Blog Archives
Watching Eurovision 2012? Your Instagram could be in a music video
On the eve of Eurovision 2012, Swedish hope (and bookie favorite) Loreen is turning to her fans for support. Not only for votes, but for their artistic help in making the video for her Eurovision song “Euphoria”.
On her Facebook page, Loreen asks fans to take Instagram photos that illustrate some part of the lyrics to “Euphoria”. If they upload their photos to Instagram with the tag #Loreen12p, the photo enters the contest to be used in the official music video for the song.
Screenshot from Loreen’s Facebook page.
An innovative take on using Instagram for cultivating fans and collaborating with them. Go Loreen – best of luck in Eurovision. Here’s the current video, posted on YouTube by Warner Music in Sweden:
Thanks to my Swedish pal @Kullin, who first blogged about Loreen’s contest.
First picture of Sweden’s new princess first published on Facebook
Congratulations are in order! Sweden’s crown princess Victoria gave birth to a tiny princess this morning. The newborn princess is second in line to the Swedish throne.
Unsurprisingly, social media in Sweden – and the rest of the Nordics – have been abuzz with royal news all day. But perhaps more surprisingly, the picture everyone has been waiting for was first released on Facebook, not to the press.
Screenshot from the Swedish court's Facebook page.
The Swedish court posted a low-key picture of the small family on their Facebook page just before the princess Victoria, prince Daniel and their daughter (whose name has not been announced yet) left the hospital and returned to their home at Haga castle.
By nightfall, the post has received more than 5,000 comments, 23,000 likes and has been shared 3500 times.
Congratulations to the Swedish people, whose princess has certainly been born into a social media savvy royal family!
@Sweden now controlled by the Swedish people
The people of Sweden have officially taken over the @Sweden Twitter account, according to Mashable. This is not the result of a digital coup, but applauded by the Swedish government.
The Swedish people - here represented by cheering soccer fans - now control their own Twitter destiny. (Photo: andregustavo on Flickr/CC-BY-2.0)
The @Sweden handle has been controlled by the national tourist agency, VisitSweden, since 2009. But through the project Curators of Sweden, the Twitterverse presence of Sweden is now handed over to the people. A string of different contributors will portray the national character online.
- No one owns the brand of Sweden more than its people. With this initiative we let them show their Sweden to the world, VisitSweden CEO Thomas Brühl said to Mashable.
The curators have been chosen because they represent Sweden’s values and skills, such as gay rights, fashion, design and innovation. Among the chosen are an ad agency founder who owns a farm, a suburban writer, a priest, a teacher and a coffee-drinking lesbian trucker.
I look forward to following the @Sweden account and will be sure to add it to my Twitter stream!
UPDATE: Swedish PR blogger Hans Kullin has made an exellent study of some of the recent content on @Sweden. Highly recommended reading – some of it is almost shocking, other items highly amusing.
Crowdfunding enters Scandinavian cultural scene
Crowdfunding, having the public chip in to finance great ideas and projects, is hardly a new phenomenon. We’ve seen it done successfully in fundraising for years, for instance through Kiva.org and Kickstarter.
Photo: Aslakr ond Flickr/CC-BY-2.0
The arts and culture have embraced this financing model. Starting in 1992, Finnish sci-fi project Star Wreck has been an online cult phenomenon, attracting production help, downloads, and purchases from all around the world. Though not strictly a crowdfunding project, it’s definately a forerunner of the trend.
The first Scandinavian truly crowdfunded cultural project I’m aware of, was Norwegian rock group Kaizer’s Orchestra‘s collecting money from fans toward the recording of a new album in 2010. But since then, crowdfunding is rapidly becoming mainstream activity for lots of cultural innovators.
Does crowdfunding work?
The big question, of course: Does it work? Are projects getting funded? The answer is a definate maybe, so far. While there is no lack of fundraising efforts, the Scandinavian public are somewhat reluctant in opening their wallets – yet. But it’s early days, stil, and a little too soon to prophesy doom to the Scandinavian crowdfunding projects. Instead, let’s have a quick look at the status quo.
(I do not in any way believe that this is a complete list of Scandinavian cultural crowdfunding projects. If you know of any I have missed, please leave a note in the comments section!)
Sweden racing ahead
Sweden is taking the lead. Since 2010 the public have paid up for culture through the website Funded By Me. Several projects have been realized due to collective efforts online.
People in Sweden’s capital Stockholm also have the opportunity to contribute through Crowdculture.se, where they can vote for their favorite projects and help fund their development. Crowdculture.se is particularly interesting since it is in part initiated by local authorities in Stockholm. To my knowledge, this is the first example of crowdfunding efforts by the public sector in Scandinavia.
Norwegians getting started
This summer saw crowdfunding in general entering the Norwegian cultural scene as well, since Funded By Me launched a Norwegian sister-site to their Swedish operation. A local theatre group in Oslo is among the first candidates for crowdfunding. The response to the Norwegian site seems to be so-so so far, but I look forward to following their progress.
