Five of the top ten most visited Swedish blogs on the portal Bloggtoppen.se are about fashion (marked in red in the graph below). Svenska Dagbladet interviewed several of these young bloggers today and discussed their growing influence on purchase decisions. Some of them say they have to buy the items themselves before they blog about them, because they sell out. The other five top blogs are part of the Feber ("Fever") network.

A thing that interested me was if I could find any correlation between the number of visits to a blog and the number of subscribers. After all, the fact that you can subscribe to news is one of the big benefits of blogs. So I checked Bloggtoppen which measures the number of weekly visits to member blogs (and the accuracy of these figures are constantly up for debate) and as far as I understand, the current numbers are visits so far this week. A blog like Tjuvlyssnat, with almost 50,000 visits this week, has only got 149 subscribers in Bloglines, which is probably the most popular RSS reader around. In fact, all of the top ten blogs have very few subscribers (in Bloglines) as you can see below.



Of course you shouldn't put too much importance on the ratio figure, it's just a number I calculated in order to compare the top blogs. If we look at my blog, I have in total 210 Bloglines subscribers (two feeds) and 261 visits so far this week according to Bloggtoppen. That is a ratio of 80.46%. Quite a difference from the blogs above, don't you think? I have no explanation to this big difference. At first I thought it could have something to do with the way different blogs publish feeds, but all top ten blogs do like I do, which is publish the full RSS feed. So in theory you wouldn't actually need to visit the website to read the posts (apart from Videofeber where I think you need to visit the site to check out the videos).

Maybe it's just me...

Tags: blogs, fashion, Sweden, bloggar, Sverige. Ping.

The blog portal Knuff.se lists the 50 Swedish blogs with most incoming links (from Swedish blogs), during the last few months. Media Culpa is at #23 and there are a few other media and marketing related sites on the list, like Beta Alfa 2.0 (#16), NMI at #38 and Martin Jönsson at #40.

Tags: blogs, Sweden, bloggar, Sverige. Ping.

Fashion retailer La Redoute has made an impression in the blogosphere. Fashion blogs are very popular and the company is a partner with the advertising network Tradedoubler which many fashion bloggers use to generate revenue for themselves. In a new drive, the company ran a promotion on its site where all products were sold at a 50% discount for only half an hour. Between 19.00 and 19.30 last night - shoppers' heaven! Just the kind of campaign that will drive blogging shopaholics nuts. The word "redoute" is now one of the top words among blog posts, according to the blog portal Knuff.se:



So does this translate to "success"? Not necessarily. The people who managed to actually buy something were really happy, but many others were only left angry and disappointed.

Emilee: "Okej, La Redoute's fenomenala 30-minuters rea var ju väldigt lyckad. Eller inte. Snarare det sämsta jag varit med om." ["The worst I've ever seen"]

One comment to this blog post by Sandra: "jag lyckades men med deras leveranser vet man ju inte. en klänning jag köpte ska komma om 5-10 veckor. Brukar ju sluta med aldrig och sedan när den kommer in i lager så säljer den slut...hehe :-p"

Engla's Showroom: "Läste bland alla kommentarerna i inlägget under att det var många som ej lyckades handla till halva priset hos La Redoute igår. Jag var en av dem. Blev insläppt kl 19.25 till slut. Men när jag sedan kom till kassan så tog det ca 30 minuter innan sidan laddat färdigt och när den gjort det. Tekniskt fel! Ja sedan kostade allt som vanligt såklart. Jag tycker La Redoute borde tänkt på att haft det under en längre tid så att alla verkligen kunde handla." ["When I got to the check-out it took 30 minutes for the page to load and then. Technical error!"]

One comment to this blog post by Therese: "tja.... jag hängde på låset kl 19, kom in direkt. Försökte komma till kassan mellan 19.20 och 20.10 - MEN bara felmeddelanden. SURT! ILLA!" ["Tried to get to the check-out between 19.20 and 20.10. But only technical errors!"]

