Björn Jeffery

While we’re on the subject of funny stuff. 1,9 million+ views on YouTube. This guy is a genius.

Translation:
Wasp sighted in Boden

Kerstin Wiklund at Spanngränd in Boden was visited by a wasp on her terrace Saturday the 13th of April.

This might be the funniest piece of news I have ever read. It took them four days to write it too!

Probably the most expected acquisition so far happened today, Allers has bought BlogSoft. No figures announced yet unfortunately. Allers are starting to get an increasing web presence this way, recently buying the portal Spray.se as well.

It’s interesting to watch what different strategies the Swedish media groups are applying in order to to catch up with the new internet. Short summary:

* Schibsted, with several in-house developed services, is the most successful when it comes to traffic at least. Not particularly innovative in their choices always, but successful still the same. Gives the impression of having a central and coherent internet strategy.

* Stampen are actively scouting more companies to buy after acquiring Familjeliv.se. Have shown interest in expanding internationally but nothing is official yet.

* MTG has bought moderately and are now looking to integrate Playahead with their tv-channels. Acting fairly slowly so far.

* Bonnier runs a very decentralized group making it difficult to implement central strategies. Has ownership of several of the largest sites in Sweden, mainly major, and tradional, media houses that can push for their online edition through current channels. (Disclaimer for transparency: I work for several Bonnier clients)

What I lack in all the of the above is vision. Buying out sites that are top 25 on the KiaIndex isn’t exactly rocket science. It’s the same logic as media companies have always had – if you can’t beat em, buy em. But catching up on the new internet is much wider than that – why aren’t these companies investing in technology for instance? Media only ever seems to look at other media. That’s their main problem, in my opinion. If they spent a tenth of their time looking at other areas of business instead the Swedish media climate would be considerably more interesting, and profitable as well.

And the specific Allers-BlogSoft case? Well, someone was bound to buy them sooner or later. I was surprised that it was Allers though, I must say. If Allers plays their cards right, I think this could be a good investment. But they have to be careful – the bloggers at Blogg.se are not the tech-savvy professional types and have not chosen the blog hosting for any other reason than their domain name and/or convenience. There is no sense of community what so ever. Therefore they aren’t loyal in the same way followers of some other sites are, like for instance Threadless. If all Allers does is fill the site with advertising without continuously developing their services, the way their bloggers want it to be developed, they are going to be left with a very expensive and empty shell.

tags technorati : allers blogsoft blogg.se bonnier schibsted stampen mtg strategy

tags bloggar.se: allers, blogsoft, blogg.se, bonnier, schibsted, mtg, stampen, strategi

Morning presentation at MiM, originally uploaded by goodold.

Don’t ask what I’m doing with my leg.

From the latest newspaper community-no-we’re-not-a-community-thing:

Du har 20 MB utrymme till dina bilder, vilket motsvarar ungefär 200 bilder eller mer. Behöver du mer plats? Skicka ett betal-SMS (50 kr plus eventuell operatörsavgift) så får du ytterligare 20 MB.

If you don’t understand Swedish, it says that you have to pay 50 SEK (?$7,3) to get 20 mb of storage for pictures. 50 SEK for 20 mb? Come on, this is 2007. It’s outrageous.

tags bloggar.se: tjenis.se, dagstidningar, prissättning, community

I got the opportunity to meet Anssi Vanjoki at Nokia the other day. We discussed the mobile internet development, among other things. Many interesting ideas came up, I hope to be able to get back to that subject.

But for now – as it’s Easter and all – I thought I’d leave you with an interesting nugget of information that I hadn’t heard before. Using white in web design may be good for many reasons, but it also forces computer screens to work harder and use more energy – compared to black which is the screens natural colour. Makes sense, when you think about it. Because of this, Google.com uses as much electricity as all of New York City. Wow. Is eco-friendly web design the next step?

Happy Easter everyone!

tags bloggar.se: eco, webbdesign, google

The young magazine prodigy Ebba von Sydow is leaving the print magazine to work with their website full time instead. Everyone seems to think that this means she got fired.

