Aftonbladet discovers podcasting and quotes Adam Curry, about what's wrong with regular radio:

"99 per cent of what you hear on radio today is crap". Nuff said.

I have been interviewed in some media this year about blogging and the papers that have published interviews or linked to my blog are the following:

* Interview with TT Spektra was published during November and December in (see pdf):

Dagbladet (Sundsvall)
Hallandsposten
Hudiksvalls Tidning
Hälsinge-Kuriren
Jönköpings-Posten
Karlskoga-Kuriren
Karlskoga-Kuriren (again)
Kinda-Posten
Linköpings Tidning
Ljusdals-Posten
Mariestads-Tidningen
Nyheterna (Kalmar)
Piteå-Tidningen
Skaraborgs Läns Tidning
Skånska Dagbladet
Smålands-Tidningen
Skövde Nyheter
Tranås Tidning
TT Spektra
Vestmanlands Läns Tidning
Vetlanda-Posten
Vimmerby Tidning
Örebro Kuriren

* Internetworld published a long article about corporate blogging in December.

* Media monitoring company Observer ranked my blog the fifth most influential in Sweden. The list was published in:

Dagens Nyheter (Nov ??, not online)
Dagens Media (Nov 15) subscr. required
IDG.se (Nov 15)
Internetworld (Nov 15)
Sydsvenskan (Nov 21)
Falu-Kuriren (Nov 22)
Sundsvalls Tidning (Nov 22)

* I was interviewed for a longer article in Dagens Media along with Tove Lifvendahl of JKL and Mark Comerford of Stockholm University. Article was published in ?? (must check) and is not online.

* Sweden's first blog forum, Bloggforum 2004, was held in November and got some extra publicity when Dagens Nyheter censored a review of Bloggforum by journalist Oivvio Polite. Articles (that did not mention my blog) about the forum was published in:

Internetworld (Nov 15)
Göteborgs-Posten (Nov 17)
Smedjan (Nov 18)
Dagens Nyheter (Nov 19)
Journalisten (Nov 22)
Expressen (Nov 25)
Internetworld (Dec 10)
Helsingborgs Dagblad (Dec 13)
Norrbottens-Kuriren (Dec 14)
Piteå-Tidningen (Dec 16)
Norra Västerbotten (Dec 18)

Sofia Olsson Olsén, editor-in-chief of Swedish daily Norra Västerbotten has "done a PJ", i.e. started a blog on the paper's web pages. The blog is called Sofia OO just nu (see PJ just nu) Nice initiative, although the blog is missing just about everything that makes it a blog, like permanent links, an RSS feed and comments (well, you can comment at the bottom of the blog, but not individual posts). And she doesn't link to any other information on the web, so it sure looks more like a diary to me. Interesting to see one of the few comments, that negative comments supposedly have been removed. My advice, try make it more interactive and blog-like by adding the stuff mentioned above. Then it will be an interesting section on the paper's web page because Sofia OO writes in a very personal and candid way (example below for Swedish readers).

I övrigt fick jag samtal från en arg dansk boende i Ske-å som undrar om Norran äger aktier i Canal Digital. Vi har tydligen 100 procent av deras filmutbud i TV-bilagan, medan bara 40 procent av Viasats filmutbud. Jag får kolla det. Vi byter leverantör av bilaga vid årsskiftet, jag tar det nästa år. Särskilt om han ringer och är sur igen.

Many readers seem worried that Sofia will not have any time left for herself with the added work load of writing a diary. I sure would like to see the same concerns for PJ Anders Linder of Svenska Dagbladet...

"Läser och följer dina onsdagsrader, uppskattar din ärlighet och raka rör. Försöker även följa dagboken på nätet, i mån av tid. Men jag blir också lite orolig över dig? Hinner du med att ta hand om dig själv? Mellan möten, fotograferingar, möten igen, barnen, mail, modem (som kan driva vem som helst till vansinne!!!)"

Swedish PR agency Springtime got sued a few years ago by Spring Time Electronic Publishing for trademark infringement. Spring Time works with graphic production and publishing, while Springtime mainly works with public relations, lobbying and consulting. The district court has now decided that, although both companies are active in commercial communication and marketing, their respective businesses are quite different in terms of key competence and services. As a consequence Springtime gets to keep its name, reports Pointlex.

A new study looks at information management and meaning construction practices of online distributed classification (or free tagging) communities, like popular online services such as Furl, del.icio.us or Flickr.