When you surf around these blogs you find more of these comments from shoppers who drew a blank. So, if La Redoute is monitoring what is said about their brand in the blogosphere they might be able to repair the damage they caused. If they are "guillouing", i.e. ignoring the blogosphere, they might make the same mistake again.

Rick Murray, executive vice president of Edelman, said it well:
"We look at the blogosphere as a focus group with 15 million people going on 24/7 that you can tap into without going behind a one-way mirror."

Worth noting is that none of the referenced blogs above are included in media monitoring company Observer's list of monitored blogs.

UPDATE: La Reduote makes an effort to reach out to affected bloggers. But they are apparently not offering any concrete solution yet, as would be desired.

Footnote: Att guilloua = ignorera bloggar. Från Jan Guillou.

Tags: fashion, fashion blogs, mode, modeblogg. Ping.

To get a better picture of the Swedish blogger and blog reader, I conducted an online survey between June 28 and July 4, 2006 where 700 blog readers answered a number of questions. BlogSweden 2 is the second annual blog survey that I have conducted and here are some key results:

Bloggers: The typical Swedish blogger in the survey is:

• Female
• 26-30 years old
• has a college/university degree
• would vote for the Social Democratic Party if there was an election today (read: between June 28 and July 4, 2006)
• has a broadband connection
• blogs because she likes to write
• updates her blog every day
• has nothing against being contacted by companies in her role as a blogger
• is anonymous
• reads 6-10 blogs daily
• spends 6-10 hours per week reading blogs
• never uses an RSS reader to read blogs
• likes to read blogs about everyday life experiences
• reads blogs to read “ordinary” people’s views
• has never clicked on an advertisement on a blog

Blog readers: The typical blog reader in the survey has a similar profile, but:

• would vote for the Moderate Party if there was an election today (read: between June 28 and July 4, 2006)
• reads 1-5 blogs daily

Other interesting results from the survey:

• Half of all Swedish blog readers in the survey spend 5 or more hours per week reading blogs (43 minutes or more per day) which is more than the Swede generally spends on reading daily newspapers.
• Most female blog readers don’t use an RSS reader to read blogs, (25.5% use RSS at least sometimes), but male blog readers do (59.6%)

Male blog readers prefer reading blogs about:
• Politics and society (69.9%)
• Journalism and media (59.3%)
• IT and blogging (54.7%)
• Everyday life experiences (35.6%)
• Literature and writing (24.9%)
• Economy and entrepreneurship (24.6%)
• Advertising and PR (23.4%)

Female blog readers prefer reading blogs about:
• Everyday life experiences (74.7%)
• Fashion and design (39.9%)
• Journalism and media (38.8%)
• Literature and writing (38.5%)
• Politics and society (32.2%)
• Parenthood and children (31.3%)
• Food and beverages (31.3%)

• Women blog anonymously (68.2%), but men don’t (29.6%)
• Nearly four out of ten bloggers have at least once regretted something they posted on their blog.
• One in four bloggers have at least once felt harassed by comments in the blogosphere.
• Male bloggers blog to a higher extent than female bloggers to influence others, strengthen their brand, to create an archive of information and because there is a need for more voices in the public debate.
• Nine out of ten bloggers update their blog every week. Female bloggers update their blogs more often than male bloggers (68.9% at least once a day, compared to 46.6% of male bloggers).
• Male bloggers more often than female bloggers have ads on their blogs (18.2% compared to 3.9%).
• More male bloggers say they have clicked on an advertisement on a blog (40.8% compared to 28.4% of female bloggers).

I will upload as many graphs as possible to Flickr, tagged with "blogsweden2".

The entire report (pdf) can be found here in English or in Swedish. Last year's survey, BlogSweden 1.0 is here in English and in Swedish. I'm sorry that it took so long to translate the report and if I will do a third survey I need to find a less time-consuming solution in order to produce a report in both languages.

Footnote: Respondents were chosen through a convenience sample.

Tags: Sweden, surveys, blog research, blogsweden, bloggsverige, bloggar. Ping.

