SOM-institutet, the SOM Institute at Göteborg University, has released the results of a study about blogging - "Bloggers - who are they?". In my view, the researcher Annika Bergström has had a somewhat skeptic attitude towards the role of blogs in previous comments. In an interview in Dagens Nyheter in 2006 she said about our media consumption that "there are changes, but they are slow, there will be no revolution". She also commented to IDG.se that the differences in blog adoption between Sweden and the USA is due to strong Swedish tradition to read newspapers.

- Swedes turn to traditional dailies online for information. And we don't get more time just because new media appear.

A year ago she said that "not many people read blogs, and the ones that do are often the ones that blog themselves".

This skepticism is visible also in the "new" study. I write "new", because the data was collected during the fall of 2007. In the report, Bergström writes:

"The survey was conducted during the fall of 2007 and it is likely that the use of blogs have increased slightly since then, but if we look at what we know from the development of other areas of online behavior we should expect only small changes."

The study says that only 2 percent of Swedes wrote a blog each week and that 15 percent read a blog weekly. Good for us then that the World Internet Institute the other day released it's fresh report about how Swedes use the internet, so we have figures for 2008 to compare with.

WII says that 5 percent of the population blog and 26 percent read blogs, which according to me is more than just a "small change".

When respondents in the SOM survey were asked if they had read a blog during the last 12 months, 39 percent said yes. Still the final comment in the report reads:

"The previously mentioned debate about the importance of blogs, is to a high degree about what a small portion of the population engage in. With that said, there is nothing that says that single blogs can have a larger influence in society."

This old data seems to appeal to TU, the Swedish Newspaper Publishers' Association. On its site TU comments on the "latest figures" on blogging like this:

"Nowadays it seems like everyone is blogging. But it is not entirely true. Two percent of Swedes blog each week. And 15 percent reads what they write. The so called blogosphere is, in other words, smaller than the impression we get from the media attention."

Stats from WII suggests that 1.9 million Swedes read blogs so I think it is safe to say that blogs are starting to reach a significant portion of the population. In my view, this study is based on data that is too old to really have any real value, and it doesn't do newspapers any good to take these figures as a sign that blogs and other online channels are no big threat to them.

Tags: sweden, blogs, bloggar, tu. Ping.

Great cartoon, courtesy of Rob Cottingham.



Related: Crime 2.0

Tags: twitter, cartoon, humor, twitter. Ping.

As expected, YouTube today opened up a Swedish version of the site. A launch video is posted on the site in which a number of celebrities welcome YouTube to Sweden, including Google's Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf; Mona Sahlin, leader of the Social Democrats and Ulf Ekberg of pop combo Ace of Base. The video is also promoted on the front page of the Social Democratic Party webpage (!).

For some reason YouTube has made it very hard to embed this launch video and it took me a while to find the embed code.



What the video does not reveal is how a Swedish version is any different than using the global site. Everything on the site is still in English, a language most Swedes handle very well.

On top of this, the launch video is suddenly unavailable. Probably temporarily, because as I type this the video comes back up, becomes unavailable again, then up again.



Tags: sweden, youtube, mona sahlin, youtube, video. Ping.

For some reason a large amount of people suddenly arrive at my blog through different links to the world famous Laughing Baby video, the amateur video with Swedish baby William. After a few Technorati searches I found what might be the reason behind this sudden interest. Apparently Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh visited the UK headquarters of Google a few days ago and were shown the video, which according to reports made the royal couple giggle.

The Queen thought it most amusing. "Lovely little thing, isn’t it?" the Queen said. "Amazing a child would laugh like that."

Maybe that was a great distraction from a somewhat embarrassing moment when Google staff were unable to show the location of their own office to the Royal visitors using Google Earth.

The video has to date been viewed 64 million times and is among the top ten most viewed YouTube videos of all time. Little William has even become a character in South Park.



Tags: laughing baby, queen, youtube, google, youtube, video. Ping.

Following up on my previous post, I have now read through parts of the World Internet Institute's new report about how Swedes use the internet.

Some of the more interesting findings are:

- 350,000 Swedes have a blog (estimate), or 6% of the online population.
- 1,900,000 Swedes read blogs (estimate), or 33% of the online population. That means that there are more than five times as many blog readers as there are bloggers. Possibly a good argument against the common view that "nobody reads blogs".
- Young women between 16 and 25 years are frequent blog readers, see graph below. As many as 52% of all girls 16-18 years that are online, read blogs.



