The two rivalling tabloids joining forces is interesting in itself, though it’s not the first time it’s happened. Campaigns in the past has made them join forces.
What’s really exciting is how this exchange took place, and where – on Twitter, where anyone could and did see and comment on the initiative. A lot of retweets tonight. Having two social/citizen media friendly editors in chief at the two main tabloids promises an interesting time ahead. Looking forward to seeing where this development will lead.

Jan Helin on Twitter
Thomas Mattsson on Twitter

Update: More collaboration across publishing house borders, through Twitter – read this post from Publishing 2.0: Networked link journalism: A revolution quitely begins in Washington State

In Sweden Jaiku has to a large extent been the microblog of choice. But with frequent downtimes, no new features for a long time and Google’s recent announcement that they’re turning it into an open source project, people were ready for an alternative.
In steps Jonas Lejon, an entrepreneur who’s behind several blog-related services in Sweden, who puts together Bloggy, a microblogging service in Swedish. He gets enthusiastic cheers, good feedback, and he responds. More than that, he responds quickly, adds new features, tweaks them, and does in a few months what Jaiku with all its Google backup hasn’t done in years.

When he announced a function for importing all your Jaiku contacts into Bloggy, there was no holding back the migration anymore. Over the weekend my mailbox has been flooded with friends requests from Bloggy users who have imported their contacts.
While it’s a bit sad to let Jaiku go, Bloggy is clearly where the action’s at for the Swedish microblogosphere at the moment. One of the great features is that you can easily follow and update both Jaiku and Twitter from within Bloggy, so you’re not really missing much, even if Bloggy still lacks support for channels. It has adopted many of Jaiku’s features, but it is a bit more like a community than a pure microblogging service.
I asked Jonas Lejon what made him develop the service.
- I was using Pownce, Twitter and Jaiku and I was tired of em all. I was thinking: Can I do this better? So i started developing Bloggy 8 months ago and implemented all the functions I liked from the other microblogging platforms, he says.
How come you decided to do Bloggy in Swedish?
- I think that the English language still feels uncomfortable for many Swedes and that providing a service in Swedish makes it more friendly. “By Swedes for Swedes”.

So far, we haven’t seen how it performs under heavy load. Monday provided one challenge with Thomas Mattsson at Expressen writing about it and giving it lots of space on their front page.

Also Bloggy was mentioned in Dagens Nyheter the other day.
There were a couple of downtimes Monday, but Jonas Lejon assures those problems are now taken care of.
- I’m working very close to our datacenters and they are helping me out with upgrading the server all the time when I reach the limits and I’m fixing performance bugs all the time and now it seems that all problems are gone.
You deserve praise for the way you handle feedback quickly and keep on improving the features. You seem to be online on Bloggy 24/7. Do you ever sleep? : )
- Thanks! I’ve been working a lot the last few days but I’m trying to take some offline time now and then and relax.

When we last summer started to see the microblogging-hype we felt that a search dedicated to microblogs would be a quite natural development for us. We like Twitter Search and been using it a lot, especially at conferences and when news like Mumbai were having the best news source at Twitter. But because we used Jaiku ourselves it wasn’t what we needed in many cases.

Microblogging services covered by Twingly’s search engine are: Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Pownce (which is dead, but a six month archive remains searchable), Swedish Bloggy.se and the German Bleeper.de.
They will keep adding new services, and aim to cover all microblogging services out there.

Lindberg writes (my translation):

The blogosphere won the FRA debate because it was right. It was an issue that was pretty much dead everywhere else. It touched a nerve, it made people react. And – although not each individual blogger could get all the technical facts of a very complex issue right – it was possible to discuss it on a fundamental level.

Lindberg expresses criticism against the mass-emailing staged by evening paper Expressen, which urged people to copy a text about the FRA law and send it to all the members of the Swedish Riksdag. She thinks this is a form of spam rather than a good way to communicate people’s opinions to decision makers. There blogs are a better option, and Lindberg stresses their role as opinion media.

She writes (again, my translation):

Blogs are first and foremost opinion based media. When competing with tv or papers that have greater resources for investigative journalism, fact checking and the like, they are underdogs, even if they can compensate for this somewhat through networking. But misconceptions and errors can still spread through blogging networks. In such cases you lose credibility.

