Media Culpa

Foursquare comes to Stockholm

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-11-04T10:01:37-08:00

Foursquare is a location-based social network with gaming elements, and it is the latest hype among tech savvy social media users. Its mobile app lets you check-in at different venues and find out where your friends are. Today the site added 15 new European cities (not 14 as published on TechCrunch) to the two existing, London and Amsterdam. Stockholm is one of the new cities that is available as of today. The other cities are Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, Copenhagen, Dublin, Helsinki, Geneva, Madrid, Munich, Manchester, Paris, Prague and Rome.

Tags: foursquare, mobile apps, stockholm, mobilapplikationer, stockholm, foursquare. Ping.

Swedish Volkswagen video the most viral ever

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-10-29T14:43:31-07:00

Volkswagen turns to social media when promoting new cars. In a recent Advertising Age article, Volkswagen of America says it is launching the next generation GTI exclusively on an iPhone app, because it is a cost-efficient marketing tool. Compare that with the $60 million Volkswagen spent on TV commercials on the 2006 launch of GTI.

And in Sweden, Volkswagen has produced three videos that have gone viral, to the extent that one of them has become the most viral video ever made (even more viral than Susan Boyle, thank God), at least according to the Viral Video Chart. "Pianotrappan" (the piano stairs) has been viewed almost 7 million times in less than a month, but what makes it the most viral video is the number of blog posts and tweets about the video (3,100 blog posts and 12,800 tweets). Well done Volkswagen and DDB.

See also the other two videos here and here.

Tags: viral, video, volkswagen, volkswagen, video, utpressning. Ping.

Consumers use social media to put pressure on brands

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-10-29T14:30:31-07:00

Canadian singer Dave Carroll became an instant hit on YouTube when he recorded and published the song "United Breaks Guitars". The video describing how United Airlines broke his guitar, has been viewed 5.8 million times and has become a great case story for how consumers are putting pressure on businesses via social media.

To add insult to injury, apparently United once again managed to mess up a trip for Carroll. The New York Times writes that United lost Carroll's bag on a recent trip to Denver. In an interview, Mr. Carroll said that for more than an hour on Sunday, he was told he could not leave the international baggage claim area at Denver International Airport, where he had flown from Saskatchewan. He said he had been told to stay because his bag was delayed, not lost, and he had to be there to claim it when it came down the conveyor belt.

�I�m the only person pacing around this room,� Mr. Carroll said, recalling how he was caught between an order from United staff members to stay and collect his bag, and a federal customs official telling him he had to leave the baggage claim area. The bag never showed.

A United Airlines spokeswoman, Robin Urbanski, said, �We will fully investigate what regretfully happened.�
Social media like blogs and Twitter enable individual consumers to voice their opinions against brands and companies. From a consumer perspective I think this is mainly positive because it gives consumers more power in a relationship that previously was dominated by companies. David is closing in on Goliath. And most incidents where bloggers write really negative comments about brands, they are doing it as a last resource. They've tried all the normal routes for customer complaints without success and eventually make a final effort by taking their anger out on their blogs.

Norwegian blogger Vampus today blogged about the Carroll/United kerfuffle. She writes that social media can be used as black mail against politicians, businesses and organizations, but where only part of the truth is revealed. That may very well happen from time to time, which is why companies must not automatically surrender to criticism just because it is published on a blog. The customer is not always right and if you believe the blogger does not have a case, you should say so.

A terrific example of an organization that faced serious allegations from a blogger, and handled it well, is the TSA, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration. In a blog post headlined "tsa agents took my son", a blogger claims her son was taken away from her during several minutes by TSA agents at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airport. But the TSA did not just apologize or admit wrong-doing just like that. Instead it investigated the accusations and published the findings on its blog, with CCTV footage and everything (first one video, then nine other from different angles), which showed that the claims were not true. As a result, the blogger backed down and apologized.

I think TSA would not have been able to respond so cleverly if it had not had a blog, so if you are looking for arguments why your organization should start a blog, that might be one. All in all, consumer complaints on blogs and other social media channels are going to increase (a new example today in Sweden from a blogger attacking the bank Nordea). Businesses need to monitor such comments and manage some, but there is no need to panic. With a decent strategy in place you can even survive an attack from a blogger.

Tags: tsa, blogs, bloggar, makt, utpressning. Ping.

Flickr reaches 4 billion photos

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-10-11T03:41:48-07:00

The photo sharing site Flickr today reached 4 billion photos. The growth continues to be steady and over the last 2.5 years the site has grown with half a billion new photos every six months.