"We have definitely arrived at a point in the development of human knowledge where the amount of content published online everyday far exceeds the ability of anyone to categorize and index such wealth of information. Even for a hypothetical individual or organization of great skill and capacity, the task of processing all that content would pose an almost insurmountable problem, without even considering the difficulty of developing and maintaining a taxonomy to accommodate the speed at which new knowledge is produced."

"[...] One approach, made possible by advances in network technologies, is to distribute the task amongst the maximum number of individuals possible. [...]
This principle of distribution is at work in socio-technical systems that allow users to collaboratively organize a shared set of resources by assigning classifiers, or tags, to each item. The practice is coming to be known as free tagging, open tagging, ethnoclassification, folksonomy, or faceted hierarchy [...] One important feature of systems such as these is that they do not impose a rigid taxonomy. Instead, they allow users to assign whatever classifiers they choose."

Some of the findings were quite interesting, for example that people used the "extended tag" as an informal way of notifiying a smaller community about certain links, like "for David" or "Did anyone attend this event?". Also, according to the study, "people seem to find more value in reviewing links than in submitting them".

The practice of distributing classification of content can be quite useful for filtering the huge amount of information on the internet. Both Flickr and del.icio.us allows you to read links with a certain tag (http://del.icio.us/tag/tsunami) and subscribe to it via RSS (http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/tsunami). I have not yet used Furl enough to be able to comment on its functionality.

In the wake of the tsunami disaster, Sweden's Ministry for Foreign Affairs are working hard to locate as many of the missing Swedes as possible. On Tuesday they sent an SMS to all Swedish mobile subscribers currently in Thailand, urging them to contact the Swedish embassy in Bangkok or to get in touch with their families back home. About 10,000 SMS's were sent. According to the Ministry's press contacts, they received more than two thousand names of people missing, many of people who are traveling on their own and aren't on the travel agencies' lists. Two individuals had collected 100 and 400 names, respectively, which they sent to the authorities.

A similar SMS was sent yesterday to Swedes currently reported to be in Sri Lanka. There are still more than 1400 Swedes missing.

Sweden's fourth largest daily, liberal Göteborgs-Posten now distributes content via RSS in five different categories:

Gothenburg: http://www.gp.se/rss/index.jsp?d=113
Sweden: http://www.gp.se/rss/index.jsp?d=102
World: http://www.gp.se/rss/index.jsp?d=103
Sports: http://www.gp.se/rss/index.jsp?d=104
Entertainment: http://www.gp.se/rss/index.jsp?d=180

Footnote: Link to my list of 172 Nordic media RSS feeds.

Sweden is one of the countries outside the region that has been most seriously affected by the tsunami tragedy. Officially there are 1400 Swedes still missing, but the numbers are insecure and potentially even bigger in reality. The Red Cross is urging everyone to help by donating money and if you have your own blog you can help by adding a banner and a link like the one below. International banners can be found here, but you may need a written permission by the Red Cross.

Brands are a vital part of culture and that is perhaps more obvious in hip hop than anywhere else. By tracking what brands are mentioned in popular hip hop and rap tunes, Agenda Inc are drawing some interesting conclusions about what brands are hot (Cadillac and Hennessy) or on their way out (Hilfiger and Courvoisier). The list can be seen as "a great barometer of consumer aspiration".

The brands that appear most frequently in the charts are fashion, cars and beverages. Cadillac tops the list of brands that have been mentioned most times in top 20 singles in the Billboard chart. Top ten are:

1 Cadillac 70 (times)
2 Hennessy 69
3 Mercedes 63
4 Rolls Royce 62
5 Gucci 49
6 Jaguar 37
7 Chevrolet 28
7 Cristal 28
9 Bentley 26
10 Maybach 25

Check out American Brandstand for the full list and a comprehensive analysis in pdf format.

Laura Ries has some great thoughts about managing "brand you" that I think are relevant to blogging, especially if you are blogging about a topic that has to do with your career. Laura writes:

"The most successful business people consider themselves a brand and market themselves according. And like product brands, it's not enough to just be well-known. You also have to stand for something in the minds of other people."

There are many examples where business people have managed their brand successfully via blogs, like Steve Rubel (Micro Persuasion) = Blogs and PR and Åsk Wäppling aka Dabitch (Adland) = Advertising to name just two in my own field of interest.