Clearly print-people are setting the agenda here. It’s great that she’ll be working with the web, as it is a far superior medium for the target group. Getting fired for me, in 2007, would be being sent back to work for a print magazine.

tags bloggar.se: veckorevyn, ebba von sydow

The Swedish business magazine Affärsvärlden has an interview with the CEOs for Swedens largest tv-channel, TV4, and our public service alternative, SVT. Unfortunately, or surprisingly perhaps, they seem to share the same outlook on the future. I’ve translated the two quotes below:

From the interview with Jan Scherman, CEO of TV4:

Jan Scherman himself builds traditional channels with traditional TV charts in the newspapers, the opposite of what IT gurus like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Niklas Zennström predict. The trio believes that the viewers, in the future, click their way to what they want to see, when they want to see it.
– I don’t actually don’t believe that for one second. The reason being that there isn’t one example in all of world history where a new medium has entirely replaced another. The book still exists and is living well. I’m not against the development at all. But some sort of balance is needed.

From the interview with Eva Hamilton, CEO of SVT:

And that the viewers own choices would go as far as IT profiles Bill Gates and Niklas Zennström predicts, that the tv charts will disappear, she doesn’t, in agreement with Jan Scherman at TV4, agree to.
– That’s the old usual when new technology comes along. We’ve still got newspapers even if we’ve since then got radio, tv, video and now the internet.

I might be missing something here (I hope so at least), but have they both completely misunderstood what’s going on? It seems they think that TV is one thing – charted programmes that are sent through a box in people’s living rooms. And as they don’t think that will be replaced, we don’t have to worry about the new technology. A strange way of looking at it, to say the least.

The way I see it, what’s happening is a change of the distribution of the medium – not a change, or replacement, of the medium itself. It will naturally evolve in terms of length, quality and assortment – but it always has done that, so this is not news. What the new distribution will enable and enhance, is a new type of viewing behaviour. One that shouldn’t be ignored.

As I say in most of my presentations: the internet is a superior carrier of mediums, rather than just a medium among others. Newspapers, radio, TV and telephones are all better through the internet for many reasons – adding true interactivity being the major point.

The whole argument reminds of newspapers that think that they are in the newspaper business. They’re not. They’re in the news business, or even in the information providing business if you wish. TV4 and SVT are not in the TV-to-television business – they are in what we can call the TV-to-any-medium business, in lack of better phrasing.

tags bloggar.se: tv4, svt, jan scherman, eva hamilton, tv, media

Curleys 7 statements about media

Originally uploaded by goodold.

Quick note from Citygate forum. The picture shows the seven local media strategies from Rob Curley, a man the occurs time and time again in these surroundings. [see the comments for explanation concerning the following:] Apparently his former employers aren’t as convinced by his brilliance as the rest of the world is. He was always out traveling, and it’s arguable that the only brand he was building while talking about the sites was his own.

My presentation went well yesterday, and a got a lot of positive feedback. I did a short case study on how the recent troubles in Copenhagen regarding Ungdomshuset. A few examples on how it was covered in mainstream media, and a few examples on how it could have been done. I was thinking that I might put the slides online, but I’m not sure they are descriptive enough to be of any value. I’ll think about it.

tags bloggar.se: citygate, media, robcurley, konferens

Twitter is a great service. Simple to set up. Easy to use. It’s based on SMS messaging, which is dead simple. But it’s a printing press for bores who tell you they are eating lunch. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it’s one of the first SMS systems with an API which creative programmers can put to good use.

Mike Butcher is on point with his observation above. An SMS API is indeed good news for savvy developers with a presence focus. And if Europe had had the American system for SMS (i e e-mail to a phone number – free!), then it would have cost them considerably less as well. Perhaps that’s the price you pay for being blog flavour of the week.

But although the above is true, this is not the only interesting development with the emerging micro-blogging. Jyri Engeström, founder of the Twitter competitor Jaiku, held a good presentation on this subject at Reboot last year. The presence, both geographical and actual, enables a more precise form of interaction than before.

If I’m up in the middle of the night, sleepless, I can’t start phoning people to have a chat. They’re probably asleep, and wouldn’t appreciate my call. But if I could see who was also still up, I could phone them directly. This would put me in contact with someone that I hadn’t initially thought of calling. Thus, knowing ones presence creates new areas of interaction that previously never appeared. This needs to be watched very carefully.

* * *

Other things on the agenda for today:
* Finish my slides for tomorrows (short) presentation at Citygate Forum
* Another meeting about Second Life – a lot of them lately
* Read key parts of State of the News Media 2007
* Go through Angalossys biz plan with Michelle
* Get well. I’m so sick of all this coughing.

tags bloggar.se: twitter, jaiku, presence, mikrobloggande, angalossy, citygate