Two Swedish Eyes on Media and Public Relations
Resumé reports this morning that TV4 will launch a tv blog on Monday at TV4.se, featuring its sports reporter and chronicler Patrick Ekwall. The blog will include both text and video files and the premiere will coincide with Sweden’s football team’s tour in the Middle East next week.
Technorati tags: tv, journalism, video blog, vlog.
Blocket is a leading online marketplace, a “Swedish eBay” if you will. In an interview in August last year, the Managing Director of Blocket said that “This year products for 100 billion kronor will be advertised at Blocket.”
This quote has turned into a corporate myth interpreted so that products worth 100 billion kronor were sold at Blocket. N24 writes that “products worth 100 million kronor are sold at Blocket each year”. DagensPS writes that “Blocket has a turnover of 100 milllion kronor”, and bloggers comment along the same lines. But that is not the case. I can put my summer house up for sale at Blocket for 1 million kronor, but if no-one buys it it will not add to Blocket’s turnover any more than if I had advertised my left sock, which no-one bought.
The myth is now back in the news, starting yesterday with N24 (they get it right later on in the article) and followed by bloggers here. As N24 notes, Blocket’s competitor Tradera actually sold goods worth 1 billion kronor last year, and it is very unlikely that Blocket is 100 times bigger.
To compare, H&M; are aiming at a turnover of 100 billion kronor in the near future.
The local daily Örnsköldsviks Allehanda is the first Swedish newspaper with a video blog, or vlog. Yesterday one of its reporters, 21-year old Liva Sandra Sverker who is currently working at ÖA’s printing house, launched the very first video blog at the paper’s web site.
– I think my video blog will be about anything. Everything that makes me mad, happy, sad or surprised will get a spot on my screen, she tells the paper.
But that’s not all. The paper invites readers to register for a space of their own, either for a regular blog or a video blog. And it’s all for free.
Swedish newspapers have not been as quick to introduce citizen journalism initiatives as for example their Norwegian counterparts. In fact, apart from Norrbottens-Kuriren, most of the initiatives have been about starting journalist blogs, but this is clearly a sign in the right direction.
Technorati tags: citizen journalism, participatory journalism, video blog, vlog.
SR, Swedish public service radio, launched a series of podcasts , or “podradio“, in May 2005 and the shows have since been downloaded a total of 1.3 million times. Last summer, the show fittingly named Sommar (Summer) was downloaded about half a million times in June, July and August. SR now offer 28 different shows as podradio, the most popular show currently being science show Vetenskapsradion (Science radio) with 40,000 downloads.
For copyright reasons, all podcasts are without music and no solution seems to be close at hand.
Source: Dagens Media.
Today is the last day for sending in your nominations for Bloggies 2006, the sixth annual blog awards. Click here to go to the nomination page, and if you like this blog, please consider putting it in as one candidate in for example Best European Blog (excluding UK and Ireland).
The Swedish jeans brand Cheap Monday comes with an attitude and a logo with a skull, wearing a cross turned upside down on its forehead. The devilish logo is now making rounds in the press in the US, something I strongly suspect was the point all along.
Chicago Tribune writes that in spite of, or because of, its logo, the jeans are flying off the shelves:
The jeans’ makers say it’s more of a joke, but the logo’s designer said there’s a deeper message.
“It is an active statement against Christianity,” Bjorn Atldax said. “I’m not a Satanist myself but I have a great dislike for organized religion.”