Photo number 4,000,000,000 can be viewed here.

Previous milestones for Flickr:

22 Oct 04: 1,000,000
20 Apr 05: 10,000,000
15 Feb 06: 100,000,000
22 Sep 06: 250,000,000
15 May 07: 500,000,000
19 Jul 07: 850,000,000
06 Oct 07: 1,500,000,000
13 Nov 07: 2,000,000,000
17 May 08: 2,500,000,000
03 Nov 08: 3,000,000,000
04 May 09: 3,500,000,000
11 Oct 09: 4,000,000,000

Tags: flickr, photos, foto, flickr. Ping.

A majority of tweets positive to Obama's Peace Prize

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-10-10T04:40:08-07:00

The unexpected decision by the Norwegian Nobel Committe to award U.S. President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize 2009 caused a flood of reactions on Twitter. Several people in my Twitter stream were highly critical and for example Simon Sund�n noted that the deadline for the Peace Prize nomination was only 12 days after the inauguration of Barack Obama. Simon also posted this photo of the front page of the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet today. Headline "What a joke!".

Then again, you might only see what you want to see, so it's interesting to read this fresh study from a company called Attensity. They analyzed some 25,000 tweets about the Prize and found that a majority, or 62%, of tweets were positive.

According to the analysis, 54% of the tweets felt Obama deserved the Peace Prize.

I don't know whether the results from the analysis are accurate or if they include several languages or not. But either way, it is a good example of how you can use the Twittersphere as a giant focus group. If you have the right tools, it's possible to quite quickly take the temperature on how people react to a news story. Sure, Twitter users are not representative of the entire population but they are the ones who are vocal and influence others so it might be good to know their reactions.

Update: On the other hand, Mashable also looked at what people tweeted and found that a majority of those tweets "didn't get it". It is however not disclosed what methodology Mashable used. Did they just analyse those four phrases, or what? (hat tip to @Daria)

The conclusion is that there is a vast amount of data on Twitter to be analyzed, but you need to know what you're doing, or you might just as well turn to palm reading.

Tags: twitter, barack obama, nobel peace prize, barack obama, fredspriset, nobelpriset, twitter. Ping.

Think before you retweet

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-10-06T07:35:26-07:00

It has become a standard practice to promote new cool online services by sending out invites to a lucky few users. They in turn get to invite some more and soon you've created a buzz online with people who are desperate to be on the bleeding edge, doing whatever it takes to get an invite. The latest craze concerns Google Wave (no, I have not been invited yet). Everyone in my Twitter stream seems to be screaming after invites to the degree that they've lost all sense of judgement.

On Oct 1st I tweeted "I'm just waiting for someone to use this invite craze for spam purposes #invitefatigue" and I didn't have to wait long. There are hundreds of people currently retweeting this information:

"RT @waveinvite Just requested my Google Wave Invite! Get yours at http://waveinvite.co.cc"

The problem is that the site contains adult material and does not hand out Google Wave invites at all. In fact, the site states that it has 293 invites to give out, but that has been the case all day.

It's amazing how many people that let themselves be fooled by this (and I admit I retweeted a similar post earlier, not this one however). The link to waveinvite.co.cc is currently the most retweeted link on Twitter. According to Tweetmeme, the item has been retweeted as many as 2789 times, and counting.

How did you suppose that you would be sent these invites in the first place when you did not supply any email address? As users of sites like Twitter, we need to be a little more suspicious to schemes like this or we run the risk of actually spreading some seriously bad stuff. The next time you see some get rich quick scheme on Twitter, please take a moment to check it out before you retweet. Do a Google search on the story, check how many others that are tweeting. Maybe you will save yourself the embarrasement of tweeting links to adult sites.

Tags: twitter, google wave invite, sociala medier, google wave, spam, twitter. Ping.

10 most popular Swedish businesses on Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-10-08T01:58:56-07:00

More and more Swedish businesses are joining Twitter. In a recent study (in Swedish), I checked the corporate accounts with most followers and came up with this top ten list. The graph above was updated today and the company with most followers is Spotify, followed by H&M.

Although it's good to have a large following, of course the number of followers is not everything. Equally important is how the accounts are managed and if companies are engaging in conversations with others.

In the study I found that the active companies are actually quite good at maintaing a dialogue with followers. Roughly speaking, 80% of the tweeting companies post updates about news or announcements. Almost as many, 74% use Twitter to respond to feedback, answers questions or handle customer complaints. 32% use it for promotions and 6% use Twitter for rectruiting/HR purposes. This is quite a contrast to the notion that a large portion of tweets are pointless babble. At least businesses are trying to add meaningful information to Twitter.

