Author: kullin

Finnair launches Angry Birds Asian Challenge

Finnair is taking the popular game Angry Birds to a completely new level: 10,000 metres! The Finnish airline has prepared a fully customised Finnair Airbus A340 and is inviting Angry Birds fans to join a flight to Singapore while competing in the first Angry Birds Asian Challenge played in the air.angry birds plane

To become one of the participants, you need to fill in an application at finnair.com and describe why you are one of the Angry Birds’ most dedicated fans. Then collect as many Facebook likes as you can and you may be one of the five fans (most “liked”) to board the flight to Singapore. In addition 2-3 favourites selected by a jury will be awarded flight tickets to Singapore. During the flight, the participants will compete against each other on games consoles that have been specially programmed for this event. The winner of the competition will become the proud holder of the very first Angry Birds Asian Challenge title.

Oh, and there will be a live Angry Bird on the plane too…

Hat tip to Alexander.

100 Swedish brands now have more than 1,000 followers on Twitter

Swedish brands on Twitter are getting more and more followers. Now there are more than 100 brands or businesses that have 1,000 followers or more, (currently 103 accounts). In January 2011, only 60 accounts had that many followers. Some of them, like H&M, are growing with amazing speed, adding about 70,000 new followers per month to its main corporate account (H&M also have several local accounts).

Swedish brands, avatars on Twitter - by www.kullin.net

The top 10 Swedish brands on Twitter in terms of number of followers, are (as of Aug 25, 2011, compared to May 3):

  1. H&M (@hm) – 431,000 (179,900)
  2. Spotify (@spotify) – 161,000 (99,400)
  3. Stardoll (@stardoll) – 134,000 (77,600)
  4. Adland (@adland) – 26,900 (24,500)
  5. Acne Online (@acneonline) – 24,900 (20,500)
  6. Pingdom (@pingdom) – 20,200 (7,200)
  7. Ericsson Labs/Tor Bjorn Minde (@ericssonlabs) – 16,700 (13,700)
  8. Propellerhead (@propellerheadsw) – 10,100 (7,900)
  9. SJ (@SJ_AB) – 9,300 (7,500)
  10. Ericsson Press (@ericssonpress) – 9,300 (7,900)

A fast mover above is Pingdom, which is new on the top ten list. The number of followers have almost tripled since May, 2011.

For a full list of more than 540 Swedish corporate Twitter accounts, check this list.

Manchester police starts naming and shaming rioters on Twitter

There’s been a lot of talk about the use of social media during the UK riots, both for good (see #riotcleanup) and for bad purposes. Additional focus was added today when PM David Cameron discussed the possibilities of limiting the use of social media in times of social unrest. It has been interesting to study how for example the UK police have used channels like Flickr and Twitter to get help with identification of suspects. Now, however, it seems that the Greater Manchester police might have taken the use of social media one step too far.

Today, the Greater Manchester police started to tweet the names and birth dates of people who have been convicted in relation to the UK riots.

After this tweet, the @gmpolice Twitter account has published dozens of tweets this evening with the names, birth dates and crimes the people have been convicted for. Like this one below (I have masked the name of the individual).

Many of these tweets have been retweeted by hundreds of users on Twitter which spreads their names to a very wide audience. This has already created a lot of negative reactions, like the following tweet.

I can only agree with @iamminihorse, there is a huge difference between names being in the public domain and publishing them on a platform like Twitter where people can easily share them with potentially thousands of others. These things have a tendency to get out of hand and will the Manchester police take any responsibility in case some people will try to take revenge on the convicted people or their families? No, this was a bad idea from the very start.

Steady growth for Flickr as it reaches 6 billion photos

As you may know, I have been keeping an eye on the growth of the popular image hosting site/community Flickr. It turns out that in spite of new cool photo apps like Instragram and others quickly adding new fans, Flickr continues to grow with about one billion new photos per year, or to be more precise, it takes about 11 months to add another billion.

The 6 billionth photo was uploaded to the site on Aug 1, 2011 so Flickr seems to be growing at the exact same pace as it has done the last three years (see below). Photo number 5 billion was uploaded on Sept 18, 2010.

Flickr 6 billionth photo - chart

The 6 billionth photo can be was shot by Flickr user eon60 and can be viewed here.

Previous milestones for Flickr:

22 Oct 04: 1,000,000
20 Apr 05: 10,000,000
15 Feb 06: 100,000,000
22 Sep 06: 250,000,000
15 May 07: 500,000,000
19 Jul 07: 850,000,000
06 Oct 07: 1,500,000,000
13 Nov 07: 2,000,000,000
17 May 08: 2,500,000,000
03 Nov 08: 3,000,000,000
04 May 09: 3,500,000,000
11 Oct 09: 4,000,000,000
18 Sept 10: 5,000,000,000
1 Aug 11: 6,000,000,000

55 fascinating statistics about social media in Sweden

Sweden is ranked first of 138 countries in its use of computing and communications technology, according to an annual study from the World Economic Forum. So perhaps it’s no surprise that Swedes are quick to adopt social media and for example the Swedish blogosphere has been very lively for several years with top blogs that attract as many as one million visits per week.

In order to give you a better view of the Swedish social media landscape, I have compiled a presentation with 55 fascinating statistics. Enjoy!

Statistics: 55 facts about social media in Sweden

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