Swedish blogger Oscar Swartz gets 150,000 kronor from IIS, the public trust that manages the Swedish top domain .se. He gets the grant in order to expand his blog with a wiki to make it a centre for citizen journalism.

Swartz writes:

"Med inspiration från exempelvis Wikipedia och det som kallas "citizen journalism" kommer jag att starta ett projekt för att försöka kanalisera den här aktiviteten till någonting som jag kallar Medborgarjournalistik. Man kanske kan se idén som en "journalistisk tankesmedja som arbetar med Open Source-tänkandet som grund" och som har ämnet fri kommunikation som grundläggande tema och intresse. Tanken är att dra igång en Wiki-baserad sajt där kunskapen skall kunna växa fram och ackumuleras med hjälp av många användares insatser."

In short, he hopes to build a wiki based site for open-source collective reporting, perhaps similar to what Jay Rosen is working on with his project NewAssignment.net.

Tags: citizen journalism, wiki, Oscar Swartz, medborgarjournalistik. Ping.

The Swedish Institute runs Sweden.se, "the official gateway to Sweden". Today the site also includes links to 9 Swedish blogs and podcasts written in English, and Media Culpa is one of them.

The other 8 are:

456 Berea St
andreasviklund.com
Annes Food
How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons
Karin's Style Blog
Letters to Marc Jacobs
NoisedFisk
Polarbear Podcast

Tags: Sweden, blogs, Sverige, bloggar. Ping.

Stationsvakt writes about Coop and its out-dated linking policy in which the company wants to control the style and typeface of any incoming links to its website. I can't even manage to write something sarcastic about this attitude. Unfortunately, it wasn't very hard to find other examples of silly linking policies (In Swedish, sorry) where companies demand that you seek their written consent prior to any linking.

ACNielsen:
Länkar kan endast ha formen av text och får endast ha beteckningen "ACNielsen."

Meca, a retailer in automotive parts:
Länkning till Meca.se får endast ske efter Meca Scandinavia AB:s föregående skriftliga medgivande.

TT-Line, the ferry-service company:
Länkning till dessa sidor får endast göras efter godkännande från TT-Line.

(TT-Line should consider tidying up their website. The Dutch, French and German versions all link to the German domain, but in English.)

Update 31 Oct: Coop have now updated their link policy. Via Fyra nyanser av brunt.

Tags: policies, links, internet, webben. Ping.

If you have an idea for a blog post, don't sit on it for a month because if it's a good idea, some other blogger will post before you do. A month ago I planned to do a similar study that Steve Rubel did regarding the largest advertisers and how high Wikipedia entries rank in the Google search results. I did the search but I just haven't come around to publish it.

So instead I suggest that you have a look at Richard Gatarski's very thorough investigation and report (in Swedish) that he published yesterday. He has done a good job and checked the 60 largest advertisers in Sweden and on average, Wikipedia entries came up before the company website. The average Google rank for Wikipedia articles was 9, which means they are in the important top ten results. For Coca-Cola, Hennes & Mauritz och Biersdorf, Wikipedia articles are as high as #1.

My results pointed in the same direction. I checked Sweden's ten largest advertisers during Jan-June 2006 and 6 out of 10 are in the top ten results [search performed on Sept 17].

Unilever 7
Telia 14
KF 8
Ica 8
Volkswagen 16 (Volkswagen Beetle 14)
Volvo 7
Cosmetique France - (L'Oréal 7)
Viasat 14 (Viasat Sport 10)
Föreningssparbanken 11
Tre 28

[Found via Mymarkup.]

Tags: wikipedia, brands, Google, Coca-Cola, reklam, wiki. Ping.