- There is a big difference in which types of communities that attract women and men. Women are more frequent users of social communities while men are more frequent users of hobby and professional communities, see graph below. In my BlogSweden 3 survey the responses indicated that women are more motivated by social interaction than men, which was also a result from a study by Kaye Trammell: "Female bloggers, however, were somewhat more motivated by social interaction (67.1%) than were their male counterparts (51.3%)."



Tags: sweden, wii, bloggar, tjejer. Ping. Följ min blogg med bloggkoll

During the Internetdagarna 08 conference in Stockholm today, the World Internet Institute released their new report on Swedes and their usage of internet. It seems that the survey confirms the findings from my BlogSweden 3 survey earlier this year, that young women are now dominating the Swedish blogosphere. Among 16-18 year-olds it is almost three times as common for girls to blog than it is for boys and in the 26-30 year age group it is even more than three times as common for women to blog.



I will update with more information once I get the entire report.

Tags: sweden, wii, bloggar, tjejer. Ping.

OK everyone, now even Britney Spears seems to be on Twitter. What's your excuse for not joining? I guess if MC Hammer can do it, so can any artist. Anyway, Mashable has a list of celebrities on Twitter. Does anyone know of any Swedish celebs that use Twitter or Jaiku?

Tags: britney spears, britney spears, twitter. Ping.

Kyla Ebbert, a woman from Californa, was thrown off a Southwest Airline plane last year because the airline staff found her clothing too revealing. The story was discussed in both mainstream media and on blogs, and Southwest Airlines eventually apologized to Ebbert in a press release.

"Kyla, we could have handled this better, and on behalf of Southwest Airlines, I am truly sorry. We hope you continue to fly Southwest Airlines. Our Company is based on freedom even if our actions may have not appeared that way. It was never our intention to treat you unfairly and again, we apologize."

Apart from issuing an apology, the airline also took the opportunity to create a somewhat positive spin on the story by poking fun at itself. In a news release, Southwest Airlines lowered its already low prices to "miniskirt" fares, a stunt that was widely covered in media and blogs.

Irish low fares airline Ryanair is another airline that has taken a blow in media recently. Readers of this blog may remember the "beds and blowjobs" debacle some time ago. And now they are at it again. Last week the Swedish Council against Sexual Discrimination in Advertising (ERK) found one of Ryanair's ads to be sexist. The ad, which was published during the start of the school year, featured a scantily clad woman posing as a schoolgirl, announcing the "hottest back to school prices".



But instead of admitting any wrongdoing, the airline went on a counter attack with statements like these.

"We are sure that the anti-funsters at the ERK do not speak for the majority of the famously liberal and easy going Swedes."

"The ad simply reflects the way a lot of young girls like to dress. We hope the old farts at the ERK loosen up a little."

"Ryanair defends the right of Swedish girls to take their clothes off."

The company was then criticized by the Swedish MP, Birgitta Ohlsson urging customers to choose other airlines. Ohlsson said that "Ryanair is relying on old fashioned, outdated values and they’re proud of it." But instead of responding to journalist questions, the company issued a new "fun" press release.

"Ryanair, Sweden's only low fares airline, today laughed off the stupid comments by Swedish MP, "Boring" Birgitta Ohlsson, when she called on Swedish passengers to boycott Ryanair and fly on high fare, fuel surcharging, SAS in protest at Ryanair's use of a sexy model to advertise its "hottest ever" back to school fare."

"This really is a storm in a D cup! We’re sure that Boring Birgitta will be overrun by the flood of right minded, liberal, people who support Ryanair’s determination to defend the rights of girls and boys to get their kit off – if they want to."

"We will also be sending free tickets to Boring Birgitta so that she can take a nice relaxing break, loosen up a little and stop calling for silly boycotts, avslutar Ryanair."

The airline also announced it would "celebrate Ryanair’s sexy Swedish ad" by launching one million €10 mid week seats.

But it appears that the support from the easy going Swedes is minimal. Christian paper Dagen hopes that Ryanair chokes on their laughter. Ryanair is called "horny guys airline" in a column in Dagens Media. Bloggers are writing things like "Bye bye Ryanair", "Yet another reason to dislike Ryanair" and "Ryanair: Swedens only no-brains airline".