Footnote: Stardoll and Ericsson Labs were not included in the initial analysis, but were added today. Hat tip to @beantin for the pointer to Ericsson Labs.

Update: A list of more than 160 Swedish corporate Twitter accounts can be found here. Feel free to add to the wiki.

Update Oct 8: Added Adland to the top list. Thanks @dabitch.

Tags: twitter, business, sociala medier, statistik, spotify, twitter. Ping.

Ideal length of breaking news tweets is 120 characters

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-10-05T07:26:54-07:00

About one hour ago, the Nobel Foundation announced that Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2009. As I blogged yesterday, the Nobel Foundation announced this via Twitter, as a complement to other channels.

I think it's great that the foundation wants to experiment with social media. But regarding the tweet, I have one tiny comment and that is, if you know you have something to announce, that many people will retweet on Twitter, you should ideally make room for that in your original post. Otherwise you are forcing people to change your message, in ways you might not want. For example by deleting the link to the original post.

The tweet above is 136 characters long. For someone to retweet this with the @nobelprize_org included, the new tweet will be at least 155 characters, including "RT" and spaces. This is of course too long, the maximum is 140 characters. In other words, the ideal length of a breaking news tweet is about 120 characters.

Tags: twitter, nobel prize, sociala medier, facebook, nobelpriset, twitter. Ping.

The Nobel Prize 2009 announced on Twitter and Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-10-04T11:50:37-07:00

Social media makes Swedish companies frustrated, according to an article in Computer Sweden this week. The companies that CS talked to all know that you can do a lot of smart things with social media, but few know where to start or have had time to come up with any specific plans. One company says it can't afford to lead the way and "it expects more things to happen in 2010 anyway".

I'd say that those excuses aren't valid any longer. Blogs and other forms of social media have been around for many years now and there are plenty of examples of businesses that have used these digital channels to their advantage. It really doesn't have to be very complicated. I like this example. The Nobel Foundation is the Swedish foundation that manages the Nobel Prize. It knows it has stories that many people around the world are interested in. That's not new. But they are modern enough to realize that media consumers today may want that information directly from the source, through new channels like social media. Today, many get breaking news via for example micro blogs.

So as a complement to traditional reporting, consumers this year can choose to get the news about the Nobel Prizes through Twitter, Facebook, RSS or a number of other ways, including a widget that you can post to your blog.

The first announcement will be tomorrow, when it will be official who wins the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (Monday, October 5, 11:30 a.m. CET at the earliest). Just follow http://twitter.com/Nobelprize_org and you will get the news right into your Twitter stream.

Not all businesses have news of the magnitude that the Nobel Foundation has, but almost all companies have stories to tell that are of interest to a number of stakeholders. Social media can be one channel to use. So businesses need to stop hiding behind arguments like "we haven't got time to engage in social media". Start experimenting now. A curious and learning organization will always be better at managing change. If you always wait to next year, you will never get off the ground.

Tags: twitter, nobel prize, sociala medier, facebook, nobelpriset, twitter. Ping.

Is TweetDeck the first victim of Twitpocalypse Redux?

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-09-22T12:31:23-07:00

An incident labelled the Twitpocalypse (see TechCrunch for explanation) occurred this summer, when the unique identifier for a tweet on Twitter hit the number 2,147,483,647. It caused problems for several Twitter applications, among them Twitterrific, TweetDeck and Destroy Twitter. A similar incident occured today when the second Twitpocalypse, or Twitpocalypse Redux happend at 18.34 GMT. That's the time when the unique identifier reached the number 4,294,967,295. At first, everything seemed ok, but when I looked at TweetDeck I noticed something strange. At 19.45 GMT and as far back as I could go in my list of friends (only a few minutes), TweetDeck seemed to repeat all tweets 11 times. See screen shots below.

Could it possibly be an effect of the Twitpocalypse Redux?

I have not the latest version of TweetDeck installed (it won't install the latest version). My version is 0.25.1b.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Footnote: Twhirl 0.9.2 seems ok.

Tags: twitpocalypse, tweetdeck, tweetdeck, twitpocalypse, twitter. Ping.

Three Swedish blogs on AdAge Power 150

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-09-21T13:44:47-07:00

Here is a new analysis of the AdAge Power 150 list, broken down into country of origin and with a focus on non-US blogs. I haven't blogged that frequently the last few months, so my rankings have been slipping. Still it's great to see that Adland, Blog of Ronnestam and Media Culpa defend the Swedish colours, placing Sweden among the top non-English language countries.

