Month: June 2009

Listed company buys The Pirate Bay for 60 MSEK

This will definitely be one of the most discussed news items today. The listed gaming company Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) has issued a press statement this morning that they will purchase the website the Pirate Bay and the company Peeralism that “develops peerialistic solutions to transport and store data on the Internet”. According to Svenska Dagbladet, GGF will purchase the Pirate Bay for 60 MSEK, out of at least half in cash, and Peeralism for 100 MSEK, out of which at least half in cash.

Here is the press statement on GGF’s website:

Acquisitions of The Pirate Bay and new file sharing technology, P2P 2.0
– Pave the way for compensation model
The listed software company, Global Gaming Factory X AB (publ) (GGF) acquires The Pirate Bay website, http://www.thepiratebay.org, one of the 100 most visited websites in the world and the technology company Peerialism, that has developed next generation file-sharing technology. Following the completion of the acquisitions, GGF intends to launch new business models that allow compensation to the content providers and copyright owners. The responsibility for, and operation of the site will be taken over by GGF in connection with closing of the transaction, which is scheduled for August 2009.

“We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site” said Hans Pandeya, CEO GGF.

“The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary. Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers’ need faster downloads and better quality” continues Hans Pandeya.

A press conference will be held in Stockholm at 11.00 CET today and hopefully we will get more information about the acquisition, or find out if it is just a PR stunt. It’s a little hard to believe that this acquisition will actually carried out.

Updated: According to information on Aktietorget, where GGF is listed, the company has a market cap of 140 MSEK (fluctuating between 125 and 150 MSEK this morning).

Update 2: Official comment by TPB: Yes, it’s true.

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Twitter search vs. Google

A quick follow up note on my previous post on using Twitter for real-time search. Today the number one news story without doubt is the tragic death of the King of Pop – Michael Jackson. Nearly all major news outlets are reporting about his death and social media are buzzing like crazy about the icon. And once again we can see that Twitter is a much quicker search engine than Google Insights For Search which doesn’t display live results, only results for the last 7 days. See the difference below.

Top ten trending topics on Twitter this morning (9 AM CET):

Rip MJ
MJ’s
P Michael Jackson
Farrah Fawcett
#MichaelJackson
Iran
#iranelection
Pop
Thriller
MTV

Top ten search terms on Google the last 7 days:

1.neda
2.leighton meester
3. wimbledon 2009
4.wimbledon
5. jon and kate
6. 儿子
7. us open
8. us open golf
9. perez hilton
10. aöf

Both tools are great for research on current trends in online behaviour, and they are of course not analyzing the same activities. One monitors search behaviour and the other monitors published key words. Either way, when it comes to finding out what happens right now, Twitter search is way quicker.

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Zlatan Ibrahimovic on Twitter

I am quite sceptical when it comes to celebrities and social media. I always assume that something is fake until I find a credible source that tells me otherwise. But when I stumbled upon Swedish football striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic on Twitter, I got a little curious. He hasn’t been very active online and to my knowledge he still doesn’t have an official webpage, so Zlatan being on Twitter would be somewhat ground breaking.

A first glance at @zlatans_official does indeed include som information that could indicate that this is in fact the real Zlatan twittering. For example, he has some mobile photos of himself with fans and a person that is supposed to be his brother. But when we look at the photos he has been posting, we see one that is taken from his house in Cernobbio, Italy:

May 24th: “dekorating my new house in Cernobbio Italy. Watch the view from casa del zlatan!! http://yfrog.com/5jjyvj“

But the very same photo can be found here, and along with several other photos it comes from the press and photo agency Stella Pictures. If Zlatan would be tweeting photos from his house, why would be be posting photos that belong to a photo agency and not just snap a picture with his mobile? No, I think we can safely say that this story has been debunked. Zlatan is not on Twitter.

Updated: This tweet says that Zlatan is eating pizza with his brother in downtown Milan, but the photo it is taken from a Swedish tv documentary, and shows Zlatan having pizza with his younger brother in Malmö. See about 4.54 into this YouTube video. (Via Luna in the comments to this post)

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News sites or ad sites?

It is well known that newspapers have a hard time charging for online content. So advertising is of course a vital part of the business model for the web sites of traditional newspapers. But the question is if ads are taking over the entire sites of the dailies? See below the screen shots of four of the leading Nordic dailies: Dagens Naeringsliv (Norway), Jyllandsposten (Denmark), Berlingske Tidene (Denmark) and Aftonbladet (Sweden). You can hardly determine what the breaking news are by looking at the screen, without scrolling.

dn-no-forside

jyllandsposten

berlingske

ab-ettan

Updated: The explanation can be found in this graphic of the state of online “journalism”.

Update 2: Kenneth Lay Milling follows up and looks at several other Danish news sites and concludes that in general 80-90 percent of the screen is covered by ads.

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Koenigsegg buys Saab

General Motors has agreed to sell Saab Automobile AB to Koenigsegg Group AB, a consortium led by Koenigsegg Automotive AB. It is a major news story in Sweden today. Below you can see the front pages of the leading Swedish dailies online, and two in Norway (one of the main investors behind the purchase is the Norwegian entrepreneur Bård Eker’s Eker Group). Dagens Nyheter and Dagens Naeringsliv almost fill the entire screen with the news about Saab. Also notice that VG.no does not have this story as a main news item today.

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649

To check out what bloggers write about the Saab/Koenigsegg deal today, check out Twingly.

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Using Twitter for real-time search

I’m not a search expert, but working in communications requires at least basic knowledge about online search. Search is such a vital part of the way we find information about brands these days. A recent Swedish study (pdf) showed that among those who used the internet to search for information about products and services, 91 percent used a search engine.

We can also use data from search ingines to track the latest buzz online. A good tool to see trends in search behaviour is to use Google Insight For Search which shows how often different search terms have been used over time. It also tells you what terms have increased the most during the last few days.

If we use Google Insight For Search to see how often people search for the term Facebook, we can’t find anything unusual related to Facebook that happens right now.

facebook-google-trends

But as most of you know, Facebook launched vanity URLs today on a first-come, first-served basis. So members who wanted to grab a specific name had to be alert this morning to secure the desired URL. Obviously the has been a lot of buzz about this on Twitter this morning, so a quick search for “Facebook” on Twist, a tool for trend search on Twitter, we discover that there was a big peak in mentions of Facebook on Twitter this morning.

vanityurl-facebook

It might not be the perfect tool, but I think the difference illustrates how Twitter and Twitter-related applications are becoming very useful in finding out what happens in close to real-time on the web. Other tools that analyze Twitter to bring you the latest buzz are MicroBlogBuzz (no 1 topic: Facebook Username) and Retweetradar (Facebook is one of the most retweeted phrases right now).

Google knows this, of course. This article states that Google is working on solutions for real-time search but I haven’t managed to find out how that works.

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