And she concludes:

The lesson to learn is that the impact of a medium depends on trust. Trust is volatile. You have to nurture it, or you will lose your readers.

(Video clip from the demonstration outside the Riksdag, which to a great extent came to pass because of activism from bloggers)

The usual crowd has shown up for Facebook Garage Stockholm, the third event organized by Nustart in Stockholm. The focus is on Facebook, but also social networking sites in general and their development. The first speaker is from MySpace, for instance.
- This is an audience-generated event, says moderator Beata Wickbom.
That’s what sets these Nustart events apart. Things like backchannels have become an integral part of the events.

All my pics from Facebook Garage Stockholm

Alf Fransson, 69, is blogging about a small area 1.3 Swedish miles from Askersund in Närke, Sweden. By putting up his own placards at the local petrol station/grocery store, he has managed to engage the people who are living in the area to read and to give response to his blog material.

The Åsbro blog has been up and running since the beginning of this November 2007. Fransson says that he got inspired to start blogging by his stepdaughter. The address for the blog is estabo.blogspot.com. Estabo is the name of the place in Åsbro where Fransson lives.
- I did not want to use the blog address “asbro”, because it is Swedish for something else but Åsbro, he laughs.

There are 1.600 people living in Åsbro and Fransson’s blog is about things which concern the inhabitants: “Do we need efficient street-lighting?”, “Why is there cable worth over a million lying down by the lake ‘Åsasjön’?” and “What is going on at the Åsbro kursgård?”

Fransson has been visiting and writing about the companies in the area. One of the companies is Alfapac, which is Åsbro’s largest industry and employs about 80 people.
- It gives me the chance to satisfy my own curiosity as well as getting material for my blog, he says.

There are some musicians and authors living in Åsbro and Fransson has plans for future blogging:
- I am thinking about interviewing people. I would like to write about personalities in the field of culture, he says.

Fransson also wants to blog about interesting places to visit in the area. Not so well known excursion spots.
- Most of the people do not see the beauty of their own neighbourhood, Fransson says and adds:
- There is an old sacrificial well situated in the forest that I would like to show to you and my readers.

Update 2007-11-24: Four more speakers added!

Next Saturday afternoon the nice guys and gals at Nustart will host another conference at Nymble at KTH in Stockholm. The last one, Hej!2007, was a great success, and I am looking forward to Saturday when Hubbub07 takes place.
The focus this time is on fixed to mobile applications in web, voice and IPTV. The six ten speakers represent four interesting companies in this field:

• Sorosh Tavakoli, Founder of VideoPlaza, will talk about online video advertising
• Trond Bugge, serial entrepreneur and founder/CEO of Super Local Media, will evaluate the importance of mobile location-based access to information at a global level
• Henrik Thomé, entrepreneur and CEO of Sonetel, will talk about “Open source, globalization and Internet technology gives super-powers to the customer-focused IT-entrepreneur. Why have staff? Why have infrastructure?”
• David Haddad, co-founder of Spontu, will talk about convergence of positioning technologies – mobile internet, smartphones and social networking.
• Peter Arvai, VP of Product Development at Mobispine, will talk about mobile internet challenges for both operators and content providers
• Patrick Broman, software architect at Mobile Sorcery, will talk about catalyzing the mobile revolution
• Niklas Tyllström, CEO and Co-founder of Green hat People, will speak about the timing of convergence.
• Hjalmar Winbladh, CEO and Founder of Rebtel, who is challenging the telecom giants.
• Per Mosseby, CEO of Pixbox, will speak about “why the preferred mobile Internet device among the wealthy will continue to be the laptop computer, and why the smaller-than-subnotebook-revolution is happening – in developing countries”.
• Per Leine, CEO of Extransit

One of the things I really liked about Hej!2007 was that live blogging and use of backchannels were encouraged and made use of during the day. This is also the case at Hubbub07. Here you can follow the event:

Jaiku Onelinr Flickr

They are all visible on the live Hubbub site. There you can also find live blogs. I will be blogging live here at Citizen Media Watch, so check back during the event!

Encouraging live coverage and backchannel feedback might seem obvious, but far too often it’s an aspect that organizers put way too little effort in facilitating for the audience. Even at the recent SIME event, the backchannels were as far as I understand not official SIME backchannels and the feedback was not used on stage. Unfortunately I could not attend SIME this year, but Joakim Jardenberg’s thread on Jaiku addresses this and other issues.