AdAge Power 150 is a ranking of the world's most influential marketing blogs.

Tags: adage, sweden, reklam, pr, bloggar, twitter. Ping.

Twitter is babble, Jaiku is mundane - so what?

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-09-21T13:54:42-07:00

Here we go again. We have just recovered from the Pear Analytics study that revealed that 40% of all tweets are pointless babble. And now there is a new study out that says micro blogging is "mundane". Researchers from Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT), Google and Elisa have studied 400,000 updates on the Finnish micro blog Jaiku and the conclusions are that:

As a consequence of the pressure to publish, most postings are mundane; The top 5 most frequent postings are "working", "home," "work", "lunch" and "sleeping".

Jaiku is a shadow of what it used to be before Google bought it and then abandonded it but either way, what if researchers find that most micro blogs are used mainly for seemingly trivial content? The personal and sometimes trivial nature is just part of what makes social media "social", in contrast to traditional media.

In Wikipedia the term "social" is described like this. "The adjective "social" implies that the verb or noun to which it is applied is somehow more communicative, cooperative, and moderated by contact with human beings, than if it were omitted." That means that micro blogs have a social dimension to them that make them more humane, more personal and more private than other forms of media. And that is part of what makes social media so interesting in my view. Yet another form of traditional media would not have caused this online revolution that we currently are witnessing.

And in spite of all this nonsense, micro blogs still have an impact on many aspects of business and our private lives. There are plenty of examples of people that find breaking news stories on Twitter first, and then on traditional news sites. To take another example, Twitter has a Page Rank of 9, which makes it very influential. Information that is published on Twitter is placed high in a Google search for example. So when research from Pennsylvania State University suggest that 20% of all tweets are brand related, you can imagine the impact it has on a brand's online reputation.

A large portion of the updates on micro blogs is probably quite trivial, but with about 21,000 tweets per minute, there is still enough important content to have a serious impact on the online community.

Tags: twitter, jaiku, sociala medier, branding, jaiku, twitter. Ping.

Many U.S. newspapers still don't use common digital channels

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-09-16T03:10:02-07:00

This is quite astonishing. The American Press Institute surveyed 2,400 newspaper executives and asked if their papers "provide access to stories or information such as sports scores, headlines, stock quotes, etc via Twitter, Facebook, Email alerts, Mobile/PDA, YouTube, Kindle, Flickr, e-readers, etc." As many as 24% indicated that they do not provide this type of content on any of the listed digital delivery channels.

The full presentation can be viewed below.

API ITZ Belden Revenue Initiatives Survey

View more documents from NiemanLab.

Tags: newspapers, usa, tidningar, digitala medier. Ping.

Visit Denmark pulls fake YouTube video

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-09-27T13:04:32-07:00

There has been some buzz the last few days about a video titled "Danish woman seeking", posted on YouTube featuring a woman holding her small child. In the video, the woman called Karen claims she had a one-night stand 18 months ago with a man which led to the birth of her son. She is now looking for the father and along the way in the video, she keeps mentioning how great Denmark is. The video has been viewed more than 800,000 times and generated more than 3,500 comments.

Karen also has a website with photo albums and guestbooks where visitors have commented for example that they have shared her story on their blogs.

But the whole thing is fake from start to finish and is a campaign by the tourism board Visit Denmark. At least until yesterday, Visit Denmark found the campaign to be a success.

� We have increased the knowledge of Denmark as a travel destination and communicated that this is an open and free society. We wanted to place Denmark on the world map and this is a good story, says Dorte Kiilerich, Director at Visit Denmark.

Naturally, I could not agree less. Deceiving people is no better in social media than anywhere else. And as expected, the video has caused a lot of controversy in Denmark where for example the Danish Women's Association even says the video encourages prostitution.

- We promote Denmark as a free place with space. We are happy that so many people around the world have chosen to see that. We know that there are true and false stories on YouTube, and it is that message we play with when we tell this positive, sweet and rather harmless story, Dorte Kiilerich continues.

I'm amazed that the fact that there are fake stories on YouTube is taken as an excuse to come up with yet another untrue story. So it is great to see that the video has now been taken down from YouTube. The fake website is also deleted. But the spoofs remain, thank God. Check out this "reply" video called "Swedish father seeking".

Updated: The real video found via Kristofer.

Update 2: Visit Denmark has pulled this video too. It's odd that they are now so eager to delete a video they recently found to be such a good idea.