There is a huge difference in the way Southwest Airlines and Ryanair have handled these incidents. First of all, SA was not accused of being sexist, but to be too prude. Big difference. Then SA apologized and used humour to laugh at themselves. Ryanair does the opposite by not apologizing, talking trash to anyone who opposes, and then giving us more of the same thing they were criticized of from the start. Like this blogger says, to counter sexism with more sexism is hardly the smartest way to go.

Secondly, SA already had a presence in social media with its blog Nuts About Southwest which allowed the airline to have a closer dialogue with customers. Ryanair on the other hand, don't respond to journalist questions, send statements in English in which there are no local spokespersons. If you on top of that try to gain support by referencing to the Swedish psyche, or rather your view of what Swedes are like, it is very easy that local customers feel that you are just an ignorant foreigner who paints a malicious portrait of how we are supposed to be.

Ryanair has a history of sexist related crisis and a CEO who leads by example. But maybe this is very clever branding. No other airline has positioned themselves as the airline for horny guys. The top position is available and Ryanair seems determined to take it.

Tags: ryanair, advertising, ryanair, reklam. Ping.

At 6 PM tonight, a new local Swedish TV channel started broadcasting. Three local daily papers in Norrbotten in the north of Sweden are the driving forces behind this new channel that will publish short news stories in a 20 minute news cycle. The new tv channel is called 24Norrbotten and apparently the number 24 has some magic glow to it that makes so many traditional media companies brand their new ventures something-something-24.

Here are a few examples, all from Sweden.











Update: Via Same Same But Different I read that 24Norrbotten has a sister channel, in the Linköping region, called 24Corren (surprise!). 24Corren was launched on Oct 15 with the same 20 minute news cycle concept.



Tags: tv, 24norrbotten, tv. Ping.

Tom Murphy links to a fantastic story about a creative bank robber who used Craigslist to recruit loads of people to act as decoys while he robbed a security truck.

"The robber had planned ahead. In case anyone was hot on his trail, he had at least a dozen unsuspecting decoys waiting nearby, which he recruited on Craigslist."

The decoys were told to show up at a certain place and to wear a yellow vest, safety goggles, a respirator mask and, if possible, a blue shirt. After the robbery, the entire street was full of people who fit the description of the purpetrator who could flee without getting caught.

This reminded me of an incident that recently happened in my neighbourhood. A guy that wanted to sell his car put up an ad on one of the Swedish online trading sites with a photo of the car. One morning a day or two later, he discovered that the entire back wing of the car was missing. Someone had apparently been looking online for a car not too far away, of that exact model with that colour, checked the license plate to find the owner's address and gone and dismantled the part. See, isn't internet great?

I'm just waiting for reports of shrewd criminals that monitor Twitter, Jaiku or Facebook to see reports like "I'm going out of town for the weekend. Ciao" and use the information to break into some poor geek's house. It wouldn't take a genious, that's for sure.

Tags: crime, inbrott, brott. Ping.

It's not a good week for bloggers. Yesterday we could read about the Swedish woman who got fired from her job for blogging (although the CEO of the company said that other factors also led to the decision). Today I read in Journalisten.no that a Norwegian journalist Trine Grung lost her job as host of the tv show "Bli ny: Mor og datter" because she criticized a colleague, Elin Tvedt, on her blog.

– She has been taken off the project, but her contract is still running, says Program Director Eivind Landsverk of TVNorge.

I really don't have an opinion if that reaction from TVNorge was too hard or not, but Heidi Nordby Lunde, aka VamPus, says it well:

– The blog is not a private conversation, and you must face the consequences of that. [my translation]

Tags: journalism, dooced, norge, journalister. Ping.

Tomorrow at 2.15 PM (CET) you have the chance to participate in a free webcast with LaSandra Brill, Manager, Web & Social Media at Cisco. She will present the slides that I linked to two days ago about the use of social media in a launch of server products. You can attend the Cisco session directly here below on this blog, but also several other webcasts during the day. See here for more info and links to attend. Be sure to register for a free account on BrightTalk before the sessions start, to save time.



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

Moderaterna, the Swedish Moderate Party which is part of the ruling right-wing coalition, predict that blogs and social media will become an integral part of the 2010 election campaign. In a speech this weekend in Sollentuna outside of Stockholm, Secretary-general Per Schlingmann said that the web will be the hub in the next campaign (my translation below).

