Media Culpa’s five year anniversary

On February 17, 2004 an outbreak of dengue fever killed 91 people in Indonesia and the board of directors of the Walt Disney Company rejected a hostile offer by Comcast. But more importantly (?), the blog Media Culpa was launched. Well, I had actually been fooling around with the blog for some time, but that is the date with the oldest remaining blog post. In other words, this blog is celebrating its five year anniversary today.

So much has happened through these five years that it is hard to summarize or pick out the most important moments. But I felt that it would be appropriate to highlight a few blog posts from these five years.

Here goes:

May 14: 2004: Link love from Dave Winer’s Scripting News

May 14, 2004: Steve Rubel already the most influential PR blogger. I’m at #17 of 28.

May 24, 2004: First corporate blog post to find its way into (Swedish) mainstream media

June 24, 2004: Link love from Doc Searls.

June 24, 2004: I get in touch with Iranian PR blogger Hossein. At this point there are more PR bloggers in Iran than in Sweden.

June 29, 2004: Answer to the question “does your company use blogs”: 7 out of 10 Swedes reply “what’s a blog?”

July 12, 2004: I participated as the only Swede in Global PR Blog Week: a number of pioneering PR blogs (such as Elizabeth Albrycht and Mike Manuel) together created a week long blog event about PR and communication.

August 12, 2004: Link love from Engadget. PlayStation banned from Swedish prisons

August 25, 2004: First Swedish daily to launch blog (Svenska Dagbladet)

October 13, 2004: Kryptonite crisis talk of the month.

October 15, 2004: Number of hits in Google for the word “podcasting” rises from 20 to 66,000 in about one month.

November 10, 2004: This blog ranked as Sweden’s fifth most influential blog by Observer (now Cision).

November 15, 2004: First Swedish blog forum, Bloggforum. I participated in the media panel along with PJ Anders Linder, chief political editor of Svenska Dagbladet, Billy McCormac and Jonas Söderström.

December 13, 2004: I was nominated to the 2004 Weblog Awards, category Best European (Non-UK) Blog. Finished at #8.

December 14, 2004: I’m on the cover of Internetworld.

January 27, 2005: The power of blogs. Blogger made L’Oréal pull ad.

February 18, 2005: Media Culpa nominated for Internetworld’s award, Best Swedish blog in the IT and Media category. I didn’t win.

February 25, 2005: Microsoft distributes press releases via RSS. I beat them with a few months for the law firm I worked for.

March 2, 2005: Swedish media RSS feeds reaches 100 – Nordic reaches 200

May 25, 2005: First blog survey published – BloggSverige 1/BlogSweden 1

June 14, 2005: Honorable mention in MarketingSherpa’s 2005 Best Blog Awards

July 11, 2005: Citizen journalism in the London bombings

February 15, 2006: Link love from Boing Boing.

June 27, 2006: My new blog disclaimer

August 25, 2006: Second blog survey complete – BloggSverige 2/BlogSweden 2

September 17, 2006: Marketing managers not willing to invest in blogs

September 22, 2006: Link love #2 from Boing Boing.

October 14, 2006: Sweden’s Minister for Trade brought down by blogger

November 2, 2006: Media Culpa is pick of the day, by the Blogger team.

December 20, 2006: Media Culpa’s 2007 predictions – it’s not a pretty sight

February 17, 2007: 1,000 blog posts published

March 14, 2007: I defend blogs in an article in Computer Sweden.

March 23, 2007: I totally dismiss any value in Twitter 🙂

April 5, 2007: Media Culpa is listed (at #71) on Advertising Age’s list Power 150 as one of only two Swedish blogs.

November 13, 2007: Media Culpa’s top 10 blog pitch pet peeves

November 13, 2007: I published a column in Aftonbladet about the media landscape in 2012.

January 30, 2008: Third annual blog survey – BloggSverige 3/BlogSweden 3

June 15, 2008: I reveal that Dagens Nyheter uses a 12 month old interview as their top story about the wire-tapping law (FRA).

September 15, 2008: Media Culpa listed under Social Media on Alltop.

November 24, 2008: Research – Corporate blogging among listed Nordic companies

Febraury 12, 2009: Media Culpa is ranked as the third best Swedish media blog (YABA)

January 8, 2009: Has Twitter reached a tipping point in Sweden?

And finally, some stats from the last few years (since I installed Google Analytics):
– 67% of all visitors are not from Sweden.
– Top traffic source: Google, 36% of all visits
– Day with most visits: Nov 3, 2006

[Photo courtesy of matski_98]

Tags: , , , , , . Ping.

Media Culpa’s 2007 predictions – it’s not a pretty sight

Yes, folks. It’s that time of the year again. Time to take a look into the crystal ball and predict what will come in the next 12 months. Here are some things you can expect from 2007:

* Linden Labs launches Third Life within Second Life, in which the avatars of Second Life are able to create digital 3D representations of themselves, so called avatars. This is the first Third Life to be launched within Second Life. The currency of Third Life is called London dollars, which causes an uproar among English avatars.

* A blog is launched in which a couple report about how they travel across the US in an RV and camp in parking lots of the PR agency Edelman PR’s offices. The blog “Edelmaneuvering Across America” turns out to be a publicity stunt by Wal-Mart with the purpose of enhancing the damaged reputation of its PR agency.

* Metro, the world’s largest free newspaper, teams up with local post offices in 19 countries with the purpose of providing hyper-local news to its readers. “The mail men are already out there, visiting every house. No-one sends letters anymore, but this way they will be able to do something useful, like peak into people’s houses and report what they see. It’s a no-brainer, really”, says Christer Fingerspitzgefühl, Chief Instigator at Metro International.

* Someone uploads a video to YouTube in which he reveals how you can open a cheap Bic pen using a very expensive bike lock from Kryptonite. The Bic share on the Paris stock exchange immediately plunges before a crisis communication team is able to restore confidence in the product. “We will be issuing a global replacement program shortly. Old pens can be sent to that place where pens always seem to disappear, it’s right next to the place where all second socks can be found,” says a PR spokesperson from Bic.

* Mainstream media are pushing the citizen journalism trend so far that reporters are quitting their jobs in order to be just “ordinary people”. “This is the only way that I will be able to get anything printed nowadays”, says one columnist at the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, who prefer to be anonymous.

* Media Culpa initiates the third annual Swedish blog survey that shows that 102% of all bloggers write blogs about fashion and only 0.9% have nothing against being contacted by middle aged men who perform blog surveys.

* Swedish “anti-Big Brother” personality Pär Ström discovers the 7 1/2 floor of his office building and finds a portal directly into the mind of former Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström.

* Rupert Murdoch enters the Danish newspaper market with a new free daily which covers news and events in the Danish free paper market. Dato, 24 Timer and Nyhedsavisen are delighted that someone now is actually interested in the stories they rewrite.

* Sweden’s blog princess Karolina Laika is invited to the ISS space station only to find that some of the space suits are sooo 1985.

* Technorati teams up with IBM to enable grocery shoppers to read what bloggers are saying about products. A service tracks the blogosphere and delivers search results directly to the store via RFID. Sales of pickled herring immediately drop to an all-time low after an “incident” with herring and a Christmas Party is filmed and uploaded to YouTube.

So now you know…

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.