If you take Laura's advice and apply them to professional blogging it might look like this:

1. Do[es] you[r] [blog] have the right brand name?
With 4-5 million blogs it is getting harder and harder to give your blog a unique brand that can also help in positioning you as a thought leader in a certain field. That is especially true if you want to host your blog at Blogspot.com where many good names are already taken. The obvious choice to name the brand after yourself is of course ok as long as you don't share names with thousands of others.
2. Narrow the focus, don't try to be great at everything.
Many bloggers are commenting on a variety of topics, and do it with style. Erik Stattin is one good local example. But for most of us, focusing means that it's easier to carve out a niche where you can be #1. When blogs become ubiquitous it will be hard for general blogs to gain readers.
3. Use PR to build your brand.
Blogging can generate publicity for yourself our your company, especially if you are good at creating original content and not just refer to existing information in media without adding your [expert] opinion.

Liberal journalists read liberal blogs. That's not the way to increase the diversity of voices, is it? Peter Wolodarski, political journalist at liberal Dagens Nyheter likes to read liberal thinkers Dick Erixon and Johan Norberg. PJ Anders Linder links to several blogs from his own blog at liberal (or "independent conservative") Svenska Dagbladet. Which ones? Dick Erixon and Johan Norberg are two examples of the 7 links. Other examples are not-so leftist National Review.

But then again, people tend to read information and sources that confirm their point of view, and shy away from conflicting opinions, so we shouldn't be surprised.

I linked to Evelyn Rodriguez' blog in my recent post about PubSub. Apparently Rodriguez was unfortunate to be hit by the tidal wave when she was in a boat outside Phi Phi Island, but apart from hurting her leg she luckily survived. And she uses her blog to tell that she's alright.

Ordinary people are creating their own media and document the tragic incidents in southern Asia, sometimes better than what traditional media accomplish. Some are uploading photos to for example Flickr and you can surf Flickr for photos by searching for tags like "tsunami" or "earthquake".

More photos here and more links here. But don't forget to contribute to the thousands in need.

I revealed on Dec 22 that PubSub potentially had made some changes in their LinkRanks application that had a serious negative effect on many sites' ranking. My blog dropped 32,544 spots in one day, down from 7,495. Well, I didn't get any answer directly from PubSub, but their CEO made a comment in Trevor Cook's follow up post.

Hey Guys,
The reason for the sudden shift is that we increased the granularity of how we measure linkranks. Specifically, we added individual blogs from the various hosting services for the first time (e.g. livejournal.com/johndoe) - that has suddenly shifted everyone's ranking. Bob Wyman, our CTO, dropped 30,000 places (much to his chagrin). Check out his blog for more details - http://bobwyman.pubsub.com

Cheers,
Salim Ismail, CEO

PubSub's CTO Bob Wyman also posted a comment on his own blog.

The effect of this improvement in the granularity of the LinkRank calculation will take about 10 days to be fully felt. We need to wait for the impact of old links to fade out of the system and for the impact of more recent links to dominate. Once this settles out, it will be fascinating to try to figure out why some sites went up in LinkRank and others went down. In any case, we'll have more accurate and thus more useful numbers to work with in the future.

Please keep sending suggestions on how to improve LinkRanks -- and please forgive what will be inevitable "turmoil" in the numbers as we continue to increase the accuracy and granularity of reporting in the future.

So it seems that the new ranking is more accurate than the previous one, but taken into consideration the drastic changes in rankings, the application maybe was launched too soon. On Nov 18 Ismail said in a press release that "We now feel the system is ready for use by consumers and professionals across the country, and the world". But as a professional you would want the data from PubSub to be reliable and if changes are made you would expect some kind of information. That information should be clearly visible on the web site, not only on a blog that most people are not aware of. PubSub have yet not published any information on their site about the changes to LinkRanks.

The end of 2004 also means the end for two Swedish magazines. TTG have decided to stop publishing Bazaar, a magazine for interior design and ICA Förlaget, now known as Forma Publishing Group, will not continue to publish the marketing magazine Sälj & Marknadsföring. Both titles will be dropped due to insufficient ad sales.

Something seems to have changed with PubSub's LinkRanks the last 24 hours. My ranking has dropped considerably, and so have several other blogs that yesterday were in the top 10,000, while many others have seen no change at all. I know that the rankings can change substantially overnight, but this seems to be more than a coincidence. For example:

* Adland 36,290 (-35,103)
* CorporateBloggingBlog 42,407 (-22,787)
* Crossroads Dispatches 36,938 (-32,603)
* Earnie the Attorney 37,366 (-33,985)
* Kunal.org 36,553 (-34,735)
* Media Culpa 40,039 (-32,544)
* Micro Persuasion 35,795 (-35,558)
* Mymarkup.net 38,346 (-34,058)
* NevOn 36,733 (-34,674)

Could it be that PubSub are adjusting their system in a way that affects some blogs a lot, while others are not affected at all? Steve, it's your client. Am I too suspicious or has something changed?