Here’s what the post on Nettby says (my translation):

If you have a suggestion for a Swedish name on a service like Nettby, send it to us! We will pick the top 10 suggestions and reward them with a 6 month Nettby Max subscription and Nettby t-shirts.
The person making the suggestion we decide to use will receive an Ipod Touch!

I found Anton Johansson’s excellent list of blog portals and services from January this year, and I’ve used it as a starting point, updating the numbers for the different services, withdrawing some that doesn’t exist anymore and adding some new ones.

This is a first draft, and I hope to get comments, contributions and corrections making it better. The numbers are rounded to the closest hundred blogs and are taken from official statistics at the different sites. Note that some of these numbers indicate the total number of blogs whereas others (blogg.se and webblogs.se) show the number of blogs active during the past 30 days.

Blogg.se: 111 200 blogs active in the past 30 days
Passagen: 25 900 blogs
Bloggorama: A total of 19 100 blogs on seven domains, of which Blogspace.se is the largest with 14 400 blogs
Aftonbladet Blogg: 15 400 blogs
Bloggagratis: 10 600 blogs
Blogdog: 8 600 blogs
Weblog.se: 8 400 blogs active in the past 30 days
Expressen: 7 200 blogs
Bloggis: 6 800 blogs
Tjejsajten: 4 900 blogs
Blogtown: 3 900 blogs (members – which seems to be the same thing at this site)
Veckorevyn: 900 blogs

The total number of blogs from these services amounts to 223 000 blogs. Now, that’s quite a lot of blogs. However, there are a lot of issues that makes this number less interesting.

• It is not a measurement of the number of active blogs
• There are Swedish blog services not included. I found no statistics on Blogga.nu, Blogs.se or Mobilblogg.nu. I disregarded Egenblog.se which only had 15 blogs.
• I have probably missed some services alltogether. Please let me know.
• There’s no way of knowing which percentage of the total number of Swedish blogs this number represents. One vague indication of the number of Swedish blogs on blogspot and wordpress is the number of blogs from these services that are registered on Bloggportalen. There are 4 627 blogspot blogs there, or 26 percent of the total number of blogs on Bloggportalen. There are 605 wordpress.com blogs.
  I can’t even make a qualified guess of the number of blogs on their own domain.

We compensate by creating new channels, such as the website and free papers.
- We have expanded our reach at HD. The way we connect to people is not important. The important thing is that we keep on delivering eyeballs to our advertisers.

We still idealize paper publishing. Joakim turned to me to give the example of Aftonbladet’s blog service, where the key point is that you can be published in the paper (well, one of the benefits, I’d say having your blog post appear at aftonbladet.se’s main page is just as appealing). Another example is that Beata Wickbom is very happy about the Sime supplement in SvD (the above image).

The day we can utilize our journalists and have them collaborate with their audience we can use their competence much better, Jardenberg says.
- The old and new worlds are at war. Get over it!

Check out Jocke’s slides from Daytona Sessions here.

Daytona Sessions are about to begin at Debaser Medis in Stockholm. The usual crowd has showed up, plus some additional people and some I haven’t seen in a long time.
Henrik Torstensson is the first speaker of the day. The jaiku backchannel is active. Most my posts will be there.

Very interesting statistics today from Johan Myrberger at The Killer Attitude. He has taken Jeff Pulver’s statistics one step further, with detailed graphs. Sweden has close to one million Facebook users. One million. In a country of nine million people. That is pretty amazing.

Swedish company Primelabs has provided MSM with blog link widgets through its Twingly service since February. Dailies DN and SvD were first out, followed by among others Idg, Dagen and Mindpark. While this is a great service, some of the sites only show the headlines, without even mentioning from which blog the headline comes.
We wanted to do more, to provide a tool to give an instant idea of what the blogosphere is saying on a topic, and also to guide the readers so that they know before they click on a blog link not only which blog it is, but also who is behind it.

In Aftonbladet’s blog listings, which come from the blog catalogue service Bloggportalen, you get the headline of the blog post (linked to the post), you get the name of the blog, and if you hover your cursor above it you get a photo and information about the blog/blogger. There’s also a three line excerpt from the post.