PR agency Edelman has been under intense fire the last few days for being involved in a pro-Wal-Mart blog, but not being open about who the sponsor is. MediaPost writes about the blog called "Wal-Marting Across America":

"The blog, launched Sept. 27, was profiled in this week's issue of BusinessWeek, which exposed the site as a promotional tactic engineered by Working Families for Wal-Mart (WFWM), an organization launched by Wal-Mart's public relations firm Edelman. WFWM paid for the RV [Recreational Vehicle ]and all travel expenses, rerouted the trip's original plan, and plastered a logo on the RV's side. Though a banner ad announced WFWM sponsored the site, it did not divulge Wal-Mart paid for the couple's RV, gas, food and other expenses."



It took a few days until Richard Edelman responded with an apology.

"I want to acknowledge our error in failing to be transparent about the identity of the two bloggers from the outset. This is 100% our responsibility and our error; not the client's."

Constantin Basturea has a good set of comments from the PR blogosphere. See also Kevin O'Keefe.

[Cartoon: courtesy of Gaping Void.]

Tags: Edelman, Wal-Mart, PR, public+relations. Ping.

Gotlands Allehanda asks five locals if they read blogs.

Yes.
Seldom.
No.
No.
No.

What a fantastic potential for growth!

Footnote: The woman from Solna is disqualified :)

Tags: blogs, Sweden, Gotland, bloggar. Ping.

Swedish business magazine Att:ention will be integrated with Veckans Affärer and only be published twice a year. But Attention, the member magazine for the association of people with neurophysiological functional disorders, is still alive and kicking.

Tags: media, magazines, attention, media. Ping.

"Den dagen bloggar fäller en riksdagsledamot eller minister är bloggen etablerad". Johan Norberg, Bloggforum 2004.

"The day blogs bring down a member of the parliament (Riksdag) or a Minister, then the blog has become established". Johan Norberg, Bloggforum 2004.

That day is today. Sweden's new Minister for Trade, Maria Borelius, today resigned, after a series of negative articles that took off after a blogger, Magnus Ljungkvist, revealed some startling facts about her and her husband's income during the 90's. Borelius only lasted a record short period of 8 days as Minister.

Background to the story here and for example here.

Update: Aftonbladet gives Magnus the recognition he deserves. Expressen still pretend it's their gig.



Tags: blogosphere, grassroots journalism, Magnus Ljungkvist, Maria Borelius, bloggosfären. Ping.

I reacted to the new tv commercial from Siba, a Swedish retailer of electronics equipment. It sounded like a complete rip-off from Avis' classic pay-off "We try harder". Siba's new pay-off is "Är man inte störst så får man anstränga sig mer" or in English, "If you're not the biggest, you need to try harder".

After a bit of search on the net, I see that others have commented about this too, here and in the comments to this article at Resumé. Apparently Siba has been criticized before for plagiarising Apple's "Switch" commercials.

Tags: advertising, Avis, reklam, Siba. Ping.

Done that, been there, etc. Blogger Beta Alfa 2.0 yesterday illustrated his blog post about the new ministers that didn't pay their tv licenses, with a reference to a classic tv commercial. In the commercial, people who didn't pay their license get a snail on their eye.

Today, Metro (large pdf) does the same.

Tags: bloggers, media, beta alfa, nyheter. Ping.

There is a story online today about the "Lesotho Promise", the biggest diamond to be found in 13 years, which was sold on Monday for about $12 million. Many of the articles are illustrated with photos of the mega-diamond and if you check Yahoo News, you find at least 11 photos that the editors could choose from. The interesting thing is that you can get a feel of whether the papers chose the "best" photo or not, since users have voted for their favourite pics. The 11 photos got this many votes so far:

Pic 1: 1587 votes
Pic 2: 69 votes
Pic 3: 116 votes
Pic 4: 105 votes
Pic 5: 88 votes
Pic 6: 67 votes
Pic 7: 130 votes
Pic 8: 100 votes
Pic 9: 91 votes
Pic 10: 202 votes
Pic 11: 150 votes

Dagens Nyheter and Ekonominyheterna chose photo no 9 with only 91 votes while Dagens Industri (photo on front page, not in the article) used a photo that is similar (but not identical) to photo no 1, the most popular photo by far. Should that indicate that Dagens Industri picked the best photo? Well, maybe you shouldn't always give people what they want, but admit that it is a fun test. And I wonder if Yahoo News have illustrated their article with photo no 1 because it got the most votes? If so, it's a nice example of how you can include readers in the production of news.