What tv viewers really really want to see. TiVo Top 25 for the last week (ending 19/12/04). Top ten looks like this:

1. Desperate Housewives
2. The Apprentice
3. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
4. Lost
5. ER
6. The West Wing
7. CSI: Miami
8. Survivor: Vanuatu, Islands of Fire
9. Joey
10. CSI: NY

Desperate Housewives will debute on Swedish channel Kanal 5 this spring. Via Lost Remote.

Swedish e-mail list Virus Bulletin (Svenska Viruslistan) has started a blog about stuff related to internet security, reports IDG. It is being run by security expert Per Hellqvist from Symantec, but he points out that it is a personal blog and not an official corporate blog.

Neville Hobson has found an interesting report from Nielsen Norman Group about how to design a website in order to serve journalists best. Executive summary here.

One journalist described what he'd do when he could not find a press contact, or any of the facts he needed for his story:

"Better not to write it than to get it wrong. I might avoid the subject altogether."

The top-five reasons journalists gave for visiting a company's website:

* Find a PR contact (name and telephone number)
* Check basic facts about the company (spelling of an executive's name, his/her age, headquarters location, etc.)
* Discover the company's own spin on events
* Check financial information
* Download images to use as illustrations in stories

I shouldn't be telling you this, because it'll make it more difficult for me to get tickets next time they're in town, but Doves are on a mini tour to create some buzz around their third album "Some Cities", due in February. The Guardian has reviewed the band's performance on Wednesday at Hammersmith Palais in London. Watch out for this must-have album and a possible European tour.

http://www.comics.com/comics/grandave/archive/grandave-20041212.html (Via Buzz)

Bloggers weren't named persons of the year by TIME magazine today. Small surprise, George W. Bush did it again, like he did in 2000. But of course it's not all thumbs up for the President. As he puts it himself: "I don't expect many short-term historians to write nice things about me." Nuff said.

But bloggers get their piece of the pie too. TIME writes "10 things we have learned about blogs":

- Blogging Can Get You Fired
- Bloggers Get Scoops Too
- Bloggers Keep News Alive
- Bloggers Can Be Titillating
- Bloggers Can Be Fakers
- Bloggers Make Money
- Most Bloggers Are Women
- [Presidential] Candidates Love Blogs
- Pets Have Blogs Too
- Anyone Can Do It

Leif Pagrotsky, Minister for Education and Culture today discussed blogs with Tobias Billström of the Moderate Party. Due to the story with SVT journalist Per Gudmundson who had to quit blogging, Billström had asked Pagrotsky:

> if he thought that freedom of speech does not include employees of a public service company?

> if he thinks that individual journalists employed in public service companies can not express views in public, even if they are not in direct connection to the work that they do as employees at SVT?

I listened in to the debate and to summarize briefly, Pagrotsky declined any responsibility for the conflict. These issues are regulated in collective agreements between the employer and the union, and therefore he referred to the board of SVT. In other words, in the name of impartiality, it is ok for a public service company to issue a gag order on its employees. I didn't really expect him to say anything else.

UPDATE: Billström comments on his blog (in Swedish).

On Sunday, Time magazine will announce the magazine's Person of the Year, which it has done since 1927. The special issue will be in newsstands on Monday. Some leading contenders are Karl Rove, George W. Bush, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (Iraq), Mel Gibson (for The Passion of the Christ) and Michael Moore (for Fahrenheit 911). But the winner can also be a guy or a gal in pajamas - bloggers.

The magazine's managing editor Jim Kelly gives some hints in an interview on I Want Media. "We got a lot of votes for bloggers as the Persons of the Year."

IWM: Are bloggers leading contenders to be Persons of the Year?
Kelly: I would say that they are contenders, yes. You could name one blog and call it Blog of the Year, or name a group of people and call them Blogs of the Year. There are six or seven people who clearly have a lot of influence.

Via Micro Persuasion.

Swedish tabloid Expressen have started adding photos to its RSS feeds. To my knowledge, no other of the more influential Swedish media have photos in their feeds. Photos will make RSS an even stronger tool in generating traffic to media web sites, and others will certainly follow.

