När bloggare bildar sig en uppfattning om ett företag så anser de att ”en person som jag själv eller en vän” är den mest trovärdiga talespersonen. En annan bloggare anses lika trovärdig som företagets egna vd.

En av tre bloggare har köpt en vara som en följd av rekommendationer på en blogg. Lika stor andel har avstått från att köpa en vara. En av tre har efter att ha läst information på en blogg vidtagit en åtgärd i syfte att påverka ett företag eller en politiker i en viktig fråga.

Vardagsbetraktelser är fortfarande den typ av bloggar som flest är intresserade av, men modebloggarna har gått starkt framåt och är den klart mest populära kategorin bland kvinnliga bloggare och bloggläsare.



Rapporten BloggSverige 3 finns att ladda ner i pdf-format här. Diskutera gärna de olika frågeställningarna i Media Culpas grupp på Facebook, där även en del bilder redan ligger uppe.

Fotnot: Lägg gärna till etiketten "bloggsverige3" till eventuella blogginlägg som rör enkäten.

Tags: social media, surveys, enkät, sociala medier, bloggsverige3, bloggar. Ping.

Kairos Future have studied youth between 14 and 18 and their views about online integrity on behalf of the Swedish Data Inspection Board. Some interesting findings include:

- About half of the respondents 51 % say they have been thinking about information concering their private life.
- 54 % say that someone has written nasty things about them online.
- They are more willing to reveal religious and political views than personal information like who they are in love with.
- Girls are more active bloggers than boys.
- Girls are more reluctant (71%) to reveal other personal information than their names online, than boys are (58%).
- 17 % of Facebook users regret they have put up a text or a photo on the social network. It is more common among girls than among boys.

Full report here, in Swedish.

Tags: integrity, sweden, ungdomar, bloggar, facebook. Ping.

The Swedish travel operator Apollo invited consumers to produce commercials for Apollo. The best video clip has now been chosen and awarded a gift voucher worth 35,000 kronor (3,700 euro). More than 100 videos were uploaded to the campaign site during the competition.

One film got as many as 5,959 views and a total of 736 blogs and 132 people on Facebook referred ("hänvisade") to the site, according to the press release. However, these figures are very hard to verify. Searches on Knuff.se and Technorati only show two or three links to the site.

Tags: video, commercials, apollo, video, tävling. Ping.

The Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet is about to launch a new community on its website, reports Dagens Media. Readers will get their own Facebook-like profile pages where all activities will be visible. In the future, profile pages will for example contain users' comments to articles (Aftonbladet.se does not currently allow comments to articles, but does show links to blog posts). According to Andreas Aspegren who is responsible for the project, the profile pages will include a guestbook, a messaging feature and a photo album.

Advertisers will be offered the possibility to purchase targeted ads on user pages. Due to recent security issues (Aftonbladet was the victim of a hacker attack recently) the community has been delayed. A possible launch date is within the coming two months.

Aftonbladet is also working on a new advertising model in which revenue would be shared with bloggers, like the free daily Metro already does.

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

The international PR agency Edelman today released their ninth Trust Barometer which showed that the respondents (3,100 representatives of the "opinion elite" – college-educated, wealthy, well-informed individuals in 18 countries) have more trust in business than in government, in 14 out of those 18 countries.

"Global companies headquartered in Sweden, Germany, and Canada are the most trusted; companies headquartered in China, Mexico, and Russia are on the bottom of the list", the press release says.

The entire study will be presented at the World Economic Forum that opens on Wednesday in Davos. Another interesting finding is that "a person like myself" is the most trusted source for information (58% trust "me", slightly above financial/industry analysts at 57%, academics at 56% and healthcare specialists at 55%). Respondents also have more trust in a regular emplyoee than in the company CEO.

If you bear with me for a few more days I will give you the views of Swedish bloggers on the same topic. In my BlogSweden3/BloggSverige3 survey of 1,000 Swedish blog readers I also asked who they trust most as a spokesperson for a company. I am soon done with the report, so stay tuned.

Tags: edelman, trust, bloggsverige3, pr, edelman. Ping.

The tv show "Norges Herligste" (Norway's Loveliest?) has become the most popular podcast in Norway with about 90,000 downloads to date. That makes it the most popular podcast right now, according to Itunes.

In the show, two brothers, Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker, travels around the country and interviews odd and interesting people. From what I can tell, this is a format that was first launched in Sweden when Fredrik & Filip did a show called "100 höjdare", a format later sold to some 6 or 7 countries.

Via Vassa Eggen.

Tags: podcasting, norway, tv, podcast, norge. Ping.

Media company Mansueto Ventures which publishes Inc.com and Fast Company, today announced the launch of FastCompany.TV, "a new online video network featuring coverage of bleeding edge technology trends, interviews with leading executives and business people, reviews of the latest technology products, and lifestyle programming". One of the world's most famous bloggers, Robert Scoble, joins FastCompany.TV as Managing Director of the site, which is to be launched in March.

Tags: fastcompany, robert scoble, media, video. Ping.

Swedish media agencies' investments in online advertising has increased by 48% in 2007 according to a press release from their trade association. That makes online advertising the third largest media category for media agencies, with tv being the top category.

Tags: advertising, sweden, reklam, sverige. Ping.

