Two Swedish articles of note this weekend that I thought I should say something about. Commentary in English about articles in Swedish, hmm. Is it pointless as the readers that only understand English can’t read the original article? I hope not, but perhaps it is. Should I have two separate feeds perhaps or maybe just leave the Swedish stuff alone? Please give me some feedback on this.
Anyway, article time:
Svenska Dagbladet about Society 2.0. Twitter, Flickr and all that. Also mentions Superlocal that I met the other day. The article is a good summary for people that have no idea this is going on, and presents it as a sociological phenomenon, which it of course is.
Erik has excellent and insightful comments about why micro is micro, and if perhaps it would have been different if it could have been. Good point indeed, the technical limitations of sms and similar stuff will have that effect. No different from printing really, when you think about it. The length of printed articles are highly correlated to the size of the magazine, and the way it is edited. But when this becomes standard practice, our expectations follow suit and we want the articles in that format to feel secure. Same thing with sms/im/jaiku if you ask me. It started as a limitation, now it’s just a form of communication that people feel at ease with.
The second article is from Expressen, and about Second Life. It’ amazing how many people are getting things wrong regarding this – it’s almost as if it’s meta-cool to hate on SL for being hype, rather that actually analysing what is being done – and what can be done. And what it is a sign of, as well.
The point of the article is that the Swedish Institute are wasting their money on building an embassy in a place where there’s nothing but porn and gambling. And hardly any people, apparently.
The article quotes one of my clients, Anders Olofsson at Sydsvenskan. He says that Second Life might not even be around in a few years time. What they don’t quote him on, but that I’m pretty sure that he said, is that it might be replaced by something else, but that the trend of the internet becoming 3D in many aspects is substantial. That didn’t make the cut apparently. It’s not important whether Second Life is around or not, websites don’t look the same today as they did 1995 either. But there was value in being online then anyway. You learned stuff. About behaviour, expectations and people. Don’t even get me started on the PR value this has had – let’s see you get that for 400 000 SEK any other way.
Porn and gambling they say. True. But seen from a biz perspective – this is a good thing, because it means there is business to be made here. Those types of businesses tend not to chose communication channels for the mere sociological value. These are the two industries that were on the forefront with the internet, DVDs and mobile phones. They understand business models, no matter what one might think about them from a moral point of view.
The internet was, and still is, riddled with porn. This doesn’t mean that there’s nothing of value in virtual worlds for regular companies and brands. Quite the opposite.
tags technorati : society2.0 second life expressen media svenskadagbladet
tags bloggar.se: society 2.0, expressen, svenska dagbladet, second life