The web will be the hub in the campaign. In ten days we will release our new digital platform which will create new opportunities. How well it turns out depends on us. How open do we dare to be? Dare we let go? For me one thing is clear: in the election 2010, every Moderate blog will be valuable, every Moderate video, every Moderate Facebook group. Let us make sure that there will be as many as possible. I am also convinced that we will carry out more activities where we will meet voters directly, but these activities will be co-ordinatet online and will make it easier for people to take part of our campaign.

The prediction that the next election will be web-centric is not very risky, but nevertheless it is interesting to see that the Moderate Party is stressing social media tools so actively almost two years ahead of the election.

During the last few months, blogs have made a huge impact on the political arena, first and foremost from the FRA debate, i.e. the resistance to the new controversial Swedish wiretapping law that enables FRA, Swedish National Defence Radio Establishement, to screen and store all digital traffic passing Swedish borders. Blogs about politics and society are also one of the most popular categories in the Swedish blogosphere. The blog portal Knuff.se lists the 50 most linked to blogs in Sweden and currently about 24 of the top 50 are commenting regularly on political topics.

A question I would like Swedish party strategists to answer is how they plan to engage with female voters via social media. If my latest blog survey BlogSweden 3 is anything to go by, female blog readers don't see blogs as an interesting channel for news about politics and society. While this was the most popular topic among male blog readers (49.2% of all male blog readers), the situation was radically different among female blog readers.

Female blog readers prefer reading blogs about (Jan 2008):
- Fashion and design (53.0%)
- Everyday life experiences (51.6%)
- Photography and art (26.6%)
- Parenthood and children (24.3%)
- Music (22.0%)
- Literature and writing (17.2%)
- Movies and tv (16.9%)
- Journalism and media (16.7%)
- Sex and dating (16.5%)
- Politics and society (14.4%)

Tags: election, blogs, 2010, moderaterna, politik, fra. Ping.

Nike has bought the naming rights to a public park in central Tokyo with the purpose of building a skateboarding area and a café. Miyashita Park will be renamed "Nike Park" and in total, Nike plan to spend around 600m yen (5.6 million dollars) renovating the park. But the investment also comes with some downsides, at least if you're not a skateboard fan. Nike plans to charge a fee in order to use the skating area or even entering the park, which of course is a controversial change for a place that used to be open free to the public. A number of homeless people will also be forced to leave the park.

The story is quite interesting since Nike obviously is investing heavily in restoring a run down area with the purpose of achieving positive associations to the brand. But the resistance is quite strong and vocal, which we can see by studing how the story is debated online. Human rights activists have founded The Coalition to Protect Miyashita Park from Becoming Nike Park which of course has a blog, and anti-Nike posters are spreading across the blogosphere (see examples here). Trendspotting also claims that "human rights" activist are much more active in Japanese blogs than "Nike lovers".

The story is also featured on the front page as one of the most linked to news on Japan's number one social bookmarking site Japan Soc, which would possibly indicate that Nike has got some work to do to change public opinion in favour of their initiative.

Tags: branding, nike, tokyo, nike park, nike, japan. Ping.

If you think that social media tools only can be used effectively for consumer products, think again. This is a great case study by LaSandra Brill, manager of Web and social media marketing at Cisco. It shows how Cisco used social media for the launch of the ASR 1000 launch router series.



ReadWriteWeb lists the major steps of the campaign.

ASR 100 Launch Campaign Steps
1. Created a fun micro site directed at uber users (the tech and early adopter audience) to help create and spread buzz.
2. Cross posted videos from the micro site to YouTube to extend reach.
3. Established Second Life presence that included a countdown calculator and pre event live concert to increase visibility; research showed much of their audience is on Second Life.
4. Created a FaceBook group to cater to users not part of Second Life.
5. Created an interactive 3D game - Edge Quest - to attract the large gaming audience.
6. Created a widget that holds a collection of key videos, documents and images that allows sharing for their content, while remaining on their server.
7. Blogged about it on the Cisco blog to try and intrigue bloggers and customers.
8. Heightened buzz with press with a vague two paragraph teaser press release to extend press coverage and fuel buzz.
9. Created a social media release to reach out to bloggers.
10. Introduced product via live online event; video on Second Life that was cross posted on FaceBook and YouTube.
11. Created 'Ask the Expert' - a forum where customers could talk to the engineers that created the product.