So far the initiative has received mainly positive feedback, though some concerns have been voiced that the blogosphere will become less interesting if it starts to follow the agenda set by MSM even more than today. I think this might be true to some extent, but I also think there are a lot of bloggers out there who blog not only for the traffic but because they have something important to say, and they will keep saying it.
I also hope that MSM will learn to showcase great examples of uniqe topics and angles from blogs. This is certainly my ambition in my work at Läsarbladet.

More about Aftonbladet’s blog links at my Swedish blog Bloggvärldsbloggen:
Smygpremiär för blogglänkar på Aftonbladets artiklar
Nästa steg: ytterligare tolv avdelningar har blogglänkar

Digga and Sovrat have been cometitors from the start in the struggle to create a Swedish equivalent to popular American site Digg. At the end of September, Digga was contacted by Digg, who asked them to change names since Digga was too similar to “Digg”. We then thought it was time to stop competing and instead merge into a strong and unified site.

Pusha will use the same technology as Sovrat and the same database, so that old Sovrat members won’t notice much change. You will also recognize the design, even if we’ve made a few usability improvements.

It is of course too early to write a review, other than that it’s a good thing that SVT has understood that they can’t dictate the viewers’ options, but need a more open attitude. Most importantly, SVT needs to understand that they can’t have a YouTube channel that works as a branch of the press department, with trailers of upcoming shows only. There is a need for an active editor: someone who can find the gems in the daily production and publish them.
If they don’t do that, the viewers will do it themselves, and then the point of the channel is lost for SVT.

I’m inclined to agree. This first effort is a start, but it doesn’t take them a very long way. Yet I can’t even imagine how this step is perceived in the concrete bunker in which the SVT is housed. To many people there I’m sure it’s a revolution, and I suspect they are not all happy about it. Old organizations are usually not the fastest movers.

Yesterday MySpace held a big party in Stockholm to celebrate their launch of the Swedish version of the site. Along with a bunch of Swedish bands, LA stand up commedian Pablo Francisco did a gig which was much appreciated by the crowd of Swedish MySpace users and their friends.
Not all users were thrilled about the site being in Swedish though. One person who had journalism as an interest got it translated into belly dancing. And parts of the site still seem like they’re translated by babelfish.
- We’re working on continual updates to make the site more useful, MySpace’s Jonas Lindberg Nyvang told my colleague Arna.
Also, like Hans Kullin noted, the timing of the release was rather bad, since the site was down for maintenance yesterday.
Nevertheless, a large number of fans had made their way to Mosebacke in Stockholm.
Some users we talked to preferred the site to be in English, saying they got on it to improve their English in the first place, and to meet people from all over the world. Others, however, thought it was about time to get a Swedish edition.
- My English is quite bad, so this is a good thing, said Natali, 19.

Pablo Francisco, the lead act at the party, is one of the many artists with a MySpace profile. We got an interview with him about using sites like MySpace for building a career.
- People put my act on the internet, which is a beautiful thing, because the internet is more exciting and more fun to be around than television now. Because you can actually communicate with the stars, get advice and be friends with them, he said.
Check out the video clip from the interview below.

This is the original interview which I translated and edited into this article on aftonbladet.se.

What brings you to Sweden?
- You could probably figure it out with one guess… the weather in November. No, naturally it was a Swedish woman. We met in 1991 while we were both tågluffare (interrailers). I’ve been visiting Sweden off and on since then, but have only lived here the last six years. Now I feel more at home in Sweden in many ways than I do in the US.

Are you still working as a travel writer?
- Yes. That and giving lectures about travel (with National Geographic Adventure Magazine) is my main income. Lately, I’ve been writing a lot for The Guardian. Before that I was writing a column in Scanorama for three years and writing/editing the rest of the travel section. Plus, I write books and various freelance magazine and newspaper pieces, including some political satire for Esquire Magazine.

Why do you think nobody’s used the Onion’s formula in Sweden?
- Hard to say. So many things have worked well in both the US and Sweden – The Simpsons, Abba, Seinfeld, Ikea, On the internet side, Tjuvlyssnat was successfully taken from “Overheard in New York.” Producing original material is considerably more demanding, though, and writing humor is one of the most challenging formats. Spermaharen was close to The Onion’s formula. It had a little more absurd humor than The Onion and was less news oriented. Grönköpings Veckobladet feels – in my eyes, anyway – quite dry and seems to be aiming at an older audience.

