Author: kullin

200,000 Swedes joined fake Facebook group for Haiti

It wouldn’t hurt to practise some critical thinking when participating in social networks. What many suspected turned out to be true today, namely that a Facebook group titled (translated from Swedish) “2 kronor for every member to the earth quake victims in Haiti” was only fake. Everything from the identity of the person who created the group to the hidden information about the “sponsors” who would donate 2 kronor (0.28 USD) per user, signalled that there was something fishy about this group.

I checked in on the group about two hours ago and it looked as it had done the last few days and the group now had about 211,000 members. But an hour later Computer Sweden published an article revealing that the official photo of the group had now changed to a hideous photo and that the information of the page had now been changed to contain information about necr0philia.

I understand that people want to help the victims in Haiti, but it’s still quite fascinating that so many people are willing to join such a group without questioning the motives. And of course very disturbing that some twisted mind uses a tragic incident like the earth quake in Haiti to pull a sick stunt like this. Especially since we less than a week ago read in Aftonbladet about another Facebook group that managed to attract thousands of members, only to change name to indicate that the members like to have sex with their children.

I think Facebook will need to monitor this issue very carefully or users will lose trust in the whole concept of groups. In the mean time, users need to be a little more careful about what they post and which groups they join. After all, it’s mostly common sense.

Footnote: The link to the group is here, but I don’t recommend a visit: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=243968684541

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Top 20 countries on Twitter

Twitter doesn’t disclose how many members it has, so it has been hard to determine how many people that use Twitter in Sweden. I tried to calculate a number in June 2009 using a survey by Sysomos that showed that 0.54% of the accounts were from Sweden. My estimate landed at 75,000 Swedes on Twitter.

Now, Sysomos have now published a new report, in which they have studied 13 million unique Twitter accounts that demonstrated tweeting activity within the period from Oct. 16, 2009 to Dec. 16, 2009. The US is still by far the largest country, but it’s dominance has decreased as the service has expanded more rapidly outside the US, with a very fast growth in for example Brazil (the US dropped from 62.1% share in June to 50.9% now.

Sweden is still in the top 20 chart but has slipped one spot from 18 to 19 and the share has decreased from 0.54% to 0.50%.

twitter-users-sweden-chart

Sysomos also looked at the number of tweets by country, and in that chart, Sweden is not among the top 20 countries.

So how many Swedish Twitter accounts are there then? Hard to tell, but according to Twitter COO Dick Costolo, the micro blogging service had more than 58 million global users in November 2009. Here is a quote from a chat with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.

MA: What about user accounts?

DC: Yeah I won’t say that, but 58 million undercounts it.

So, taking these to figures into account, there should be somewhere in the range of 290,000 Swedish accounts, which sound like a lot. If the statistics from Sysomos are correct, they have at least found 65,000 Swedish accounts (0.50% of 13 million active). What springs to my mind is that considering the extreme growth for Twitter, it might not be long before more Swedes are tweeting than blogging. By the end of 2010, that might actually be a reality.

Footnote: I’m @kullin on Twitter.

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How to brand your tweets with TweetBrand

Every tweet you post on Twitter comes with a line that states what time it was published and what application you used to tweet (TweetDeck, Tweetie etc, or the Twitter site). Now there is a free application that lets you hack this line and brand it with your own information. With TweetBrand you can brand your tweets with the name of your company, your blog or whatever you want it to say. And not only that, you can link it directly to any landing page you choose.

I tried TweetBrand and it seems to work perfectly (so far). The tweet below is branded with the name of my blog (Media Culpa) and has a link to the blog.

brandedtweet

You can name your “application” anything, as long as no-one else has taken that name. Once your app is installed and you have downloaded the software, you get this little screen to tweet from. You may use it to run several Twitter accounts, which I guess is pretty neat.

tweetbrandtestit

Although this is a cool app, I don’t see myself using it very frequently, but I will continue to experiment with it and see if it drives any traffic to my blog.

According to Tammy from TweetBrand, this is just the free “lite” version and a main service will be launched soon with more functionality.

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Influencers on Twitter talked about Sweden in 2009

Gryts skärgård

Sweden may be a small and sparsely populated country, but when it comes to Twitter, apparently influencers talk about us. According to Klout, which measures influence across the social web, Sweden was the 6th most talked about country on Twitter in 2009. Klout’s Influencer Zeitgeist 2009 claims that these are the ten countries that influencers on Twitter tweeted about:

1. United States
2. Iran
3. United Kingdom
4. Canada
5. China
6. Sweden
7. India
8. France
9. Australia
10. Japan

I find it quite extraordinary to find Sweden, a country of 9 million, in this list of international super powers. Apart from the standard explanations, that Sweden is one of the world’s most wired countries and that most people speak decent English, one reason could be that there are several Swedish companies and startups that have generated a lot of buzz. For example Spotify, Polar Rose, Voddler, Tobii, Rebtel and Twingly.

