I've started to subscribe to the wednesday print version of the Danish newspaper Børsen, because they have a real good coverage of the Danish media market. In today's Børsen, I found a very interesting little article: the Danish media company Initiative Universal Media has conducted a survey with 18.000 users, using seven Danish "social media" websites: arto.dk, dkbn.dk, radio100.fm, babyblub.netdoktor.dk, connery.dk, netstationen.dk and trendsales.dk. According to the company representative, Arto.dk has a 85% coverage of the age group 13-19 years.

Now this definitely looks like a very interesting survey, but is there any information to be found on it online at the moment? My brief search tells me no. Initiative Universal Media own homepage has a news menupoint, but nothing there. They don't have a press release feature on their website. Børsen.dk, Politiken.dk, Berlingske.dk, Jyllandsposten.dk and Nordjyske.dk has nothing. When I google the name of the company plus "social media", I mostly get links to blogs who have mentioned the company name at some point.

If you happen to come across anything more about this survey somewhere online, please let me know!
# posted by Lisbeth at: 10:25 (0) comments

I just submitted my face to Tino's 2000 Bloggers experiment - he is making a dynamic collage of the faces of 2000 bloggers, and each picture in the collage includes a link to the blogger on it. In an update to the post that started it all, he yesterday told us that he still needs around 980 blogger-faces, so you can still be part of it! Look at the bloggers' faces here. A little group of Danish bloggers in there by now, perhaps you recognise them?

Stephen is conducting a small survey, trying to figure out what makes people click a particular face in a collage like this. Judging from comments so far, smiles make a difference, as does familiarity, weirdness or an artistic photo. Which points to a potential weakness of this kind of blogger exhibition: you might have the most boring photo of yourself on your blog, but have some really interesting content - then your blog might never be discovered through an experiment like this. But the collage is a fun idea. - Oh, and you could "easily" do a gender count this way, will be interesting to see how many male vs female faces show up in the final version.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 11:34 (1) comments

This story from Reuters travels around the world currently (I found the English version on the "first online newspaper in Africa"): China phone thief repents after 21 SMSs.
- Story goes: Thief steals mobile phone, bag, purse and money but returns it after the owner has sent him 21 sms, trying to convince him that stealing is a bad thing...
# posted by Lisbeth at: 11:00 (0) comments

Look, here's IMHO one of the best way to use the blog format if you are a cultural institution: Brooklyn Museum runs a Dig Diary, documenting the work some of their researchers are doing on-site in Egypt. Replete with lots of nice photos. Current events, "behind the scenes", a clear narrative structure (discovering statues, ancient history) - several elements combine to make this a worth-while read. Danish Museums and Popular Science Institutions could learn something from this, I believe (disregarding the massive online coverage of the Galathea Expedition which has - to the contrary - been over-blogified).
# posted by Lisbeth at: 14:03 (0) comments

Now here is a sensible way to make use of Second Life as a space: The Danish University of Souther Denmark (SDU), which has departments and campus areas distributed all over Denmark, is opening a virtual campus in Second Life - perhaps a way to unify the experience of the university for the students?- In the press release linked to here (in Danish), they claim they are the first European University to set up campus in SL. Thumbs up, SDU.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 17:36 (0) comments

Gunnar Langemark is writing a blog on the Computerworld.dk site: Second Life-blog about his experiences with moving in and setting up office in Second Life.

Kim Elmost, journalist and blog-editor at Politiken, on his blog Mediehack, currently has some quite interesting links to happenings in Second Life. He visits there quite often as well, I suspect :).

Oh, and long-distance colleague and Alternate Reality Game (ARG) Designer Jane McGonigal was interviewed in CNET's Second Life Bureau. For those of us, who happened not to be in SL that day, the interview is here, in which she also talks briefly about what an ARG in Second Life should do. I agree.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 11:05 (0) comments

How weird is that?! I remember someone (cant remember whom) writing a blog post about the BookCrossing movement a few years ago...and tonight for the first time, I found a bookcrossing book in a completely unexpected place: at a windy busstop in the rather forlorn area of town where I go for choir practice - Sydhavnen, close to Mozart's Plads. Three books were there, waiting for someone to pick them up, all labeled with a bookcrossing ID. I took one, a chick-litt novel, and left the two others behind for someone else. Typing in the ID on the site, I discovered that JaneKbh left it for me -thanks, Jane!