Expressen's feeds:
News:
http://expressen.se/rss/nyheter

Sport:
http://expressen.se/rss/sport

Entertainment:
http://expressen.se/rss/noje

In what can only be categorized as a milestone in "community marketing" or "citizen marketing", Spread Firefox, the volunteer organization promoting the adoption of Firefox web browser, today placed a two page ad in the New York Times with the names of the people who helped finance the launch of Firefox.

From the press release:

The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet, today announced that it has placed a two-page ad in the December 16th edition of the New York Times. The ad, coordinated by Spread Firefox, features the names of the thousands of people worldwide who contributed to the Mozilla Foundation's fundraising campaign to support last month's highly successful launch of the open source Mozilla Firefox 1.0 web browser.

Consumers are now not only creating their own media via blogs. Now they help create advertising too. The homemade iPod ad is another current example. MoveOn ads yet another from earlier this year.

Wired writes: School teacher George Masters has the marketing world abuzz with a homemade ad for Apple Computer's iPod that is rapidly "going viral." To some experts, Masters' ad heralds the future of advertising. Homemade ads will play a big part in marketing, just like blogging is shaking up the news.

In Sweden we sadly do the opposite and fake it. Food chain Coop is currently running a campaign with TV commercials that are produced by Coop's own members. Or so it looks. In reality they are not. The members in the ads are actors, although not professional ones, but they have been casted and are not the ones who came up with the idea for the commercials.

Link via Micro Persuasion.

Media Watchdogs: A group of heavy liberal groups are putting pressure on Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest owner and operator of television stations in the US. Media Matters for America with support by MoveOn, MediaChannel.org, Free Press, Working Assets, Robert Greenwald (Director, Outfoxed), AlterNet, and The Institute for America's Future, are protesting on what they call "Sinclair Broadcast Group's continued misuse of public airwaves" or in other words, conservative bias. Via the web site Sinclair Action, they are also encouraging citizens to put pressure on advertisers.

Link via DailyKos.

Yesterday I wrote about predictions for web design in 2005. Now Pete Blackshaw at ClickZ has some predictions for buzz-driven marketing and advertising in 2005:

> Blogs absorb flak, yet stay on track.
> "I'll watch the ads... for a price!"
> All media become product-placement vehicles.
> Wireless goes free (brought to you by Unilever).
> There'll be more integrated-branding misfires.
> We'll see a backlash to "sight, sound, and motion."

On the last point above, Blackshaw concludes: Don't be surprised if you start to see advertising that says something like, "This moment of silence is brought to you by (your brand here)."

Tobias Billström and Sven Otto Littorin of the Moderate Party think alike. So alike that they are posting close to identical entries on their blogs. Billström at Politiskt.nu and Littorin at his own blog.

UPDATE: A few minutes after my posting, Billström changed his post and added a link to Littorin's post, both in the text ("vi var några som reagerade på det") and at the bottom of the post (See also Sven Otto Littorin's original post). In the new version it looks like it is intentional that the posts have the same phrases. It didn't before.



Billström:
MUF hade rätt!
Av: Tobias Billström (m) den 14 december 2004

För ett tiotal dagar sedan skickade Moderata Ungdomsförbundet ett avslitet hästhuvud i tyg till Byggnads "som symbol för sitt framtida fackliga arbete". Vi var några som reagerade på det och tyckte att det var lite osmakligt. Allt facket gjorde var ju att driva sin linje om kollektivavtalen.

Men se så enkelt var det inte. Idag trappades konflikten upp - under ropen "go home, go home" blockerade byggfacket de lettiska byggjobbarna att komma in på sin arbetsplats. "De ska få veta att de är ett gäng svartfötter" säger Byggettans ordförande Torgny Jonsson i SvD.

Därmed har Byggnads kastat masken och visat vad frågan egentligen handlar om. Fackfolket har helt enkelt gett sig rollen som självpåtagna gränsstängare och passkontrollanter. Det handlar inte alls om att skydda letterna mot at bli "utnyttjade" av svenska företag. Det handlar om fackets privilegier och om "svenska jobb", som man så tydligt formulerar det. Som om inte en lett eller polack har samma rättigheter att ta ett jobb i Sverige. Det Byggnads ägnar sig åt är destillerad främlingsfientlighet.

Hur länge skall regeringen ska ge sitt "oreserverade stöd" till dem som använder sådana metoder? På fredag är det en särskild debatt i riksdagens kammare om just den "svenska" kollektivavtalsrsätten. Skall bli mycket intressant att se hur arbetsmarknadsminister Hans Karlsson skall försvara Byggnads agerande.