Tags: denmark, youtube, youtube, danmark. Ping.

Participation in social media increases but Sweden is lagging the US

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-08-25T13:52:13-07:00

Forrester Research has just published its third annual study about consumers' participation in social media. The data from the US is available and indicate that the digital divide is closing. Consumers who are participating the most in social technologies are labelled Creators, Critics and Collectors and all three groups have either grown moderately or are at the same level as last year. Instead the inexperienced groups called Joiners and Spectators grew rapidly. As many as 73% of online Americans are now in the group Spectators, which means that they read blogs, listen to podcast or watch videos from other users.

The inactive group decreased from 25% to 18% of the online US population.In the age group under 35 only 10% are Inactive.

According to the research data for Europe, "The Netherlands and Sweden have the most participation, Italy has the most Creators, and social networks are most popular in the UK." But Sweden and Europe is still lagging the US. A comparison between Sweden and the US looks like this:

Participation in social technologies are growing fast and as author Josh Bernoff at Forrester writes: "Marketers, if you're not doing social technology applications now, you're officially behind."

You can also check the data for individual contries on this widget.

Tags: socialmedia, research, sweden, sociala medier. Ping.

Controversial captchas

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-08-25T10:07:17-07:00

A captcha is a sort of form that visitors fill in on sites in order to stop responses generated by computers. Different distorted passwords are generated as either a combination of words or just a series of symbols. Sometimes though, the automatically generated captchas are somewhat unfortunate. This is what I got yesterday when signing on to Twitter.

To say that eugenics is controversial is an understatement.

Tags: twitter, captcha, twitter. Ping.

Unofficial pages attract Usain Bolt fans on Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-08-17T02:57:09-07:00

I spent the weekend in the archipelago on the Swedish east coast and drove for about three hours to get back home on Sunday evening. We arrived only five minutes before the start of the 100 metres final in the World Championships in Athletics in Berlin. I sat with my two oldest kids and watched the amazing new world record (9.58) set by Usain Bolt and it was a magical moment that I will remember for many years.

When we get to experience such an amazing performance we sometimes like to show our graditude and support for the athlete. After 9.58, more people will become fans of Usain Bolt and search for information about the fastest man on earth. His own website is of course one such place, but people will also want to become fans of Bolt on Facebook for example. But there are as many as 62 pages for Usain Bolt on Facebook, which one is the official page? Well, there is one page with more than a million fans and it appears to be some kind of official page. It contains a lot of information and it can be reached via the personalized URL http://www.facebook.com/Usain, so it appears to be legitimate.

Another fanpage has managed to attract 127,000 fans, and there are several others with a few thousands Bolt fans. Others are piggybacking on celebrities by "borrowing" their names on different social networks. For example, someone called Jimmy Hawarny has managed to get the personalized URL http://www.facebook.com/UsainBolt for his personal page. And there are several Usain Bolts on Twitter, none which seems to be the real one. While Twitter has tried to solve the problem with fake accounts by creating verified accounts, to my knowledge, Facebook has no such indicator that a page is "official".

One the other hand, creating fake fan pages is a violation of Facebook's terms:

Fake Pages and unofficial "fan pages" are a violation of our Pages Guidelines. If you create an unauthorized Page or violate our Pages Guidelines in any way, your Facebook account may be disabled.

Unofficial fanpages may not be a huge problem, in fact they may even become the biggest asset for a brand or a celebrity. The biggest fanpage for Coca-Cola on Facebook has attacted well over 3 million fans, and it was started by two regular Facebook members who had trouble to find a legitimate Coke page. The page has also been embraced by the Coca-Cola Company.

In the case of Usain Bolt, it's not extremely hard to find the official page, even though hundreds of thousands have become fans of unofficial pages. But when there are so many unofficial pages, maybe it is time for Facebook to launch some form of Verified Pages? Just so that you know what's what.

Update: In a Google search, the page with 1 million fans and the page with 127,000 fans are both presented as official: "Welcome to the official Facebook Page of Usain Bolt. Get exclusive content and interact with Usain Bolt right from Facebook."

Tags: facebook, usain bolt, sociala medier, facebook, usain bolt, twitter. Ping.

Hey TechCrunch, Sweden is not the worst greenhouse gas emitter

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-08-04T01:36:54-07:00

A blogger writes a provocative post with claims that turn out to be completely false. It happens every day, why should I care? Well, if the blog in question is no other than TechCrunch, things start to get a bit problematic. The site is so influential that its content reaches many thousands of people. As you may have read in my previous post, TechCrunch posted an article on July 31 claiming that Sweden and Canada are among the worst emitters of greenhouse gases in the world. This turned out to be at least partly bogus but TechCrunch shows no interest in correcting the misleading information.

