Author: kullin

Person of the year: Bush, not bloggers

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

Blog discussion in the parliament

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).

Person of the year – a guy in pajamas?

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.

Expressen adds photos to RSS feed

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

Firefox New York Times ad – a first in community marketing?

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.