Tag: blogs

Is my blog officially a medium now?

Peter Lindberg sent an email to Observer regarding today’s ranking of the most important blogs in Sweden.

Daniel Nordlund at Observer replied:

“The background to our ranking is that we have come to the conclusion that blogs as channels are so important to monitor that we have added the most important ones as part of our monitoring service.

The list that DN today published is the list that we have started to monitor, in other words, the ones that we have graded as being most important. At the same time we are convinced that the importance of blogs will increase and in turn also monitoring of them. Because of that, looking forward, we are going to invest a lot in this area.”

Does this mean that my blog now is officially considered a proper medium and that all sorts of PR people will start pitching me now (that has already started but not by anyone from Sweden)?

Anyhow, the upcoming blog debate in Stockholm on Monday, Bloggforum.se is promising to be a historic event, considering that all top 6 on the list of the most important blogs will be in the panel, and 7 of the top 10. That should be an incentive to participate in our debate.

UPDATE: The top ten list has been discussed a lot during the day in the Swedish blogosphere and the main issue has been, not surprisingly why these ten have been chosen. Many don’t have comments activated and may not even be considered blogs. Johan Norberg, PJ Just Nu, Niklas Lundblad, Dick Erixon and Peter Lindberg have all chosen not to have comments. I still consider them blogs, although Erixon probably would be more blog-like if he had permalinks on his posts.

Some critisism to the list today has been around the fact that there are other Swedish blogs with possibly more readers than these ten. So why has Chadie for example been excluded? I think that Observer have ranked the blogs not only on number of readers but also considered:

1. Focus – are they trying to influence readers with a clear agenda?

2. Platform – are they writers that already have influence? If Göran Persson started blogging tomorrow morning he would be the most influential blogger before lunch, simply because of his position. Many of the names on the top ten list already are influential people in media and/or politics.

3. Topic – these blogs are all focused on media and politics and other blogs that comment on a broader variation of topics may lose out in terms of impact.

And because of that, my guess is that Observer thinks that some Swedish blogs may reach a lot of readers, but in regards of their influence over public opinion, they are not influential enough to be on the list.

Sweden’s 10 most influential blogs

Media monitoring company Observer has compiled a list of the ten most influential blogs in Sweden, and I am at #5. Erik Stattin is the doyen of the Swedish blogosphere and he is rightfully at the top of the list, which is all male in fact.

The list has two group blogs (#3 and #7) and is heavily skewed to the right of the political scale. One would almost consider it a Timbro jackpot, considering the connections between liberal think tank Timbro and #2, #3, #6 and #9, which I have mentioned previously on this blog. Furthermore it is interesting to note that there are at least four blogs on the list that started only this year, namely my own, JKL’s, Stockholm Spectator and PJ Just Nu.

1. Erik Stattin

2. Johan Norberg

3. PJ Just Nu

4. Per Gudmundson

5. Hans Kullin

6. JKL

7. Stockholm Spectator

8. Nicklas Lundblad

9. Dick Erixon

10. Peter Lindberg

Norwegian opposition leader launches blog

Kristin Halvorsen, leader of Socialistisk Venstre, SV, (The Socialist Left Party) in Norway last week launched a blog. The premiere of the blog coincides with the launch of her book “Straight from the heart”.

The first two posts was by her personal “advisor” Roger, but then Halvorsen has been posting herself. She blogs about the American election, no/yes to EU and the rights for homosexuals to register a partnership, among other things. The blog has a comments function but no trackbacks or RSS feed visible, so she is not fully using the capabilities of a blog.

Fredrik Reinfeldt, are you reading this? Buy me lunch and I will show you how to launch a personal blog.

Kryptonite crisis and its impact on the blogosphere

Dave Sifry has an interesting graph on the number of blog posts in the blogosphere and how it relates to certain events. The Kryptonite bike lock controversy for example created two spikes – first when the news broke in the blogosphere, and second when traditional media picked up on the story which made bloggers discuss the implications.

The Kryptonite case will go down in history as classic example on what happens to a company’s reputation if it fails to handle crisis PR in a blog enabled world.

Via Mymarkup.

A constructive blog debate

This is unusual – a constructive Swedish blog debate. The liberal blogs are usually in consensus about current topics, but a post by PJ Anders Linder about a proposition from the Swedish Moderate Party sparked a comment from Mathias Sundin. That was picked up by Dick Erixon, who for once had a differnet opinion than SvD:s “PJ Just Nu” who in turn replied here. Johan Norberg threw in his five cents the day after and it is actually quite refreshing to see that these gentlemen are able to discuss topics online and in public that they don’t fully agree on. Erixon and Sundin continues to discuss. There is hope for the Swedish blogosphere.