Actually I don't really care if people lose trust in TechCrunch, but when disinformation about my country keeps on spreading across the web, I feel I need to raise my voice. The false article is bad enough, I could live with that. But due to the authority of TechCrunch and the behaviour of its readers, the false statements continue to have an impact for a very long time. Here's why:

- As seen on Techmeme, Twitter users are still retweeting links to the article so the lies keep reaching new people. In total at least 220 retweets so far.

- The article has been dugg 110 times on Digg and I'm sure it has been shared on many other different platforms during the last few days.

- All this sharing helps place this story high on Google. For instance, in a search for "worst country greenhouse gas" the TechCrunch article comes up first. A search for "Sweden greenhouse gas" shows the article on top as a news result, with three more mentions in the first ten results. There is an obvious risk that the false facts will stay around and influence people's opinions and views about Sweden.

There is really no need to add more proof, all the arguments and links are clearly available in the comments to the TechCrunch article. But just to point out how ridiculous statements like "So who are the worst offenders? Topping the list is Sweden!" are, I have compiled two tables below.

As TechCrunch actually noted further down in the article, USA is the country among the 42 in the report that emits most greenhouse gases. But a more fair comparison of course is to look at home much gas each country emits per capita. So I took the liberty of compiling a table of the 42 countries, based on the total emissions for 2006. Population numbers from the Population Reference Bureau (pdf).

The tables shows that Australia is topping the list, which is due to a high reliance on coal to generate electricity. The US is in the top along with Canada, with Sweden at the very bottom.

Another way to illustrate how much greenhouse gas a country emits is by looking at the amount of emissions divided by GDP. That could illustrate the ability of a country to generate wealth with a small impact on the global environment.

In the following table, countries in Eastern Europe are the worst, while again Sweden is at the very bottom.

If you feel like I do, please continue to comment the article. You can also blog about greenhouse gas emissions and link to a trusted source (like some of the links above) so that the correct information climbs in the Google results. You can tweet about the story and include the hashtag #techcrunchfail.

Don't sit back and let this insult stand unchallenged.

Additional links:
Sweden does the most of any country for tackling emissions of greenhouse gases.

Updated Swedish data: (zip file).

Photo credit: Fredrik St�lhandske, Sweden.se 2008

Updated with graphs from Sweden tops the Climate Change Performance Index 2009 (pdf).

Tags: twitter, sweden, greenhouse gas, techcrunch, techcrunchfail, sverige, koldioxid, twitter. Ping.

Can you trust TechCrunch enough to share their stories?

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-08-01T23:42:26-07:00

TechCrunch is the second most influential blog on the planet according to Technorati and with such authority comes a huge responsibility. Thousands of readers read the content and spread links to newsworthy articles to even more readers via Digg, Delicious, Twitter and so on. Unfortunately many people only scan headlines and quickly read the through the content which means that if a story is not correct, misleading information quickly spreads across the web.

TechCrunch yesterday published a story with the headline "Google Maps Don�t Lie. Sweden And Canada Among Worst Greenhouse Gas Emitters." How sensational, those self-righteous Swedes are worse than Americans. Yay, I can keep my Hummer. Such a provocative headline obviously appeals to a lot of people who share the story with their friends. Tweetmeme has tracked 166 tweets about the article so far and most of them just recycle the headline and the link. The problem is that the entire story is bunk for several reasons.

First of all, the data that the article is based upon shows that Sweden has had the highest increase (in percent) in green house gases from 1990 to 2006 (with 110%). While that indeed looks bad it does not mean that Sweden a) emits most of all countries or b) emits most per capita. To the contrary, a quick look at the data reveals that the US and many other countries emit many times more per capita than Sweden.

Second, as is revealed in the comments, the map is based on incorrect data. Sweden has produced a new report with updated data that show that Swedish emissions in 2006 were at level with 1990 (zip file). In other words, not even an increase compared to 1990.

The first point above is just the result of poor journalism by TechCrunch, but the second point is harder to foresee. But readers quickly pointed out the first mistake that the writer Erick Schonfeld had made so it wouldn't have been especially hard to correct the misleading headline and content. But Schonfeld apparently didn't see it that way, instead he posted denigrative responses to reader comments.

"Do you dare question a Google Map?"

"Where did you learn to read, Sweden?"

"That is the default map. Go petition the UN (or Google) if you think it is misleading."

