Sweden beats Nordic rivals in social media Olympics

The Olympic games in Rio 2016 are engaging large audiences in social media. However, some reports suggest that the volume of interactions in social channels are lower than expected. A survey of US viewers shows that fewer people are following the Olympic Games via social networks than had said they expected to.

But many people are commenting and sharing views on Twitter for example. According to statistics from Socialbakers, the US and Brazil are the countries that most people are tweeting about, followed by India.

Most interactions about Sweden
If we look at Twitter conversations about the Nordic countries, Sweden is clearly in the lead before Denmark (Aug 5 – Aug 16). Almost 100,000 tweets about Sweden and 57,000 about Denmark. There are significantly fewer comments about Norway and Finland. The peak for Sweden came after the women’s football team beat USA in the quarter finals on penalties.

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More statistics on social media at the Olympics can be found here.

Follow the Eurovision on social media

The first of two semi finals of the Eurovision Song Contest takes place tonight in Copenhagen, Denmark. New this year is the ambition to bring the participants closer to the audience via social media.

The Social Green Room
Social media has become increasingly important as the place to read and share opinions about the contest. So to make it even easier to find live reporting from the participating countries, the Danish public service television channel DR has created a Social Green Room that collects updates from the artists official Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts. You can either follow a stream of updates or select updates from one country.

Official Eurovision social media channels:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EurovisionSongContest

Instagram: http://instagram.com/eurovision

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Eurovision and https://twitter.com/eurovisionpress

Twitter hashtags: #eurovision #esc2014

eurovision-ticktock

Like in recent years, some artists are promoting hashtags of their own, like the Ukraine’s #ticktock. You can also use the country code for each country as a hashtag, like #SWE for Sweden and #DEN for Denmark. A list of country codes can be found here.

Generous Danish Lotto millionaire on Facebook is fake

Ok folks, it is time to apply some critical thinking to social media. As I blogged about yesterday, it is incredibly easy to trick thousands of people to like a fake account and even post their email addresses publicly on Instagram. Today I found another example on Facebook that was posted yesterday evening.

A Danish guy says he won 23.5 million Danish kroner on Lotto and that he will choose two people who like his picture who he will give 75,000 DKK. The problem, it is fake.

danish-lotto-winner It took me about 30 seconds to search for the facts on Google. A Danish newspaper wrote about it this morning. According to a representative at Danske Spil, the company behind the Danish Lotto, the coupon in the picture is from February and that no such large prizes were awarded during February. The person in the photo is not a Lotto winner.

The image has been shared 62,000 times since last evening.

Once again, take a second or two to double check if the image you are about to share is fake or not. It might save you some embarrasement.

2.5 million LinkedIn members in the Nordic countries

The social network LinkedIn has grown to more than 135 million members and there are now 2.5 million members in the Nordic countries, according to statistics from Socialbakers.com. Sweden has the highest number of users, 862,000, but the highest penetration can be found in Denmark (14.62%).

linkedin statistics sweden denmark norway finland

More Americans find jobs via Facebook than LinkedIn
With its career focus, LinkedIn is often mentioned as an important social network for job hunting and recruiting. New statistics show, however, that more Americans claim to have gotten their current job through Facebook than through LinkedIn: 18.4 million compared to 10.4 million. Either way, social networks are increasingly playing a vital role in connecting the work force with available jobs.

Note: Iceland is not yet included in Socialbakers’ statistics.

More than half of Swedes and Danes use social media for travel

Smartphones and tablet computers are transforming the traveller experience. A new report – The always-connected traveller: How mobile will transform the future of air travel”by Amadeus, explains how the way travellers interact with the airline industry, as well as travel and tourism in general, is about to change.

One hardly surprising finding from the study is that social media is having a major impact on all parts of the travel life cycle. A majority of the respondents in a survey commissioned by Amadeus use social media for travel related purposes.

In Sweden and Denmark, 53% of respondents report that they use social media related travel sites. Depending on how that question was asked, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that the overall use of social media during travel is much higher. Other surveys show that as many as 48% of Swedes use Facebook during vacation.

Click image to enlarge.

social media use for travel purposes - chart

Read the entire report below.

Amadeus -The Always Connected Traveller 2011

Follow my travel blog at hanskullin.se.

Social media behind decrease in Christmas text messages

The last few years it has become quite common to send greetings to friends and family on Christmas Eve via text messages, SMS. But this year telecom operators in Sweden, Norway and Denmark report a significant decrease in the number of messages. In Sweden, the four operators Tre (3), Tele 2, Telia and Telenor distributed a total of 72.5 million text messages on Christmas Eve, down from 76.5 million in 2009. In Norway, Telenor report a decrease with 5 million text messages compared to 2008, this year Norwegian customers sent 17.1 million SMS. The same pattern can be found in Denmark, where Telia report a decrease by 1 million SMS.

The operators claim that the reason behind the lower volumes is an increased use of Facebook and other social media. The conclusion is supported by the fact that data traffic has increased during this Christmas compared to previous years, most likely because customers are taking photos and uploading them to Facebook and other social networks, where they share it with friends.