My good friend Henrik Torstensson wrote a few wise (Swedish) words in May last year that stuck with me. In short, his thesis was that it is cheaper to aggregate content than to produce it. Very simple one might think, but looking at Swedish publishers web strategies it’s obvious that everyone’s not onboard the train.

I’ll give you the latest example. VeckoRevyn is one of the largest magazines for women between 18 and 25 in Sweden. Their Editor in Chief, Ebba von Sydow, is known as the fashion princess of this northern country through numerous appearances in media and a successful career at the tabloid Expressen. One of the main features on VeckoRevyn´s site is von Sydow´s blog. So far so good. But then it goes wrong.

After re-launching the site the other day VeckoRevyn invited their readers to start their own blogs, hosted by VR. This had been a good idea, had it come a year ago. By now, the Swedish blogosphere is already (literally) swamped with girls posting their daily outfits and best shopping tips (visit top-blogger Eleonore for the best one). The chances of all these bloggers moving to VRs site are pretty slim.

In my opinion, VeckoRevyn should have built an aggregator for Swedish fashion blogs instead. That way the transition of information had been automatic and they would have added a new, sought after, service and made VeckoRevyn the hub of all fashion blogs in Sweden instead of yet another blog hosting clone. Easier as well, as they wouldn’t have to take care of 200 15 year olds that want to change their usernames every other week.

So actually, when trying to enter an satiated information market, it not only is it cheaper – it is essential – to consider aggregating options. Owning the information is no longer top priority. Make sure that your site has updated content, and care less about who actually owns the content or where it is coming from.

(this is my first post, so bear with me while we try to get the design and everything in check 🙂