Is writing satire for Swedes different from doing it for Americans, you think?
- The basic approach is similar, I think. But you have to have a sense of the nuances of a culture to pull it off. I’ve learned loads living here, but it’s a work in progress. However, having a full grip on the culture is a work in progress for Swedes as well. So the more people you have to discuss with, the better. Fortunately, I have some Swedish friends (and a wife) who seem to enjoy this. It’s nice to throw in some silliness now and then, but when satire works best, it highlights a nugget of truth and presents it in a new and entertaining light. I like this example in The Onion: “Bush Vows To Eliminate U.S. Dependence On Oil By 4920.”

What reactions have you got so far on Faktumé?
- So far the comments have been overwhelmingly good. The main complaint is that I’m not putting up five postings per day. At the moment, it’s just a labor of love. Still need to pay the bills. And spend time with my kids. So I can’t devote my entire day to this. I could put up a few entries a day, but I’m trying to concentrate on quality.

How come you don’t allow comments or trackbacks on the blog posts?
- I’ve seen on other sites that people sometimes use such comment areas as places to promote racism, sell penis enlargement services, offer to transfer millions of Euros from Nigerian banks and other things that probably shouldn’t be there. I just don’t have the time to go through and monitor all the comments. Also, for what it’s worth, The Onion has managed without comments as well.

Who else is writing the blog? I take it you write the English section and your Swedish friends write the Swedish versions?
- Something like that. There’s a bit of secrecy at this point (one friend, for example, works in Rosenbad and wishes to remain anonymous). Typically, it gets written in Swenglish by me, then translated by my wife or friends. We discuss the word choice and storyline and they point out any cultural reference opportunities I may have missed. Then I translate it back into English for the English version. No matter what language you write it in, it’s always good to show it around for some feedback, put it down for a little while and return to it with fresh eyes.

Perhaps irrelevant to Faktumé, but what are the most amusing signs you’ve found in Sweden? (Doug is the editor of
- Haven’t had any great ones from Sweden (mostly signs with the word “fart”). Swedes have mastered English a bit too well. Even better than Americans, who seem to mess up the signs quite often.

Anything else you’d like to add about the blog or your exeriences with this project?
- Humor is the last thing you grasp when learning a foreign language. One of the most frustrating things about being a foreigner is to be in a room full of laughing people and be the only one who doesn’t understand the jokes. I’ve lived outside the US since 1991in many countries and know this frustration all too well. Even though most speak perfect English here, there’s very little humor (if any) translated into English. So for the tens of thousands of English speakers in Sweden, this may offer a unique window.

Congratulations André!
- Thanks! Never in my life did I think 1000 people who support me and are genuinely interested to know more about my projects would sign up. But at the same time I knew I would never give up.
How are you going to celebrate?
- By tattooing Geek Movie Director on myself, for real! Also I’ll make a special video for members only.
Tell me more about the tattoo. Where will you put it?
- It will be my life-long promise to one day become the obvious geek movie director. I’ll place it somewhere visible, probably on my arm.
What’s your background? What got you into film-making?
- It started when I was born 7 weeks early, in an elevator. I spent a lot of time sick in bed while growing up. There I fell in love with story-telling through the superheroes in comic magazines. Then, when I saw Jurassic Park at age 11, scared and squeezed in between my parents, I knew I wanted to become a movie director. To take people places, to make them experience emotions and adventures they might not experience in their daily life.
What does the term Geek movie director mean to you?
- For me it’s about combining my love for nerd culture with film-making. Examples of “Geek Movies” would be Star Wars, The Matrix, Spiderman and 300.
In which ways do you consider yourself ground-breaking in your movie-making?
- I’m not really trying to break new ground, it’s more about finding new ways to realising my dreams through my creativity. The internet has opened up a way for me to distribute and finance my films. That’s why I’m going to make a superhero series that will be viewed for free, world-wide, through YouTube, Facebook and Dvoted.
What will Extraordinaires be about?
- “Extraordinaries!” is about normal people without super-powers, who become the super-heroes of our time through extraordinary actions. A superhero tale you can really relate to!
You’ve said that the series will be created together with people you meet on Facebook. How will that work? So if I chat with you on Facebook, you might put me in the series? :-)
- Definitely! The internet has opened the doors to a whole new way of making film. “Extraordinaries!” is a low-budget project, and it will be created together with people from around the world in front of and behind the camera. If you join my fan-club at andrehedetoft.com or befriend me on Facebook, anything could happen!
When will the first episode be online?
- Production starts today, and the first episode will be out in January. Though you can already follow the pre-productioon through weekly production diaries online.
Finally, what do you wish for the most at the moment?
- Sponsors for my production diaries, so that we can really make a series to blow people off their chairs!

