Björn Jeffery

I moved to Sweden from London when I was three years old. My mother had been talking Swedish to me all the time, but I hadn’t quite caught on yet. So when I started at a play school, there were some communication issues. None that couldn’t be resolved of course – three year-olds tend not to be that picky anyway. The teachers at the play school taught me Swedish as we went along.

The other day I got an email. It was from one of my old teachers. She had found me through googling the names that are published with the Sudokus in GP (we make them!). She thought that she recognised my surname, and then managed to work out that it was the same little boy that once came to stay with them all these years ago.

I’m still thinking about what to answer her. It’s like a circle somehow.

Sometimes I think the shift to Society 2.0 is driven by the wrong incentives. When I hold presentations for companies, the fact that they often pick up on is that people do things for “free”. Sometimes you can see it in their eyes – “oh! if the users to all the work we don’t have to pay! bring it on, web 2.0!”. You know what I mean; the whole (tiresome) UGC-discussion.

I think this is a complete misconception of the situation, as this would imply that there are hoards of users just waiting in line to help companies cut their costs. This is, obviously, not the case (but if it was that would indeed be a revolution in itself). People are people primarily, not users. This is not going to change in a foreseeable future.

The confusion occurs because there is no monetary transaction. That doesn’t mean it’s free. You still have to offer something in return, but in another currency that is equally accepted on the internet. There are many different types that can be considered. Here’s a few that I’ve thought of:

Content: Barter deals with articles or services. Common in old media as well.

Traffic: The Technorati deal with Washington Post. Blog about one of their articles and get paid with a traffic directing link back.

Enhanced user experience: Upcoming.org – add the events that you are interested in, and get recommendations in return.

Trust: Adding information or customisation to make the service more adjusted to you, and thus more trustworthy. Netvibes is a good example. Head over to Trustmojo for more qualified thoughts on the matter of trust.

Identity: Adding content to strengthen the persons online identity in that arena. See any working community for this.

Values: Wikipedia – the dream of a free encyclopedia for everyone, world wide.

Exposure: Add yourself doing something in order to get exposure – receive either ridicule or fame. See American Idol or FejmTV.

Brand loyalty: People that love a brand or a company so much that they are willing to help them. Lego made use of this while developing their new Mindstorms series.

Money: Still works of course, Revver for instance.

Although I don’t have a formula on how one relates to another in terms of amount, there probably could be one. It would be very blunt, but still. If nothing else it would be a good way to show all these companies that are offering absolutely nothing, money or otherwise, to their users. They are in for a surprise if they think their corporate wikis are going to be filled with spectacular and free content.

I have suggested this topic for Reboot9, and also added my presentation on Old Media vs New Media. If you think they sound interesting, please login and click the “i like it” button.

tags technorati : society2.0 internetcurrency currency

tags bloggar.se: society 2.0, internetvaluta, valuta

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

I’m absolutely worn out after a long and inspiring day. For those of you that couldn’t be there: Onelinr-backchannel, Flickr photos, Podesk videos, a good text summary from Citizen Media Watch and podcasts from What’s Next.

Thanks to everyone – today was a good example of both great speakers, great audience and a great organising team. And I was pleased about my new presentation as well, I hope there will be time to hold a more comprehensive version of it soon.

tags bloggar.se: hej2007, konferenser

Tomorrow, Saturday, I will be talking at the Hej! 2007 conference in Stockholm (Other upcoming keynotes here!). The topic is “Old Media vs New Media”, and hopefully it will go okay. It’s a new presentation so I’m a bit nervous actually – the crowd feels a bit tougher than usual 🙂 Or more knowledgeable anyway.

If you’re there, please come by and say hello. The list of registered guests is really impressive so I’m sure we’d have a lot to talk about.

tags bloggar.se: hej2007, konferenser

Attention all Malmö-people: Please swing by Solde at 9 am tomorrow as it is Likemind, as usual. Free coffee from Anomaly and really nice people – like you. If you don’t live in Malmö but like the sound of it anyway, check out the list to find your nearest city.

Unfortunately I won’t be there myself (I’m in Milan!), but Olof and Tomas will take care of you.

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.