You’re It! – a blog on tagging is just that, a blog about tagging and folksonomies. The first posts are just up and the blog might be worth checking out in the weeks to come. It is written by 8 prominent bloggers, among them David Weinberger, the co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto.
Category: Other
Norwegian dailies face significant shrinkage
Four Norwegian newspapers are investigating a shift to the smaller tabloid format, reports Journalisten.no. Adresseavisen, Bergens Tidende, Stavanger Aftenblad and Fædrelandsvennen have hired McKinsey to come up with a plan for reducing the ad format without losing ad revenues.
Smoke gets in his eyes
Journalist Fredrik Virtanen at Aftonbladet thinks his quit-smoking-blog is Sweden’s biggest blog after just two weeks online. Please allow me to laugh out loud. Sure, I bet his blog gets loads of visitors from being hosted on Aftonbladet.se but it takes a little more than that to be considered the biggest blog in Sweden, at least in my book.
50,000 blogs talk about the iPod each day
Few products the last few years can show the same phenomenal growth rate as the iPod. The PR success of this tiny gadget is demonstrated over and over again, yesterday in an article in the Norwegian marketing publication Propaganda. They write about a media analysis by media monitoring company Retriever which shows the brands with most publicity in Norwegian media during 2004. The iPod is on top, ahead of older brands like McDonald’s, Playstation and Nokia.
If we look at the number of times the iPod have been mentioned in the blogosphere, the numbers are equally impressive. For example, iPod comes out on top ahead of the world’s number one and two most valuable brands Coca-Cola and Microsoft. The iPod is talked about in half a percent of all blogs and since Blogpulse tracks 10 million blogs, that means that 50,000 blogs talk about the iPod every day. If that’s not a PR success, I don’t know what is.
Da-la-la-da
Some artists’ brands are so closely tied to one monster hit that you only need to hear a drumbeat or a few notes to recognize them. Or what about this description for the upcoming May concert in London with Sweden’s number one poodles – Europe:
“Da-la-la-da Da-la-la-da-da Da-la-la-daa-da It’s the final countdown… to Sweden’s finest son’s return to the London stage. Rock!”
PR speak translated
Here’s a lesson for PR professionals. As a result of Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia the PR departement has produced a FAQ, completely soaked with words devoid of any real meaning. That becomes painfully obvious when Daring Fireball translates PR speak to plain English. Example:
Q:Do you anticipate a reduction in force as a result of this transaction?
A: When two successful growing companies join together, the result is a combined organization that creates new and exciting opportunities. The combination will lead to powerful new areas of innovation, new products and solutions, and an acceleration of our respective growth agendas. At the same time, there will be some duplication of employee functions between the two companies, and upon the close of the transaction, we anticipate some level of reduction in force. While we anticipate the integration team will identify opportunities for cost savings, the primary motivation for this acquisition is to continue to expand and grow our businesses into new markets.
Translation: Yes.