Read more about André and his projects on his blog. Also check out the Extraordinaries teaser below.

The two main critics, Fredrik R Krohnman and Jonathan Leman, claim that it’s not correct to call Ljungkvist’s scoop citizen journalism since Ljungkvist’s employed by a political party (the social democrats, where he works as press speaksperson).
The blog is however not an official social democrat blog, but his private publishing space.

The critique and the discussion that’s followed is interesting because it sheds light on an important question: Who can call himself/herself a citizen journalist? In Krohnman’s and Leman’s argumentation I see the same views as some of the more conservative SJF (Swedish journalists’ union) members gave voice to at a debate I took part of in Stockholm in May. The idea that journalism is defined by who does it. And now Krohnman/Leman uses the same argumentation for citizen journalism.

Citizen journalism is most often not objective. What is important though is transparency, to clearly state what allegiances you have.
This is the one bit of critisism that I can partly agree with. It is not obvious from Ljungkvist’s blog that he works for the social democrats.

But: Doing so does not exclude him from performing acts of citizen journalism. For me, that is exactly how you can define it: If you perform an act of journalism that is journalism. But you also need to be very open about anything that could have influenced your angles when you report a story.

I think Ljungkvist’s scoop is qualified to be called an act of citizen journalism. Even though it is not obvious for a new reader of his blog Magnus Tankar who he is, this was not unknown for returning visitors or indeed for most media. Knowing this does not change the value of what he revealed about Borelius, and his doing this before any traditional media company.

I do agree with Krohnman/Leman that traditional media should have done a better job presenting who Ljungkvist is though. I also believe a critical approach to your sources is vital for anyone doing journalism.

Disclaimer: I was a jury member for the Nyhetspriset award

The price ceremony, which was held at Podcamp Europe, was quite small, with just one of the winners present. Nevertheless it’s a really good initiative, putting focus on podcasting and the development we’re seeing in this field.

This year, two new categories were added. Best original podcast and Best amateur podcast. This is a way to balance the domination from mainstream media. Both categories were won by Disco Belle.

The other winners are:
Best music: Disco Belle
Best technology/science: The Nerd Herd
Best humor: X3M Radio Pleppo
Best culture/entertainment: DN på Stan (de enda(!) som var där för att hämta priset)
Best news, economy, society: P3 Dokumentär
Best pod tv: SVT Rapport
Best foreign podcast: Keith and the Girl

To check out all my photos from Podcamp, check out to my Podcamp Flickr set.

What is PodCamp Europe? It’s an UnConference of podcasters, bloggers, and new media professionals & amateurs for two days to share, explore, challenge, and grow our abilities in new media. Learn about audio and video podcasting, blogging, photography, Second Life, Twitter, and all kinds of other new and social media tools. Whether you’re a veteran or interested in getting started, PodCamp is for YOU.

My personal requests/wishes for speakers/topics:

• it would be nice to get a presentation from the guys from Twingly (who are coming to PodCamp anyway)
• something on vlogging and how it’s developed
• community management and trolls
• creativity at the core – why all this tech stuff is just different tools of expression. I’d like to hear this from someone who expresses herself/himself creatively, an inspiring pep-talk with an artist’s perspective on the web, with examples of creative projects to join or steal ideas from ; )
• gadgets – what are the best options for blogging and podcasting today
• someone from trig.com – how’s it going?

What would you like to hear?

If you don’t want to make a presentation, make sure to sign up as a participant for PodCamp Europe anyway. If Hey2007 was cool in the way interaction and blogging in different ways was encouraged, I am hoping an unconference will be even more so. And as far as I know this will be the first unconference to be held in Sweden.

