Month: January 2006

“Du Bist Deutschland”

The odd phrase “Du Bist Deutschland” has for some mysterious reason been a top search on Technorati for some time. It turns out that it is a slogan from a German PR campaign with the intent to “tell everyone in Germany that you can achieve something, that you shouldn’t complain and be lazy”. The campaign has set the German blogsphere on fire when someone found an old photo from a 1935 public Nazi convention using the same phrase.

It didn’t get any better when the head of the agency that created the campaign spilled his guts over bloggers in an email. He was quoted saying:

“Weblogs, the bathroom walls of the internet. What gives every PC user the right to exude [or excrete] their opinions? Most bloggers simply exude.”

Way to go, sucking up to a bunch of annoyed bloggers. Nicht.

Social networks go online

I was recently approached by a journalist who wished to test a theory that kids and teenagers spend time online to build and maintain relationships but adults primarily go online in search of information. My take was that if there ever was a difference, it has disappeared the last few years and adults connect to communities almost to the same extent as young people. The new study “The Strength of Internet Ties” from the Pew Internet and American Life Project seems to suggest I might be on to something.

From the report, about the fears that social relationships are fading away in America:

“Instead of disappearing, people’s communities are transforming: The traditional human orientation to neighborhood- and village-based groups is moving towards communities that are oriented around geographically dispersed social networks. People communicate and maneuver in these networks rather than being bound up in one solidary community. Yet people’s networks continue to have substantial numbers of relatives and neighbors — the traditional bases of community — as well as friends and
workmates.”

“With the help of the internet, people are able to maintain active contact with sizable social networks, even though many of the people in those networks do not live nearby.”

In my survey of blog readers last year, I found that a large portion of Swedish bloggers are anonymous (6 out of 10 women), which could suggest that many people are able to maintain parts of their social network online even without revealing their true identity.

Diego’s blog attracts readers

Dagens Industri’s magazine Diego has had a blog since October and have now revealed some stats for January 1-23.

– 30,000 unique visitors
– 78,000 page visits
– 43,000 visitors
– an average of 1,813 visits per day during 2006

The numbers are quite good, but Diego is still way behind top blogs like Adland which is reported to have about 30,000 visitors per day. And site visits are not the only measure of a blog’s success, for example, Diego has 4 subscribers to its feed in Bloglines, I am closing in on 200 (Atom + Feedburner feeds), and since I publish the full post in my feeds, one could guess that I have many readers who never enter my site.

Three strikes and you’re out

Oh, the sweet irony. The delegation of Danish SAS pilots on an unlawful strike were delayed to a negotiation meeting with SAS in Stockholm because (drums please) the flights had been cancelled due to their own strike! They had to wait for a flight with Swedish non-striking pilots and arrived in Stockholm two hours late. (Via DN, not online).