The other guy blinked – how bloggers “won” the news war

Last week I compared three different tools for tracking blog links, Twingly, Technorati and Knuff. Twingly is a new service that for example the daily newspapers Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet use to show most blogged articles.

Since Twingly was so new, my last post did not do the service justice. Primelabs, the company behind Twingly, now say that the numbers visible on DN.se should be more accurate. And a new search shows that Twingly tracks as many posts as Knuff.se, and far more than Technorati. The articles listed below are the five most blogged articles at DN.se as of yesterday.

Blogs posts tracked
Article Twingly Technorati Knuff
“V försöker kringgå las” 30 17 29
“Lagrådet ger grönt ljus till avlyssning” 25 13 27
“Upphovsmän kan få jaga fildelare” 35 28 35
“Fortsatta turer kring Anna Nicole Smith” 23 20 22
“Arkeologer hittade 6.000 år gammal kram” 21 8 11

Please note that these numbers only reflect links visible on DN.se. There could be links that Twingly track but are not publicly visible for one reason or another.

It would have been interesting to include Bloggportalen.se in the table above, but I have not found a way to easily calculate how many links there are to a specific article. Maybe Sigge can bring some light on the matter?

The introduction of blog tracking at DN.se and SVD.se has caused quite a stir in the Swedish blogosphere, and most bloggers support the initiative. Some raise concerns that bloggers will increase the number of links to Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet in order to drive traffic to their blogs. I can’t see that this is neither surprising or very negative. Bloggers who’s main goal is to have a lot of visitors and be on top of different top lists will do whatever they can to add a few hundred readers to their stats. Others will manage their brand and build a reputation based on their integrity and link to these papers when they feel a need to do so, while refraining from doing it when it is not in line with the theme of their blog. None of these choices, or variations in between, are wrong in my view. These are just citizens that exercise their newfound rights to speak their mind. So instead of critizising bloggers who pimp for visitors, let’s rejoice at the fact that the leading newspapers of this country voluntarily invite YOU to be a part of the dissemination of news.

Maybe you’ve read Roger Enrico’s book “The Other Guy Blinked: How Pepsi Won the Cola Wars”, about how the invincible cola giant Coca-Cola was pressured into changing the formula to the much disliked new Coke, a gigantic fiasco. Well, I think you can look at the introduction of Twingly and similar services (like Aftonbladet/Bloggportalen) as a historic shift where media as the sole gatekeeper has become a thing of the past. With the introduction of blogs and other social media, resisting to invite readers/bloggers into the conversation in the end was meaningless. This is what we’ve been waiting for all along – the breaking up of MSM’s monopoly of news distribution. MSM blinked, in a positive manner of speaking. Sure, a lot of crap will float to the surface, but readers will learn over time where to go and who to skip (as they do when they read blogs in general), and Twingly’s ranking system might help bring the most relevant links to the top of the lists.

And regarding the supposed increase in links to DN and SVD, among the top blogged articles, a majority are from DN and SVD according to Knuff. But according to Twingly, there does not seem to be a huge increase in links to these two sites. So, no need for panic just yet.

twingly13feb

Inc. 500 companies are using social media

Eric Mattson and Nora Barnes of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s Center for Marketing Research have published an interesting research project about the adoption and usage of social media by the Inc. 500, “an elite group of fast-growing private companies” in the US. In the report “The Hype is Real: Social Media Invades the Inc. 500”, 121 companies responded to questions about six social media (blogging, podcasting, online video, social networking, wikis) and as many as 26% of respondents said that social media is “very important” to their business and marketing strategy.

42% of respondents claimed to be “very familiar” with social networking, followed by message/bulletin boards (38%), blogging (36%), online video (31%), podcasting (30%) and wikis (16%).

inc1

The percentage of companies that use social media is quite high in my opinion and I am certain that Swedish companies are far behind in the adoption of social media.

inc2

inc3

According to a recent calculation, only 8% of Fortune 500 companies are blogging, while 19% of the respondents in this survey use blogs.

Another comparison can be made with this survey of 805 mainly UK based companies (including agencies) performed by e-consultancy:

* 42% are planning to apply user-generated content (UGC) to their websites in the next 12 months; 23% are using it already.

* 35% are planning to use corporate blogs in the next 12 months; 17% are using them already.

* 33% are planning to use podcasting in the next 12 months; 18% using it already.

* 35% are planning to use videocasting in the next 12 month; 17% using it already.

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Bits and bobs about PR and social media

Today I’m throwing you a smorgasbord of things to dig deeper into. Here goes:

Stathydro? Norskoil? Noroil?
In Norway there is a heated debate about the name of the new oil and gas giant that is the result of the mega merger between Norsk Hydro and Statoil. Branding experts claim that it will cost between 2.7 and 3.6 billion kroner to change name and that the brand Statoil is worth between 2.5 and 5 billion kroner.

Tech blogs in, conservative blogs out
Bloggers Blog compare the top 10 blogs at Technorati on Jan 1, 2006 and Jan 1. 2007. Via Kristine Lowe.

Busting myths about social media
PR agency Ketchum and the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Strategic Public Relations Center have produced a report called “Media Myths & Realities, 2006 Media Usage Survey”. Among other things the survey deflates five myths about social media:
-Blogs dominate.
-Social networking sites are just for kids.
-Young adults don’t read the newspaper.
-Word of mouth cannot be managed.
-The company Web site is the best way to communicate.

Big ad, big love
The business man who paid 11,000 kronor (1,600 USD) for a large personal ad in Borås Tidning, has got replies from women from all over Sweden. Question is if any of them want to move to Borås… (More here in English).

Top 100 web 2.0 sites
Web 2.0 Magazine lists the top 100 web 2.0 sites in categories such as Video (#1 is YouTube), Music (last.fm), Chat (Meebo), Images & Photos (Flickr), Blogs (Blogger), Bookmarking (Digg), VOIP (Jajah) and a few others.

New free Swedish daily
Xtra Helsingborg is the name of Helsingborgs Dablad’s free daily. It will become the second freesheet in the city when distribution starts in about a month. Metro is already present. Circulation: Monday-Friday, 20,000 copies. Via Researcher.

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Yahoo to launch social media brand hubs

Yahoo is making a serious attempt to embrace the social media space by bringing together its web 2.0 assets like Flickr into social media brand hubs, or “brand universes”. Yahoo is partnering with “passion brands” to create “dedicated areas on Yahoo for fans of a movie or product to congregate, share and connect with each other”. The first example is a site for Nintendo Wii which attracted some 250,00 visitors during the first 24 hours of operation.

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