"Fear drives managers to ban social media at work" writes Ragan.com. A poll of 424 professional communicators from around the globe showed that the number one reason to block social media sites was fear that these sites will impact productivity [negatively]. Security concerns ranked second and bandwidth concern ranked third among the reasons.

"Of those not allowed to use social media at work, 65 percent said their managers block access to sites like YouTube, Facebook and Flickr because they're afraid employee productivity will suffer."

- Most people are not going to abuse the privilege of using these sites, says Shel Holtz, one of my favourite podcasters.

I would like to agree with Shel, first because there are reasons to use social media that can have a positive impact on your job, and second because the line between work and spare time is becoming more and more blurry. As my Swedish readers will know, I have just conducted my own poll of 1,000 Swedish blog readers and I thought that this would be a good opportunity to give you a sneak preview of one of the survey questions.

When I asked 747 bloggers about the reasons why they are members of one or more social networks, the main reason was to "stay in touch with friends". But several of the motivations are clearly work or career related:

* 61.6 said "as a way to stay in touch with former colleagues, classmates or suchlike"
* 54.1% said "to use as a common channel in which to communicate with friends/colleagues"
* 31.3% said "to network"
* 18.7% said "to connect with others in my profession"

Also, 43.0% said a reason was "to use technical features like sharing photos and such", which could of course be both a private and work-related activity.

Blocking social media sites may not be an entirely good idea. There will always be people who abuse trust and would spend plenty of time on social media sites with non-work related activities, but I believe the benefits outweigh the risks in the long run.

Footnote: Stay tuned for the results of the BlogSweden 3/BloggSverige 3 survey.

Tags: social media, surveys, enkät, sociala medier, bloggsverige3, bloggar. Ping.

Unionen ("the Union") is a new Swedish mega-union which was established on Jan 1, 2008 through a merger between HTF and SIF. In its member publication Kollega, a number of people are being compared to animals. Inter forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic is the peacock of the year for being more eyecandy than an asset on the field. (Yeah right, he's only one of the top football forwards in the world.) Personal coach Mia Törnblom is called a cockroach for being too visible on tv.

The union's own chairman, Mari-Ann Krantz, gets a nicer treatment and is named the elephant of the year because she is heading such a grandiose union. Perhaps she should be named the great cormorant (storskarv) of the year instead. The cormorant is, as you may know, a bird that often pollutes the environment with its ammounium rich droppings which kills vegetation.

Mari-Ann Krantz is apparently going against the union's own environmental policy when she choses to fly instead of taking the train, because it is not practically possible for her to travel by any other means.

"Unionen tar sitt ansvar och agerar föredömligt genom att, då det är praktiskt möjligt, välja ett miljövänligare alternativ."

That may of course be ok, I can understand the difficulty of living in Alingsås, working in Stockholm and managing your schedule. But if the union has environmental ambitions, she should lead by example and at least consider her carbon footprint. She says that she never considered compensating for the carbon emissions, which would cost about 1 euro for a flight between Göteborg and Stockholm.

The Union or The Onion? The more you peel...

Disclosure: I was once a member of SIF.

Social networking sites may be playing an important political role in the 2008 US campaign for young people, according to a new study by Pew Internet.

"Fully two-thirds of Americans age 18-29 say they use social networking sites, and more than a quarter in this age group (27%) say that they have gotten information about candidates and the campaign from them – including 37% among those ages 18-24. Nearly one-in-ten of people under age 30 (8%) say that they have signed up as a "friend" of one of the candidates on a site. And the numbers are even higher for each of these activities among young registered voters."

Full report here.

Tags: pew, social media, sociala medier, politik. Ping.

Tags: bubble, web 2.0, video, humor. Ping.

[In Swedish only]

UPPDATERAT 23.00, 2 jan 2008: Enkäten är nu stängd för nya respondenter, men de som påbörjat enkäten kan slutföra den. Det tog bara ett drygt dygn att samla in nästan 1000 deltagare och jag vill redan nu tacka alla som länkat till den och deltagit. Nu börjar analysarbetet. Stay tuned...

I maj 2005 genomförde jag den första stora svenska undersökningen av bloggare och bloggläsare, BloggSverige 1.0. Den följdes av en ny enkät 2006 som besvarades av ca 700 personer (rapporterna finns för nedladdning i högermarginalen på denna blogg). Nu är det dags för den tredje enkäten och den har ett lite bredare anslag mot även sociala medier. Nu behöver jag andra bloggares hjälp med att sprida information om enkäten.

Därför skulle jag vilja be så många som möjligt att:

1) fylla i enkäten genom att klicka på följande länk:
Klicka här för att fylla i enkäten.

2) om du har en egen blogg, lägga upp en text på din blogg i stil med följande:
Bloggen Media Culpa genomför sin tredje årliga undersökning av svenska bloggare och bloggläsare och behöver deltagare till sin enkät. Svara på enkäten genom att klicka på länken och uppmana gärna fler att delta: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=xFqxvNv9gUDjibIiMju5qw_3d_3d

Enkäten tar bara ett par minuter och är helt anonym. Resultaten presenteras här inom kort. Är du inte redan prenumerant på Media Culpa så passa på att lägga till mitt RSS-flöde till dina prenumerationer, så att du inte missar när resultaten publiceras.

Lägg gärna till etiketten "bloggsverige3" till eventuella blogginlägg som rör enkäten.

Tack på förhand.

Tags: social media, surveys, enkät, sociala medier, bloggsverige3, bloggar. Ping.