Tags: social media, cisco, b2b, cisco, social media. Ping.

The citizen journalist "Johntw" that falsely stated the Apple CEO Steve Jobs had been rushed to hospital after a heart attack is now under investigation of the SEC, reports Wired.

Assuming the Securities and Exchange Commission can prove the fake news writer published the post with the purpose of manipulating the stock, there would likely be criminal charges, says [attorney Scott] Vernick.

"These sorts of financial crimes or attempts to defraud investors carry criminal penalties and the possibility of imprisonment," says Vernick.

Wired writes that in a similar case from 2000, a 23-year-old community college student was sentenced to 44 months in prison for issuing a fake press release about a company called Emulex.

LA Times reminds us that Steve Jobs' health has been an issue before, for example when Bloomberg accidentally published Jobs obituary two months ago.

CNN reports that the false content was flagged and quickly removed from the site.

Tags: steve jobs, apple, apple, aktier. Ping.

Apple Inc saw its stock rapidly fall 9 percent today after a rumour was started that CEO Steve Jobs had been rushed to hospital after a major heart attack. The story was first published by a citizen journalist on CNN's site iReport.

Citizen reporter Johntw wrote: "Steve Jobs was rushed to the ER just a few hours ago after suffering a major heart attack. I have an insider who tells me that paramedics were called after Steve claimed to be suffering from severe chest pains and shortness of breath. My source has opted to remain anonymous, but he is quite reliable. I haven't seen anything about this anywhere else yet, and as of right now, I have no further information, so I thought this would be a good place to start. If anyone else has more information, please share it."

Fortunately Apple were able to quickly dismiss the story as nonsense, but the rumours had already had a negative effect on Apple's stock, which after the rebuttal climbed up again. We don't know it this was a deliberate attempt to manipulate Apple's stock or someone who was just pulling a prank on CNN and/or Apple. But it illustrates clearly how an anonymous person can have a huge impact on several brands by just posting a few lines of lies on a web site. And for a trusted brand like CNN it is of course troublesome to be hosting such content.

Silicon Alley Insider writes that "Citizen journalism apparently just failed its first significant test". Skeptics of user generated content are of course gloating now. At least, crisis consultants will not be out of work in the near future.

Tags: steve jobs, apple, apple, aktier. Ping.

Arbetsförmedlingen, the Swedish Public Employment Service, today launched Jobbsökarna ("Job Seekers"), a blog project where they recruited unemployed people by sending out SMS. Five people have been selected among the 1,400 applications and these bloggers will share their thoughts and views about the process of getting a job. As soon as one of the bloggers get a job, he or she will be replaced by a new blogger. It's a fun and creative initiative but I wish that they would have included "must have" blog features like permalinks, RSS and so on. Comments are not available either. One of the goals for the initiative is to share and distribute information about seeking jobs in new ways, between people without middlemen, so it is a bit unfortunate that they don't use all the sharing tools that normally comes with a blog. There is very little interactivity on the site. You can however send a tip to the blogger about a new job.

Photo: Magnus Pehrsson (Arbetsförmedlingen)

Tags: jobs, blogging, jobb, bloggar. Ping.

How do you police a site consisting of close to 3 billion pieces of consumer genererated media? Ask Heather Champ, Director of Community at photo sharing site Flickr, who oversees that the 30 million members of Flickr follow the community guidelines and don't post pictures that the company consider illegal or inappropriate.

Champ says there is a clear need to have a control function to monitor the site.

"The amount of time it would take for the community to self-regulate -- I don't think it could sustain itself in the meantime," she says. "Anyway, I can't think of any successful online community where the nice, quiet, reasonable voices defeat the loud, angry ones on their own."

Her team handles feedback from people like for example a woman who complains that her ex-boyfriend has posted inappropriate photos of her or the parent without custodial rights who wants photos of the child, posted by the other parent, removed. Champ says that people sometimes do stupid things due to the anonymity of the web:

"People become disassociated from one another online. The computer somehow nullifies the social contract," she says.

Read the entire interview by the San Fransicso Chronicle.

Tags: flickr, ugc, photo, foto, flickr. Ping.