Oh, and by the way. BBC got their (web tv) reports from no other than - Jonny Dymond:

"The diamond, about the size of a golf ball, is the 15th largest ever discovered. Jonny Dymond reports from Belgium."

Tags: diamonds, photography, foto, nyheter. Ping.

On 4 October, Dagens Nyheter started podcasting. Johan Åkesson at DN På Stan talks every Thursday about music and entertainment. The first podcast is a 12 minute piece about for example Japanese music and Swedish band Koop. Marit Bergman is interviewed as well. The sound quality is not quite up to top radio standard yet, but apart from that I think it worked out nicely.

RSS feed here.

Tags: podcasting, music, musik, poddradio, Koop. Ping.

Oooooh how hard it is for mainstream media to credit bloggers with a scoop. Aftonbladet's Helle Klein posts about blogger Magnus Ljungkvist's scoop on her blog at Aftonbladet.se:

"(En av de första som påpekade detta var bloggaren Magnus Ljungkvist)"

"(One of the first to point this out was blogger Magnus Ljungkvist)"

Well, that's the closest we've seen so far to giving the right credit to Magnus (I understand that Aftonbladet would not want to credit competitor Expressen, unless they really really had to). But he wasn't one of the first. He was the first. The first. And not by minutes but by almost one day. It's not very hard to prove, you just need to check his RSS feed to find that out.

If you are going to give someone credit for his scoop of the year, then do it properly, not with a "von oben" attitude like "I don't really have to do this, but I'll be nice this time".

More in my previous post.

Update: Lena Mellin does the right thing and writes about Magnus' story in today's Aftonbladet. Well done, Lena!

"Familjen Borelius inkomster avslöjades för övrigt av s-bloggaren Magnus Ljungkvist, pressekreterare i Stockholms läns landsting och tidigare medarbetare till demokratiminister Britta Lejon.
Bloggen håller på att bli
politikens skarpaste verktyg.
Den har redan skördat offer."

[Hat tip to Clas for the link.]

Tags: blogosphere, grassroots journalism, MSM, Magnus Ljungkvist, Maria Borelius, bloggosfären. Ping.

My friend and former colleague Magnus Ljungkvist has done some journalistic digging regarding Sweden's new Minister for Trade, Maria Borelius. She confessed that she had hired a cleaing woman in the 90's without paying the proper payroll taxes. Borelius claimed that she otherwise shouldn't have afforded to pay for the services. The story broke on Saturday and yesterday Magnus published his blog post about the matter where he reveals that Borelius in fact had a much higher income than the average Swedish woman. He updated his investigation later the same day by adding the income for Borelius husband which clearly reveals that their income during the decade totalled more than 16 million kronor.

His investigative reporting immediately gained positive responses in the blogosphere. But mainstream media weren't interested in his sensational findings. Magnus told me that he had pitched the story to Aftonbladet who had declined to report about it.

But today, Expressen is pretending that they have the scoop of the week when they write about the same topic, one day later than Magnus.

"Expressen kan i dag avslöja att Maria Borelius och hennes man tillsammans tjänade över 16 miljoner kronor under 1990-talet."

"Expressen today reveals that Maria Borelius and her husband earned more than 16 million kronor during the 1990's."

And other media were quick to follow suit (1, 2, 3 and 4 to take some examples). LO-tidningen re-writes the story without crediting either Magnus or Expressen (!)

There are two possible scenarios.

1) Reporters at Expressen read Magnus' post and stole his story without giving him credit.
2) Expressen were already working on the same story but Magnus beat them to the scoop, proving that bloggers can fill a vital roll in investigative journalism, sometimes even better than MSM.

Either way, credit where credit's due. This was a scoop from the blogosphere and none of the mainstream media noticed this fact, or worse, noticed and ignored it. Maybe it's time that news editors update their RSS feeds subscriptions (if they have any).

