Björn Jeffery

Piers is hosting an event in New York, and knowing what PSFK normally does, it’s probably going to be really good. If you’re around you should go. Click the picture!

Reminder: Tomorrow is the second meetup for Likemind in Malmö. Turn up at Solde after 9am, drink coffee sponsored by Anomaly, and meet good likeminded people. See you there! (next time we´ll be hosting in Copenhagen as well, if that suits you better)

tags bloggar.se: likemind, malmö

The launch of Sydsvenskan in Second Life is getting a few reactions that I want to address. One of them written in English is by Kristine Lowe (via Media Culpa). I left a comment there but decided that there was more to say. About hype, this awful word that plagues the internet (and everything else).

Second Life has been getting a lot of flack for being the ultimate money (and time) waster in this time and age. The amount of attention this virtual world is getting compared to it’s actual impact is vastly exaggerated, some say.

Admittedly, a lot of both time and money has been wasted in SL. But that fact alone doesn’t say anything about its importance, or the possibilities that it contains. The decisive factor is why one enters these types of projects. If it’s because of the hype, well, then you´re just adding to it. But simply writing off anyone joining Second Life (or any web 2.0-esque movement for that matter) without knowing their intent, is not the right way to go.

Hype often blocks the view of the interesting things that really are going on. Take the Boo.com example – this excellent blog post goes through loads of features that were way ahead of its time. Is this what we remember of Boo.com? The hype shaded the really interesting things that were going on.

The short lesson from this is: hype shouldn’t be your incentive to join anything, and it shouldn’t make you back off either.

Second Life is an epiphany of the new social arenas that are evolving. Starting an office there in order to get a few press releases out is joining the hype. Participating and adding value to an emerging community is not. In my opinion, it’s best to wait a while before calling anyone out to either side.

Today we launched an island in Second Life for the Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan. Since the Swedish Embassy announced their plans the Swedish buzz has increased considerably. Consequently, the time was right to enter and start something up.

The island is called Sydsverige which translates to “Southern Sweden”, which is the area of Sweden that Sydsvenskan covers. The plan is to create a place where Swedish people can meet, and create their own projects if they want to. The planning will take place together with the visitors that are interested.

Hype? Yes and no. Being active within digital media today is a hit and miss procedure. Just like in the real world. Good publishers have a failure rate of about 50% on their new magazines. And that’s in a market that they know extremely well.

Today, understanding the change in social behaviour is the most valuable lesson media companies can learn from the new internet. And the best way of learning is participating, listening and discussing. That is why we, and Sydsvenskan, are in Second Life.

tags bloggar.se: sydsvenskan, second life, dagstidningar

Click this link to get teleported to Sydsverige straight away.

* “Within a week or so” was somewhat of an understatement as Twingly officially launched today. The ping-address to include is http://rpc.twingly.com/

* We have rearranged our Good Old blogs, and now have four to show the world. This one, Good Old Tech, Good Old Design and Good Old Office. The latter will cover what we, as a company, are up to. Whatever that may be. I want to start a Good Old Robotics project for instance, that will be featured there if we get round to it.

* The next Likemind session will be at Solde Kaffebar, on Friday the 16th of February. And yes Måns, you’re invited.

tags bloggar.se: primelabs, twingly, likemind, goodold

The Swedish newspaper DN launched a new addition to their site today; the blog perspective, if you like. Basically it is the same idea that the Washington Post have done with Technorati for ages, but it’s an excellent initiative still the same (look at this article to get the picture).

DNs partner is the Linköping/Stockholm-based company Primelabs, with their product Twingly. The idea is to listen to bloggers and give them an incentive to link to DN rather than other newspapers, as they then get rewarded with a link back to their blog. Also, readers of the paper can follow the discussion as it continues out in the blog world.

In order to do this, Twingly must find these blogs. Today they have 12 000 Swedish blogs tracked, and CEO Martin Källström told me that they will launch their own ping site (referred to here) within a week or so in order to get a direct feed to the participating sites. Interesting! And worth following closely. Also, DNs main competitor SvD started using trackbacks on some of their articles yesterday.

tags bloggar.se: primelabs, twingly, dagstidningar, tidningar, media, blogg, ping, dn, svd

It’s nice to see Swedes that are in the forefront of the web these days. Malmö-based Liviu P has started the aptly named site MyTripYourMoney.com in order to raise money for the road trip of his life: riding across America in a Lamborghini Murciélago. Liviu and his associates will document the trip in a blog using video and all the rest. The car, and the site, will be covered in advertising – of course.

This type of meta-advertising is interesting. Although, the project in itself probably won’t be half as interesting as the buzz before. But as long as the exposure is sufficient, this is a way of communicating a brand as any other. Site visitors that are interested can’t be bad – even if the interest is in the phenomenon rather than the project in itself.

tags bloggar.se: mytripyourmoney.com, annonsering, malmö, sverige

I recently moved to a new apartment, and today a letter from my electricity company fell through the letterbox. I thought I’d check out my options with the others and did a Google search for elleverantör miljö, el-leverantör miljö and el leverantör miljö which are three ways of spelling (and misspelling) electricity provider and environment. Two words that one might think would be connected at a time like this.

Not one company had thought of buying sponsored links with those two words in combination. Amazing. Amazing that there still are so many companies that have no clue about the internet, what so ever.

tags bloggar.se: elleverantör, miljö, ipcc, sponsrade länkar

Okay, I’m (somewhat) back. I’ll leave out the details of what happened for now, as this is a blog about my work, not my life. Although it has become obvious that the two are interconnected in more ways than I first had thought.

Instead, more blog posts about the exciting world of the internet will follow. Stay tuned.