Bookcroosing now (according to their own stats) has 524,021 members and more than 3 mill. books in circulation. You can make your own profile on the site, write journal entries for the books you find so the story of the book is trackable and readable, and send private messages to other members, so I believe this must count as one subgenre of social software, nicely linked with physical objects. It started back in 2001 - so an early version too, but still a brilliant concept!
# posted by Lisbeth at: 23:30 (0) comments

Via a blog on the Danish Library School at which blogs is now an integrated part of their reseachers official homepages: searchmash, a Google search engine experiment. Don't know how it works, but it produces good results.

In the free paper I read on my way to work today, a small article on the phenomena of streetkissing - a movement in opposition to happyslapping, originating in France. Kiss a stranger on the street and film it with your mobile. And then put in on the internet...h
- In the article about streetkissing, they interview Mads Thimmer of Innovation Lab in Denmark. Innovation Lab - as both branding and information - at the end of last year published a list of the 10 hottest trends in IT [in Danish]. I've seen lots of references it to it, so there is no doubt: list works!
# posted by Lisbeth at: 12:09 (0) comments

Via my colleague, Søren Mørk: International Journal of Communication - judging from the table of contents, this issue of the journal is truly international in its scope!
# posted by Lisbeth at: 14:25 (0) comments

The blog of San Francisco consultant Adrian Chan: A Social Interaction Design (SxD) blog on Web 2.0 & Social Media looks interesting - he has just posted a link to a study of social software design, and he has previously done a study of myspace, it looks like.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 22:40 (0) comments

So this is what you get yourself into when you agree to do a "virtual" interview with Paul Mason of BBC Newsnight: yours truly politely featured as a researcher/computer gamer geek (???) in the Virtual Lives feature which is part of BBC newsnights ongoing geek week 2.0. Perhaps it's a good thing that we're not credited at all ;) (at least not in the online clip). & pls forgive me for my horrible Danish accent.

Fyi, Mason has in fact done a lot of research himself. So on the geek week site, you can also find an interview with the CEO behind Second Life and a feature on the use of mobile phones in Kenya.

update 16.01: just discovered that the tv feature is elaborated on in an article in two parts by Paul Mason, in which he quotes the people from the programme in more detail: I think therefore I am a Tauren Druid
# posted by Lisbeth at: 23:56 (0) comments

Interesting sneak preview of a new survey of the European and Asian blogosphere on Richard Edelman's blog: Blogs Matter and We Have Data to Prove It. Prominent bloggers do influence mainstream media.

Jill links to a new survey by Pew Internet and points to a nice commentary on it by Danah Boyd: As Danah points out amongst other things is that the survey shows what I think many working in the field suspect or already know from their own smaller studies: teenagers use social software to maintain existing friendships (91%), rather than to make new friends (49%).
# posted by Lisbeth at: 16:53 (0) comments

Interesting article in Businessweek: James Cameron's Game Theory, introducing a new project of director James Cameron (yes, the Titanic guy), Project 880, a sci-fi experience, where the "audience" will first meet the universe as an "multiplayer game" online (MMOG?) and then as a movie. In other words, universe first, story later, which is an interesting development.
I think, that the paper Susana Tosca and I wrote on Transmedial Worlds back in 2004 can help explain and analyse a media phenomena like this. If Project 880 works out, it will definitely be a nice example to support our theory. Perhaps it is time to take our work further (when Susana is back from maternity leave...).
# posted by Lisbeth at: 13:36 (0) comments

Happy new year everyone :)
- I havent done much reading or surfing or thinking lately and hence no blogging either - apparently a bout of bronchitis has been santa's new year's gift for me.

Amidst the coughing, as passtime, I'm now surfing for travels to hot places, and on the site where I normally calculate exchange rates, I suddenly discovered that they have blogs too.

So for Danes interested in stock markets, and the buying and trading of stocks, here's a little list of Danish stock blogs (danske blogs om aktier) on the Euroinvestor site...

Labels: blog-genres, Danish blogs

# posted by Lisbeth at: 19:25 (0) comments