Tags: blogosphere, grassroots journalism, MSM, Magnus Ljungkvist, Maria Borelius, bloggosfären. Ping.

I've always had a thing for lists and rankings. When I was younger I used stay up late and scribble down the UK top 40 chart on a noisy 1440 kHz Radio Luxembourg. It was a great way to discover new music and I especially recall hearing the brilliant "Telegraph" by the Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark for the first time, a very hard band name to catch, especially at the low volume I had to use not to disturb my parents. But this was not supposed to be a post about old New Romantic classics, no, I wanted to raise a question about the Technorati rankings that I follow like a paparazzi after Paris Hilton. I have noticed that Technorati does not register all incoming links to my blog and I am sure that there are a number of reasons for that, like for example that they are published on some obscure local blog platform from a tiny north European country. I understand that there are a large number of blogs that Technorati simply does not track (yet). No problem with that.

What I don't get is why an incoming link from Boing Boing, the second most linked blog on the planet, does not show up in my Technorati cosmos? That's like a thing that goes into your CV, so obviously I'd like that to show up. The first time Media Culpa got link love from Boing Boing, it was registered, so something must have changed at either Technorati or Boing Boing.

Tags: Technorati, BoingBoing, Flickr, bloggar, bloggosfären. Ping.

This seems to be the week when former colleagues get new great jobs. Congrats to Nyamko Sabuni for landing the position as Minister for Integration and Gender Equality issues in the new Swedish government.

This is neat. Go here and type in the URL of any Flickr photo and it gets displayed very nicely on a black or white background. You can even just type in the ID number of any photo in the URL (for example: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/onblack.php?id=250000007

Here's one of my photos: 'DSCN0946' On Black

Via Micropersuasion.

Tags: Flickr, photo, bloggar, bloggosfären. Ping.

Few things are so instructive as reading about people in your own profession that screw up. And pitching bloggers is an art form few are able to master. Like in this example, in natural irritable Gawker style.

"How Not to Send Things to Gawker Stalker"

On my home turf, this would probably have to be named PR blunder of the week. Peter Eriksson, spokesperson for the Swedish Green Party, lashed out at Leif Johansson, the CEO of Volvo, for its decision not to continue to produce bi-fuel cars. Problem was that Johansson is CEO of AB Volvo, not Volvo Cars which was sold to Ford in 1999. Ouch.

- It would be nice if politicians on this level could tell one company from another. After all, AB Volvo is Sweden's largest company, a press contact at Volvo commented.

Tags: public relations, PR blunder, Gawker, PR. Ping.

At 2 PM today, Fredrik Reinfeldt was elected new Prime Minister of Sweden. When Aftonbladet reports about his career to date, they go to Wikipedia to find background information. This practice has become more common the last year or so. Göteborgs-Posten did it earlier this week and SVT did it a week ago. In spite of the recent critisism against the accuracy of Wikipedia, more and more journalists rely on it as a trustworthy source. And no wonder, Wikipedia did well in an accuracy test against the Encyclopedia Britannica last year.

Here is a chart that reveals the number of articles in which Wikipedia has been mentioned in Swedish online media 2004-2006. Source: Retriever.



Footnote: the graph above of course also includes articles about Wikipedia as such.

Tags: Wikipedia, Sweden, Fredrik Reinfeldt, wiki. Ping.

This one is really good...

Tags: humour, George W Bush, humor. Ping.

I'm fascinated by the fact that communications weekly Dagens Media has started to publish rumours. Isn't that what bloggers are for? Before this article about a new Managing Director for Edelman UFO in Sweden, the paper states that the information is not verified (Obekräftad info). So much for the editorial process...

And how long should a rumour be allowed to be up on the website before it is confirmed? The bitter rival Resumé publishes all the facts in the story a few hours later, but Dagens Media has still not updated yesterday's article.

Anyway, congratulations to my former colleague Marianne Bäärnhielm to a new job, and congrats to Edelman UFO for a great recruitment.