New Danish site
The Danish cultural scene has recently been expanded by the launch of Boomerang, a new crowdfunding site for arts and culture. Not many projects seem to have caught the eye of financers as of yet – but again, it’s early days and too soon to deem any crowdfunding efforts a success or a failure.
Less culture, more crowd: Iceland and Finland
Though not a cultural project per se, the Finnish crowdfunding efforts of Hub Helsinki pave the way for new crowdfunding projects in Finland.The cooperative of people trying to change the world are attempting to raise €50,000 towards the refurbishing of their new premises in Helsinki. The Aalto Social Impact initiative has taken a serious interest in crowdfunding in Finland.
I have not been able to find examples of crowdfunded cultural projects on Iceland. This is probably due to my abysmal comprehension of Icelandic – the country which crowdsourced its new constitution must surely have some interesting projects to show for. If you know of any, please leave a note in the comments section!
If you are interested in crowdsourcing as a phenomenon, check out this extensive list of crowdfunding sites. Among the inspirations for this post are the blogs of Danish Mikael Mejlvang, a.k.a. “Municipality Man” (blogs in Danish), and Arts and Business Norway (in Norwegian). Thanks!
Islands are Facebook crazy: Iceland, Faroe Islands top Nordic Facebook stats
New post in Socialmedianordic.com series Stats on Thursday!
A fun discovery: The Scandinavian Northern European obsession with Facebook is most extreme in the west, and diminishes the further east you live.
Islands at the top
According to Facebook statistics from Socialbakers.com, Iceland has the highest Facebook penetration of the population in Northern Europe – in fact, with two thirds of the population facebooking, Iceland is the third most Facebook-saturated country in the world!
Facebook penetration gets less intense the further east you get in Scandinavia (international penetration ranking in parentheses):
- 68 % in Iceland (3. place)
- 60% in Faroe Islands (5. place)
- 54% in Norway (8. place)
- 50% in Denmark (15. place)
- 49% in Sweden (29. place)
- 39% in Finland (43. place)
Facebook penetration in the Nordic countries, according to Socialbakers.com data, September 2011
Scandinavians slow in adopting social media for travel
Scandinavians are slowly embracing social media for travel purposes, a recent study by Amadeus reveals. This very interesting report focuses on how the adoption of mobile communictaion will transform the travel industry, and is worth a read.
Asia, UK and Latin-America in front
On a Nordic note, however, I was surprised to learn that we Scandinavians have fallen behind our fellow travellers when it comes to using social media for travel related purposes.
Social media travel statistics. Screen shot from the report "The Always Connected Traveller" by Amadeus 2011.
Sweden and Denmark are two of the countries featured in the whitepaper. Just over half of Swedish and Danish travellers, 53 percent, report using social media for travel. This figure is far behind our British (77%) or Spanish (71%) counterparts. And it hardly even registers compared to the eagerness Chinese, Hong Kong-based or Singaporean travellers demonstrate in their use of social media services for travel (92%, 85% and 81% respectively).
Hints of possibilities to come
In many respects, it’s impressive that more than half of the surveyed Scandinavians use social media for travel. In the egalitarian and affluent North, most of the population travels frequently, be it for work or leisure. It is probable that a greater specter of the population could be counted as seasoned travellers in Scandinavia than in most other parts of the world. Still, there is a long ways to go!
With smartphone adoption on the increase here in Northern Europe, and the Scandinavian travel marked being one of the most online-oriented in Europe, marketers should expect more social media interactions from travellers in the years to come. The Asian numbers only hint at the possibilities in social media marketing for travel.
A hat tip to my Swedish fellow social media enthusiast Hans Kullin who blogged about the Amadeus report first and brought it to my attention. Thanks! (I do promise to not go quoting your blog posts all the time; you just do a splendid job of being interesting!)
Icelanders have most Facebook friends; all Nordic countries are avid users
A number of studies have shown that web users in the Nordic countries are extremely Facebook-friendly. Iceland and Norway are both in the top 10 countries in regards to Facebook penetration in the population, according to Socialbaker.com stats.
But how friendly are we really? And how connected? A great question from Nikki Schei on Twitter (in Norwegian), how many Facebook friends does the average Norwegian have? I had to find out. And in the process, I got the stats for the other Nordic countries as well.
Scandinavians way above world average on Facebook
The answer to Nikki’s question, as it turns out, is approximately 230. That’s way above the international average of 130, according to Facebook’s own statistics page.
Average number of Facebook friends in the Nordics
I aquired this number thanks to Facebook’s Nordic account executive, Petter Høie, who was very helpful in the Facebook group for Facebook marketeers in Norway. And he helped me with the statistics for the rest of the Nordics too.
Icelanders friendliest in the Nordics
The Icelanders are the friendliest of the bunch. They average approximately 290 Facebook friends apiece.
Norwegians are in second place with their 230 friends each.
Sweden and Denmark tie for third place, they average 190 friends, while Finland are slightly less sociable: Finnish users have on average 180 Facebook friends. Still way ahead of the international average!