Instead of doing the right thing and using the input from readers to improve a poor article, TechCrunch chose to leave incorrect statements up on their site. Instead of subscribing to Dan Gillmor's view that "my readers know more than I do", TechCrunch apparently think that their readers are idiots (and that Swedes can't read).

Any leading publication today, be it a blog or a traditional newspaper, must take responsibility for the content they publish if they want to keep any sort of credibility. Everone makes mistakes, but news is shared at lightning speed today and if you are the source of incorrect information that spread across the web, you should do everything in your power to stop the false information from spreading any further. If not, how can anyone trust you in the future?

I didn't expect this kind of behaviour from a leading blog in 2009. Big fail.

Tags: twitter, sweden, canada, fail, techcrunch, sverige, journalistik, twitter. Ping.

AP quoted fake Zlatan on Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-07-19T02:54:06-07:00

What do Associated Press, Al Jazeera, SVT (Swedish television), Sydsvenskan and Shanghai Daily have in common? They were all fooled by a prankster pretending to be Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the Swedish football striker, on Twitter.

AP seems to be the origin of the story which spread across mainstream media last night. Sydsvenskan writes that "according to AP, Zlatan is quite talkative on his twitter-blog" and quotes one tweet saying "I have won everything in Italy, its time to move on! I want the champions league title!".

Shanghai Daily writes: Ibrahimovic appeared prepared to accept the move after writing "time to learn Spanish" on his Twitter page.

But if you have any knowledge about Ibrahimovic, you would do at least a little research before assuming that he is on Twitter. Microblogging would be a very un-Zlatan like thing to do since he keeps his private life to himself and for years have not have had a decent official webpage.

The first thing you would do is check if the Twitter account is a Verified Account. Sure, verified accounts have just recently been introduced for Twitter but it is a good way to secure that celebrities are the ones actually tweeting.

The second thing to do would be to search for Zlatan and Twitter on Google. That would immediately have revealed my blog post from June 22nd, which shows that in fact the Zlatan account is fake. For example, the "mobile photos" that he has posted are taken from a photo agency and from a TV documentary on YouTube.

This morning, Italian media write that Zlatan confirms that it is not him on Twitter. A Google translation of an article in Correire dello Sport:

"Zlatan Ibrahimovi? denies that he wrote the message on Twitter in which he expressed the intention to leave Inter. Swedish - as reported by the press Inter - said that they had not written anything on the site of microblogging. Ibrahimovic aims to trace the author of the 'post' ( 'I have won everything in Italy, and' Time to change. I want the Champions League! ') And see if there are means for obtaining financial compensation."

Hat tip: Robert Laul and David Hylander.

Tags: twitter, zlatan ibrahimovic, sociala medier, zlatan, zlatan ibrahimovic, twitter. Ping.

Top PR and social media blogs

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-07-01T10:25:43-07:00

I love ranking lists, especially the ones that include me. So I have to write about these rankings from Invesp Consulting that list blogs in a variety of categories, based on factors like Google Page Rank and incoming links. I am happy to find Media Culpa currently listed as number 21 in public relations and 119 in social media. Not bad for a guy blogging in a second language (and I get 0 for subscribers since my FeedBurner stats are not in yet). Especially cool to see that among the biggest PR blogs in the world, this blog is ranked #8 on Google Page Rank, #12 on number of incoming links, #13 on most indexed pages in Google, #18 on StumbleUpon reviews, #19 on Delicious bookmarks and #23 on Alexa site rank (that was a real surprise).

The list of social media blogs include such well-known blogs as ProBlogger, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb and Scobleizer, so I'm quite happy to be included at all.

Hat tip to Chris Abraham (#18 in PR).

Tags: media culpa, pr blog, pr, bloggar, media culpa, blogg. Ping.

Listed company buys The Pirate Bay for 60 MSEK

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-06-30T02:34:40-07:00

This will definitely be one of the most discussed news items today. The listed gaming company Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) has issued a press statement this morning that they will purchase the website the Pirate Bay and the company Peeralism that "develops peerialistic solutions to transport and store data on the Internet". According to Svenska Dagbladet, GGF will purchase the Pirate Bay for 60 MSEK, out of at least half in cash, and Peeralism for 100 MSEK, out of which at least half in cash.