Det går för övrigt en röd linje mellan ord om "social turism", "lönedumping" och "svartfötter", och det är ingen trevlig linje. Noterar förresten att Attac stödjer Byggettan.

Med såna vänner behöver man inga fiender...

Littorin:
MUF hade rätt!

För ett tiotal dagar sedan skickade MUF ett avslitet hästhuvud i tyg till Byggnads "som symbol för sitt framtida fackliga arbete". Vi var några som reagerade på det och tyckte att det var lite osmakligt. Allt facket gjorde var ju att driva sin linje om kollektivavtalen.

Men se så enkelt var det inte. Idag trappades konflikten upp - under ropen "go home, go home" blockerade byggfacket de lettiska byggjobbarna att komma in på sin arbetsplats. "De ska få veta att de är ett gäng svartfötter" säger Byggettans ordförande Torgny Jonsson i SvD.

Fy fan, säger jag. Och undrar hur länge regeringen ska ge sitt "oreserverade stöd" till dem som använder sådana metoder. Det går en röd linje mellan ord om "social turism", "lönedumping" och "svartfötter", och det är ingen trevlig linje.

Noterar förresten att Attac stödjer Byggettan. Jojo, med såna vänner behöver man inga fiender...

I have been interviewed by Swedish Internetworld in the issue that comes out next week. Apparently I am on the cover as well (second from left). Haven't read it yet so I hope I say something intelligent...

UPDATE: So I have read the article now, and it looked ok. I just have to correct one fact, namely that I am not a PR consultant. I am working as Marketing Communications Manager at the Swedish office of one of the leading global law firms.

Any new readers that are interested in subscribing to this blog but are unsure of how to do it, here's what to do.

Go to www.bloglines.com and register for a free account. Then go back here and click on this icon. That's it.

Or, copy one of the following two addresses and paste it into your Bloglines account:
http://www.kullin.net/feed/atom.xml
http://feeds.feedburner.com/MediaCulpa

As expected, I had absolutely no chance in the final of the 2004 Weblog Awards, category Best European (Non-UK) Blog. Media Culpa was placed as #8, with a certain frogman grabbing half of all votes. Congrats to the Dissident Frogman and thanks to everyone that voted for me.

1. The Dissident Frogman 50.8%
2. BarcePundit 17.0%
3. A Fistful of Euros 10.8%
4. Hispalibertas 5.3%
5. La Petite Claudine 3.1%
6. The Joy of Knitting 2.4%
7. Elastico 2.3%
8. Media Culpa 1.9%
9. NouS 1.6%
10. Hot Loving gone cold 1.3%
11. Le Blaugue à Beleg 1.3%
12. Burp 1.0%
13. Turkish Torque 0.7%
14. NevOn 0.5%

There are a number of ways to rank the importance of blogs, like for example measuring inbound links via Technorati. PubSub today launched a new tool called LinkRanks for tracking a blog's inbound links the last 30 days. LinkRanks calculate a site's current ranking among all blogs that PubSub tracks. Media Culpa is currently ranked 6,523 which is in the top 0.1 per cent of all seven million blogs that PubSub tracks.



Link via Micro Persuasion.

UPDATE: Håkan Kjellerstrand has a list of several Swedish blogs and how they rank on LinkRanks.

Here is a list of the 100 oldest currently registered .com domains. The oldest one, symbolics.com, doesn't seem to have been updated since 1986.

This blog is sooo 2004. In 2005, according to predictions by Forty Media, web design will be about:

> Color of the year: Brown
> Pure red (the “new blue” of the past few years) falls into disfavor.
> Minimalism is out; detail is in.
> Designers realize that Verdana is ugly; most stop using it.
> Retro is out.

Link via Poynter.

Mac News Network reports that "Saab has quietly introduced its own iPod/MP3 Player audio integration system. The new system, listed in the most recent Saab Accessories Catalog from October 2004, offers direct input for and control of the iPod on its Saab 9-3, according to one MacNN reader: "I spoke with the parts department at my dealership and they confirmed that it's available. Evidently it's wired through to the center console armrest and will be out of site. A tech told me the unit has power and will be able to control the iPod from the steering wheel controls. I took this to mean switching songs via the OnStar / radio controls that are stock on Saab 9-3s." Apple and BMW announced iPod-compatible cars in September 2004."

Link via NevOn.