Other reasons Sweden has been discussed a lot of course have to do with the trial against the Pirate Bay (and the failed attempts to sell the site), and the success of the Pirate Party in the EU election. Sweden was the third most talked about country on Twitter during the election, according to Tweetelect09.eu (a site developed by my employer Burson-Marsteller). Sweden also held the Presidency of the European Union in 2009.

Some other stories about Sweden during 2009 that got attention were:

– 24 hour business camp
– What is it with all these Swedish startups? Videoplaza signs new UK deal
– Sweden’s Entire Internet Goes Black for an Hour
– iPhone Homescreen Exposé Concept: Would you use this? “Swedish design house made an awesome mock-up video of an alternative homescreen for the iPhone.” This was the third most read post in 2009 on Mobilecrunch.
– Voddler, the Spotify-for-movies, partners with Paramount and Disney
– Swedish government promises superfast broadband for all
– First 4G Mobile Network Launches . . . In Sweden 🙁

The most dugg story in 2009 on Digg.com, tagged “Sweden” was “Jessica Alba schools Fox’s O’Reilly in WW II history” with 5733 diggs.

Another interesting finding in Klout’s statistics is that #fail was the 6th most used hashtag among influencers on Twitter during 2009. Brands should take note.

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Social media dominates Google search results for Brand Me

In February I blogged about taking control over Brand You online and especially in terms of how your name appears in a Google search. I concluded that my blog and other social media properties that I use ranked high in a search for “Hans Kullin” on Google. The top ten results for my name on Google.se in February were:

1. The “About me” page on this blog
2. This blog
3. Blog posts tagged with my name on www.s-bloggar.se
4. Blog posts tagged with my name on mindpark.se
5. Blog post at fyranyanser.se with my name in the headline
6. My profile page on profsweden.ning.com
7. Blog post at bisonblog.blogs.com/blog with my name in the headline
8. My page at micro blog service bloggy.se
9. My page at micro blog service jaiku.com
10. Blog posts tagged with my name on sv.wordpress.com

I was more or less in control of results number 1, 2, 6, 8 and 9, with Media Culpa claiming the two top spots.

A few weeks later, in March 2009, I launched a Swedish language blog called Sociala Medier (“Social Media” in Swedish) on a very good domain: www.socialamedier.com. In spite of being active less than a year, that blog (which is built on WordPress) is already among the very top results.

Top ten today are:

1. The “About me” page on this blog
2. This blog
3. My Swedish blog Sociala Medier
4. My page on Twitter
5. My profile page on profsweden.ning.com
6. My page at micro blog service bloggy.se
7. Article about me in Dagens Media
8. Article about me in Resumé
9. Article about me in Medievärlden
10. Blog post at techrisk.se tagged with my name

I now “control” results 1-6, which is an improvement in only 11 months. My Twitter page has moved up to #4, while my Jaiku page is no longer among the top results. Back then, the first traditional media link was at #16, but now there are three in the top ten. It’s clear that blog posts and articles in online media that have my name in the title, tend to rank high.

Other social media properties that rank high are my FriendFeed page and the LinkedIn page, both in top 20, but there are still no links in the top 30 results to me on Facebook.

I wonder if there is an “easy” way to get hold of the remaining top ten spots without starting a third blog. Let’s see in 12 months what the status is.

Update: Results slightly adjusted.

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Tweets from people you don’t follow appear in your Twitter stream

It seems that tweets from people you don’t follow are appearing in some users’ Twitter streams. I noticed this morning that there were two tweets from people that I don’t follow and they were not retweeted by any of my friends. They just appeared in my stream like any regular tweet from my friends.

tweet1

tweet3

I did some quick searches on Google and found this note on Posterous posted yesterday and updated today. The user “aulia” in Indonesia writes about “Twittruders: Stray Tweets from people you don’t follow”:

“It seems that there is a breach of some sorts in Twitter today where stray tweets show up unexpectedly on people’s timelines. These tweets are not retweets, they’re not quoted tweets, and they’re not from people being followed. These stray tweets may not necessarily be spam. It’s entirely possible at this point that there is or was a breakdown in Twitter’s network which leaked messages into other people’s timelines.

Speaking with Peter Baxter from AVG a few weeks ago, he mentioned that the Twitter network as well as the website are very insecure and Twitter, the company, isn’t doing very well when dealing with these attacks. It’s difficult to dispute the man when the facts speak for themselves.”

Twitter has been over capacity this morning so the site does not run smoothly and I hope that there aren’t any real security issues behind these tweets that appear. I will try to monitor this story further during the day. If these stray tweets pop up in your stream too, do let me know.

Update: The Mirror in the UK also writes about the story: Twitter spills the beans: leaks private tweets

Update 2: Comment from Twitter.

Note: I’m @kullin on Twitter.

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