Tjuvlyssnat.se is a Swedish version of the popular US blog ”Overheard in New York”. In a short period of time it has gained a great success, being the most read blog on Bloggportalen.se, and last summer the blog landed a book deal. The book is also very successful.

Last week Damon Rasti, one of the people behind the site, talked a bit about Tjuvlyssnat on Stockholm Media Week.
Tjuvlyssnat started out as a hobby project between Damon and his friend. They started publishing conversation they had overheard, and the site got a lot of attention. More and more people started contributing.
- It’s everyday conversation, but here they are collected in one place, said Rasti. It reminds you of gossip, but it is more innocent.
The people in the conversations are usually anonymous everyday people.
- It’s never been our intention to expose celebrities.

Tjuvlyssnat.se is ad financed, and it’s going very well.
- When you can influence and contribute content you are much more okay with ads. You understand they are necessary to keep the site going.

Rasti said he has many new projects coming up, one of them with a major media company. But as the papers were not yet signed, that was all he wanted to reveal. Also he’s working on a mashup and two new sites for young girls.

On the whole it was an odd situation, being in a debate with my employer’s main competitor suddenly on my side, and the other side consisting of representatives of my own trade union. These are strange times.
It was however a good and necessary debate which high-lighted for me some of the dangers of the conservatism in the press corps.

Tomorrow morning I hope to have time to stop by Stockholm Media Week to listen to Damon Rasti talk about web2.0 and a panel on local as “the new black”.

Then on Monday I’ll participate in a debate hosted by the Swedish Journalists’ Union on Citizen journalism – “threat or opportunity”. It’s to take place at Cafe Aguéli, Blecktornsgränd 9, Stockholm, at 19.30. It’s free and open for all. Jonas Morian hoped for more bloggers/citizen media people in the panel as opposed to journalists, and I can see his concern. Let’s hope for a lot of them in the audience.

From the description of the spirit of Hej! 2007 it sounds great:

We don’t want it to be some stuffy old seminar where everyone sits for hours on end. We want people to talk, walk, mingle, laugh and cheer. Oh. And we really don’t like suits. Jeans are cool. So leave your suits at home and bring that laptop and a healthy dose of enthusiasm and cheer!

Here’s an article in Swedish on Hej! 2007 and the importance of credibility and trust as users come more into focus online. Eric Wahlforss and Alexander Ljung are “trust consultants”, and two of tomorrow’s speakers. They will talk about some of their experiences from a three month study trip in the US. Should be interesting.
Here’s the list of all speakers.

If Habbo was a town it would be bigger than Stockholm, thus becoming the largest city in Sweden. Habbo is also growing globally. Today there are more than 76 million virtual Habbo characters worldwide. This can be compared to Second Life which has around 5,3 virtual inhabitants.
The reason behind the fast growth is a continuos creative development of the community. All the time new activities are added, which are exciting, informative and fun.

Among the activities mentioned is a guest appearance by Swedish singer Darin and q&a with representatives from the youth section of the Red Cross.

What is PodCamp Europe? It’s an UnConference of podcasters, bloggers, and new media professionals & amateurs for two days to share, explore, challenge, and grow our abilities in new media. Learn about audio and video podcasting, blogging, photography, Second Life, Twitter, and all kinds of other new and social media tools. Whether you’re a veteran or interested in getting started, PodCamp is for YOU.

(via Media Culpa)

Anyone who’s passionate about the freedom of information and communication should go there and start filling it (the wiki) with information. It’s a site for anyone who wants to be digital today, not tomorrow. Hence “Digital idag”!

Previous post on the same subject:
Oscar Swartz to set up citizen journalism wiki

The thought behind the decision is that Habbo, like other places where young people meet, should have a set closing hour. We want our users to be alert when they go to school in the morning. Closing the site at night is part of our ambition to make Habbo a safe and fun meeting place for our users.

Other steps that Habbo has taken to achieve this is to have grown-ups monitor the site and answer questions and offer support to the users, a language filter that will take away personal info, swear-words and racist expressions, phone support for parents, guidelines for Habbo usage, and a guide for the users parents.

While all these things are certainly recommendable, I wonder if closing Habbo at night is really good for business.