Mindpark

WAN/WEF is cancelled – but still they don´t get it

Joakim Jardenberg — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:02:28 +0000

Last summer the big and annual world conference of WAN and WEF took place in Gothenburg, Sweden. Just to be clear, we are talking about the international newspaper industry association. Several of us attending last year were stunned when we heard what many of the industry representatives had to say. Among others, I met up with a very upset Martin Jönsson over a beer, who thought that the representatives were on their way of ruining all the great opportunities to debate by keeping their blindfold on. They emphasized clearly that there was no crisis in the newspaper industry.

So it comes, I was just reached by the information that this year’s conference, that was scheduled to take place in India two months from now, is being canceled. The reason stated is that the number of confirmed attendees is too low. Therefore they cancel, and as usual put their hope to everything solving itself after the crisis. A quote from Guardian:

“The economic crisis has had a devastating effect on participation in the events, which are simply not viable at this stage,” Bertrand Pecquerie, World Editors Forum director said in an email seen by MediaGuardian.co.uk.”

“Our belief is that newspaper companies will, by necessity, learn to live with the crisis over the year and will be more willing to invest again in conferences and travel by the end of 2009. The exact new schedule will be confirmed shortly. We need your suggestions in this difficult period.”

Ok, so by the end of 2009 everything should be back to normal again. With such kind of friends, this industry doesn’t need any enemies. Jeff Jarvis writes about it here: “ Talk is not cheap“, and he has mentioned it earlier as well. A lot of people will have things to say and it would be great if we could find a better and cheaper alternative for the industry to move forward. And at wan.org everything runs along as usual. Unchanged, that is.

Wordpress - the most popular platform among the biggest blogs

Erik Forsberg — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:00:03 +0000

Pingdom has investigated what blog platforms are used on the biggest blogs, by using Technorati’s list of the 100 most popular blogs and checking the tools they use. Wordpress and Six Apart (Movable Type and Typepad) dominate the list and together they account for 60 of the 100 biggest blogs.

Wordpress is the most commonly used platform among the 100 biggest blogs, with 27 of them using Wordpress and a further five using Wordpress.com.

12 out of 100 use Movable Type and 16 use Typepad.

Blogsmith is the biggest platform of the rest with 14 blogs. Gawker follows with 8 blogs and four out of 100 use Drupal. Blogger.com is used by 3 of the most popular blogs.

Eight out of ten internet users visited a Google site during December 2008

Erik Forsberg — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:00:58 +0000

Google finishes first in comScore’s survey Media Metrix that ranks the biggest companies on the web based on the amount of unique visitors from the USA. The entire internet audience in the USA totaled to 190.7 million during December 2008 according to comScore. Almost eight out of ten (79 percent) of them visited at least one Google website during the month.

Second biggest in the USA is Yahoo! with a total of 145.7 million visitors (76 percent), followed by Microsoft in third place with 125.4 million (66 percent).

Just outside of the top 10 we find Facebook with 54.6 million unique visitors, which equals 29 percent of the entire internet audience.

A third of all internet users have a profile on a social network

Erik Forsberg — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:00:54 +0000

The share of adult internet users in the USA that have a profile on any of the social networking sites has more than quadrupled during the last four years. The numbers have risen from 8 percent in February 2005 to roughly a third (35 percent) of the users by December 2008. All according to results from the tracking survey by Pew Internet & American Life Project in December 2008.

It’s still the younger generation that dominates the social networks. In the age group 18-24 years it’s a staggering number of 75 percent stating that they have at least one profile on any of the social networking sites. Amongst those over 65 years the number adds up to only 7 percent.

The usage of social networks during an average day is also rising. Almost a fifth (19 percent) of all internet users say they visited a social network the day before, which should be compared to only 2 percent in February 2005.

24hbc – only one week left

Joakim Jardenberg — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:00:21 +0000

A week from now we are going to fill a boat with almost 100 entrepreneurs and set sail towards an intensive day. During 24 hours we will develop business ideas on the internet, services will be built and they are all going to be launched. It´s a wonderfully ambitious project! Bordering to craziness, but the good kind of crazy!

The whole project took its start the 26th of October 2008 when Ted Valentin wrote a blog post about developing business ideas in 24 hours. It felt spot on and I announced our interest to participate immediately. Shortly after the announcement we took the decision that Mindpark should step forward as the first main sponsor of the event. A week later, Ted opened the project blog and named it “ 24 hour business camp”.

Big name players gradually signed up, for instance main sponsors Bonnier, Binero, Telenor and product sponsors Google, Hasseludden Yasuragi and Get a Newsletter. Press and blogs seem to like what we are about to do. Among others Svenska Dagbladet paid attention to the event, as did DI (don’t miss out on the comments to the article). The whole event will be covered live at live.24hourbusinesscamp.com by Beata Wickbom and the people at Arctic Startup (the Techcrunch of the Nordic region).

But that’s not enough! In the long list of participants you find people from all around the country, but as far as I am aware the event hasn’t drawn any attention outside of the main cities. Of course it’s more fun to write about the project when it has succeeded, but why not join in from the beginning? If a local talent is brave enough to promise a new business idea in 24 hours, one deserves to get mentioned in the local newspaper. Don’t you agree?

If you are working somewhere in Sweden with media, check this list below and see if you recognize any of the names.

72 percent of all searches in the USA are through Google

Erik Forsberg — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 10:00:33 +0000

According to the latest numbers from Hitwise, Google had a market share of 72 percent among search engines in the USA during November 2008. That’s an increase of 11 percent since November 2007, when Google’s share was 65 percent.

Only Google saw an increase of searches among the bigger search engines between November 2007 and November 2008. Yahoo! is losing market shares and accounts for 17.7 percent of searches made. During the latest year the market share for MSN Search (including Live.com) has dropped from 23 percent to just 5.5 percent. Ask.com has a share of 3.4 percent. The remaining 43 search engines that are included in the survey account for 1.5 percent of all searches made in October.

Since September 2006 Google has increased its market share with roughly 18 percent in the USA, from 61 percent in September 2006 up to 72 percent in November 2008. During that same period both MSN’s and Yahoo!’s numbers have decreased, Yahoo! from 22.3 percent down to 17.7 percent, a drop with 21 percent. Meanwhile MSN has halved its market share from 10.9 percent to 5.5 percent.