At the annual convention of the [North American] Association of Opinion Page Editors a panel discussed the future of op-ed pages and the problem of attracting a more diverse audience.

As one editor said:
"The main problem facing op-ed pages everywhere is that our average reader is a white man in his mid-40s. Which is fine, but we want more readers than that. So how do we attract younger readers, female readers, readers who are all sorts of colors and backgrounds?"

It would be interesting to hear if Svenska Dagbladet are tracking who reads their op-ed pages and whether their op-ed blog PJ just nu has had any effect in attracting a younger audience. One also wonders if the op-ed editors in general are white mid-40s men? Stats anyone?

Via editorsweblog.

More and more traditional media are starting to add RSS feeds to their web pages. In the Nordic countries this is still at an early stage and the number of users who subscribe via RSS is still very low. Most feeds have less than 100 subscribers via Bloglines and the publication with most subscribers in Bloglines is the Norwegian IT publication IT-avisen with 138 (as of 9 Dec 2004).

I have checked a sample of 50 important RSS feeds of traditional media in the Nordic countries in the Bloglines system and it is clear that IT and news are what interests most subscribers, 84 per cent of all subscriptions are for IT and general news. Business, sports, culture and entertainment have far less subscribers. This is of course an effect of both supply and demand.



Top 25 RSS feeds (out of 50 Nordic media feeds):



Among these 50 feeds, 92 per cent of all subscriptions are for Norwegian or Swedish feeds (N: 51%, S: 41%). Only 7 per cent are for Danish feeds and 1 per cent for Finnish. This figure might not be completely statistically correct, but I have chosen 50 feeds out of my list of 172 Nordic RSS feeds that I noticed had most subscribers. There might be RSS feeds that I am unaware of, and the Bloglines system is just one of many news aggregators. But I am convinced that it gives us some idea of what feeds are available and what subscribers choose.

As a comparison, here are the number of Bloglines subscribers for the RSS feeds of a selection of prominent Swedish blogs:

Tesugen.com 136 + 51 + 1 (three feeds)
Mymarkup.net 105 + +56 + 15 (three feeds)
CorporateBloggingBlog 103 + 82 (two feeds)
Det perfekta tomrummet 89
Johan Norberg 82
Henrik Torstensson 74
Media Culpa 72 + 15 (two feeds)
Annica Tiger 67
PJ just nu 54
Månhus beta 49
Chadie 42
JKL 34

UPDATE: Added feeds according to comments. Again.

Swedish IT publication Computer Sweden today started a blog. But where are the permalinks and the RSS feed???

The Times: Doctors confirm that Yushchenko was poisoned.

German business paper Handelsblatt has three blogs; Wirtschaftsprüfer, Ad Hoc and Transatlantischer Beobachter.

Try the "Transatlantic Observer" in English via Babelfish.

New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer yesterday used his blog to announce that he is running for governor in New York. This is an unconventional approach since most politicians normally make these announcements in speeches or in a statement.

His blog uses RSS and allows comments. CBS has more on the story.

I am a finalist in the 2004 weblog awards, in the category for best European, non-UK blog. If you like my blog, please cast your vote here and spread the word. You can vote several times, but only once every 24 hours. Voting ends on Dec 12.

Thanks to fellow PR blogger Neville Hobson for bringing it to my attention. His excellent blog is in the final too.

The story about journalist Per Gudmundson's blog is far from over. Tobias Billström of (m) the Moderate Party just now asked (interpellation) Leif Pagrotsky, Minister for Education and Culture:

> if he thought that freedom of speech does not include employees of a public service company?

> if he thinks that individual journalists employed in public service companies can not express views in public, even if they are not in direct connection to the work that they do as employees at SVT?

Dagens Nyheter today writes that liberal debater Johnny Munkhammar will lose his job for blogging about topics that are not in line with the vision of his employer the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv).

- He hasn't always had the same opinion as Svenskt Näringsliv, and it can be hard to separate when he speaks as a private person and when he speaks for us. Our mission is to represent the views of our member companies, says Inger Holmström, head of communications at Svenskt Näringsliv.

Just about a week ago we had the incident with journalist Per Gudmundson who was told to quit blogging and now this. What does that tell us about blogging in Sweden? I'm not sure yet. But clearly some bloggers should be nervous. Is your blog officially approved by your organization or is it clearly a private matter? If you don't have a clear answer to this question you should arrange for a meeting with your boss today.

The article is not online yet. Munkhammar says he will keep his blog.