Tags: public relations, Edelman, pr, Dagens Media, Resume. Ping.

The dust has barely settled after yesterday's launch of the new free daily Punkt SE, when yet another newspaper sees the light of day - Täby Danderyd Tidning, a bi-weekly local paper for the two cities Täby and Danderyd north of Stockholm. But this is not part of the current free daily craze that has hit the Nordic countries, no T&D is a subscribed morning paper. While I admit that this part of greater Stockholm is in what could be considered "media shadow", I admire their guts. The competition is stiff with three free dailies currently being handed out across the region and one (Mitt i Täby) being distributed directly to the local households. T&D aims to be the leading local paper in the region within five years, and who knows, stranger things have happened.



And while we are on the subject of new media investments, Aftonbladet today revealed the name for its new tv channel - TV7. Starting next Monday they threaten us with "Aftonbladet in a tv format".

What is surprising is that Aftonbladet two days in a row have launched new media projects that they don't own the domain names for. Punkt.se is owned by Spray and TV7.se has been owned by a company called Esias Consulting KB since 2001 (contact name Svante Tegnér, the über-brat of Stockholm city). Esias Consulting KB lost a legal dispute for the domain sportnytt.se to SVT in 2003, but that was an old brand. TV7 is brand new and such a dispute may not be as easy to win for Aftonbladet.

Tags: media, tv, Aftonbladet, tv7, media, Danderyd. Ping.

A blog voice long missed is back after almost two years of silence. Yes, Per Gudmundson no longer works for SVT, the Swedish public service television, which means he is back in the blogosphere. [Via Erik.]

Let's hope this is the last media project with "24" in the title (please?) At 6 PM this evening, local daily Norrköpings Tidningar launched its new local tv channel 24nt. The channel can be accessed via cabel-tv, Ip-tv, web-tv, pod-tv and terrestrial digital tv. 24nt will be a news channel that runs in 20 minute formats, consisting of 10 minutes of news and sports, 2 minutes of weather and information, two one-minute blocks of commercials and 6 minutes of other programmes.

Other "24s": 24timer, NA24, N24, SVT24 and so on...

Tags: 24, podtv, media, 24nt. Ping.

Swedish daily Aftonbladet has been under intense fire for naming its new free daily Punkt SE ("dot SE"). The internet portal Spray has been the owner of the domain punkt.se since 1996 and Stiftelsen för Internetinfrastruktur, the foundation that overlooks the Swedish top domain .SE has not taken lightly on the intrusion. In an article in Svenska Dagbladet the foundation writes that Aftonbladet are mooching off the good reputation of the internet and demands that the paper is called something else. The reply from Niklas Silow, chief editor of .SE, raises more questions than it answers:

"Ja, vi renommésnyltar. Men inte på den svenska toppdomänen .se eller Stiftelsen för internetinfrastruktur. För när det gäller nyheter, journalistik eller tidningar har inte topp-domänen något renommé att snylta på. Det har däremot Aftonbladet och jag kan inte tänka mig ett bättre varumärke för en gratistidning att renommésnylta på."

In short, what he says is that the top domain .se does not even have a reputation for news, journalism or newspapers (!). Eh, I beg to differ. Last time I looked, I noticed several Swedish papers that delivered news via this new thing called the internet. Yes, it's true.

In his last sentence, Silow opens for a compromise and welcomes a dialogue.

Furthermore, Bonnier still owns the publishing rights for the magazine Se, which it published in the 1970s and Bonnier have threatened Aftonbladet with a law suit.

So today when the paper was launched we can see that Aftonbladet has removed the dot from the logo and the daily called Punkt SE is now ironically without dot. This seems to be a last minute decision since the branded clothes of the distributors still carry the old logo, with the dot.

It remains to be seen if this will be enough to silence the critics.

Update: Pressens Tidning, Martin Jönsson and Beta Alfa 2.0 have already commented.

Tags: media, domains, Aftonbladet, media, punktse. Ping.