Here is the press statement on GGF's website:

Acquisitions of The Pirate Bay and new file sharing technology, P2P 2.0
- Pave the way for compensation model
The listed software company, Global Gaming Factory X AB (publ) (GGF) acquires The Pirate Bay website, http://www.thepiratebay.org, one of the 100 most visited websites in the world and the technology company Peerialism, that has developed next generation file-sharing technology. Following the completion of the acquisitions, GGF intends to launch new business models that allow compensation to the content providers and copyright owners. The responsibility for, and operation of the site will be taken over by GGF in connection with closing of the transaction, which is scheduled for August 2009.

"We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site" said Hans Pandeya, CEO GGF.

"The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary. Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers' need faster downloads and better quality" continues Hans Pandeya.

A press conference will be held in Stockholm at 11.00 CET today and hopefully we will get more information about the acquisition, or find out if it is just a PR stunt. It's a little hard to believe that this acquisition will actually carried out.

Updated: According to information on Aktietorget, where GGF is listed, the company has a market cap of 140 MSEK (fluctuating between 125 and 150 MSEK this morning).

Update 2: Official comment by TPB: Yes, it's true.

Tags: pirate bay, p2p, pirate bay, p2p, fildelning. Ping.

Twitter search vs. Google

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-06-26T00:51:53-07:00

A quick follow up note on my previous post on using Twitter for real-time search. Today the number one news story without doubt is the tragic death of the King of Pop - Michael Jackson. Nearly all major news outlets are reporting about his death and social media are buzzing like crazy about the icon. And once again we can see that Twitter is a much quicker search engine than Google Insights For Search which doesn't display live results, only results for the last 7 days. See the difference below.

Top ten trending topics on Twitter this morning (9 AM CET):

Rip MJ
MJ's
P Michael Jackson
Farrah Fawcett
#MichaelJackson
Iran
#iranelection
Pop
Thriller
MTV

Top ten search terms on Google the last 7 days:

1.neda
2.leighton meester
3. wimbledon 2009
4.wimbledon
5. jon and kate
6. ??
7. us open
8. us open golf
9. perez hilton
10. a�f

Both tools are great for research on current trends in online behaviour, and they are of course not analyzing the same activities. One monitors search behaviour and the other monitors published key words. Either way, when it comes to finding out what happens right now, Twitter search is way quicker.

Tags: twitter, michael jackson, sociala medier, google, michael jackson, twitter. Ping.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic on Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-06-23T02:11:39-07:00

I am quite sceptical when it comes to celebrities and social media. I always assume that something is fake until I find a credible source that tells me otherwise. But when I stumbled upon Swedish football striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic on Twitter, I got a little curious. He hasn't been very active online and to my knowledge he still doesn't have an official webpage, so Zlatan being on Twitter would be somewhat ground breaking.

A first glance at @zlatans_official does indeed include som information that could indicate that this is in fact the real Zlatan twittering. For example, he has some mobile photos of himself with fans and a person that is supposed to be his brother. But when we look at the photos he has been posting, we see one that is taken from his house in Cernobbio, Italy:

May 24th: "dekorating my new house in Cernobbio Italy. Watch the view from casa del zlatan!! http://yfrog.com/5jjyvj"

But the very same photo can be found here, and along with several other photos it comes from the press and photo agency Stella Pictures. If Zlatan would be tweeting photos from his house, why would be be posting photos that belong to a photo agency and not just snap a picture with his mobile? No, I think we can safely say that this story has been debunked. Zlatan is not on Twitter.

Updated: This tweet says that Zlatan is eating pizza with his brother in downtown Milan, but the photo it is taken from a Swedish tv documentary, and shows Zlatan having pizza with his younger brother in Malm�. See about 4.54 into this YouTube video. (Via Luna in the comments to this post)

Tags: twitter, zlatan ibrahimovic, sociala medier, zlatan, zlatan ibrahimovic, twitter. Ping.

News sites or ad sites?

noreply@blogger.com (kullin) — 2009-06-23T02:26:31-07:00

It is well known that newspapers have a hard time charging for online content. So advertising is of course a vital part of the business model for the web sites of traditional newspapers. But the question is if ads are taking over the entire sites of the dailies? See below the screen shots of four of the leading Nordic dailies: Dagens Naeringsliv (Norway), Jyllandsposten (Denmark), Berlingske Tidene (Denmark) and Aftonbladet (Sweden). You can hardly determine what the breaking news are by looking at the screen, without scrolling.

Updated: The explanation can be found in this graphic of the state of online "journalism".

Update 2: Kenneth Lay Milling follows up and looks at several other Danish news sites and concludes that in general 80-90 percent of the screen is covered by ads.

Tags: news, advertising, reklam, media, dagstidningar, annonser. Ping.