Footnote: Bloggers saw this coming last week.

Pontus Schultz reads Wired. Especially the October issue.

Today I got my hands on the newest magazine on the Swedish market, Att:ention, a magazine about "business and pleasure" from Bonnier publishing house Bonzoo. Att:ention is media entrepreneur Pontus Schultz' new baby, so to speak (no, not the one he pushes around in a pram...). The magazine seems to be a salute to entrepreneurs, talents and free agents and is a nice mish mash of career advice, design, and portraits of young (good looking, of course) people who "made it". No-one is old, no-one is ugly. Throw in some soft porn, some gays and a bunch of former McKinsey consultants and you sort of see where this is heading. It's the dotcom boom all over again minus the hype, it is "brand you" and free agents and the talents rule. No, I am being a bit mean, it is really quite interesting and I'm looking forward to read more of the articles, but what's up with all these ex-McKinseys being mentioned over and over again? Wouldn't it be a bit more interesting to talk to someone who manages to stay at McKinsey?

Anywho. The magazine starts and ends with two terrible Wired rip-offs. First, it is the "wired/tired/expired" thing that gets not-so-reinvented. Hmm, so Tivo is hot, I thought that was so last year? The other thing from Wired is the Jargon Watch that gets duplicated and 2 out of the 4 "new words" in Att:ention are from Wired in October (bluespamming and click fraud). Even the reference to Gizmodo is in there. We don't want a "Wired meets Café", but two months later. Give me something I haven't read before. Not the Pinc House that I read about in Residence some, what, 12 months ago?

If we disregard those small mishaps, I haven't had time to read that many articles yet so maybe I'm jumping the gun here. I think Att:ention has potential. This is a magazine that I could very well imagine reading and I think that Schultz often has a good view of what's hot or not. But a magazine dedicated to entrepreneurship, new ideas and great thinkers can not survive by copying others.

Update: There's some good reading in here, for example the interview with Jesper Kärrbrink and the article about the Swedish music industry.

Local daily Smålandsposten and golf magazine Golf.se adds RSS feeds to their web pages.

SMP has two feeds:
http://www.smp.se/extras/rss.php (news)
http://www.smp.se/extras/rss.php?args=,102 (sport)

Golf.se has one:
http://www.golf.se/xml/rss/index_10_latest.rss

Footnote: Here is my list of 172 RSS feeds for Nordic media.

I think we can officially declare November 2004 as the month that blogs broke through on a wider scale in Sweden. There has been a significant increase in the number of online articles in traditional media that have mentioned blogs and some of the incidents that have helped bring blogs into the spotlight are:

> The first Swedish blog forum, Bloggforum 2004, in Stockholm. Thanks again Stefan & Erik for the initiative.
> Dagens Nyheter deleted a sentence about one of its journalists in Oivvio Polite's article about Bloggforum. This stirred up a big debate.
> Media monitoring company Observer decides to monitor 10+ blogs. Several traditional media report about this.
> Journalist Per Gudmundson had to quit blogging if he wanted to keep his job at SVT. Also made it into several mainstream media, like SVT, Sydsvenskan, Journalisten (1 & 2) etc.

Apart from the increase in number of articles online, there were at least three occasions when blogs were discussed on Swedish Television in November and early December, first the Gudmundson incident was discussed on Kulturnyheterna on SVT, then Malte and Chadie were interviewed in K2 on SVT24, followed by a discussion about blogs in SVT1 with PJ Anders Linder and Nicklas Mattsson. I also had a small part in evangelizing blogs during November as I was interviewed by TT Spektra. The articles appeared in at least 15 local Swedish dailies, including Skånska Dagbladet and VLT (only one of them online though).

Does this mean that most people now know what a blog is? Definitely not. Most Swedes still haven't heard about blogs or at least are not aware of what it is. But mainstream media are continuing to write about blogs in December, for example about how blogs were named word of the year by Merriam-Webster. Slowly, blogs are becoming mainstream.

UPDATE: My interview with TT Spektra has now been in 15 Swedish dailies:
Hallandsposten
Hudiksvalls Tidning
Hälsinge-Kuriren
Karlskoga-Kuriren (twice)
Kinda-Posten
Linköpings Tidning
Ljusdals-Posten
Mariestads-Tidningen
Nyheterna (Kalmar)
Skaraborgs Läns Tidning
Skånska Dagbladet
Vestmanlands Läns Tidning
Vimmerby Tidning
Örebro Kuriren

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