In some extent this is true, but more in the way that blogging itself is changing and we use other platforms for it.

But blogging is not dead. Here in Sweden we have one of the most active blogospheres in the world and we are still bat-shit crazy when it comes to blogging.

Let me just simply show this by taking Swedish TV show Idol as an example, which currently is the most popular TV show in Sweden.

I have analyzed how many people mention Idol during the day of the weekly finals of the show and this last friday I found something very interesting. With Lissly I checked which kind of social media that mentions Idol the most:

In detail there are two interesting things here for 11th november Friday:

• 1317 tweets
• 1123 blog posts (!)

The amount of blog posts this day was really crazy – especially compared to Twitter. Twitter is starting to grow in Sweden but if you look at it compared to blogging it’s still very small in Sweden.

To write a blog post takes a lot more time from the user than a simple tweet and the content and effort for these blog post can’t really be compared to Facebook or Twitter – that’s why this is so impressive.

During the Idol finals there were 228 blog posts from 20.00-21.00! People simply talked about the Idol weekly final, what they did and what they thought about at the same time they were watching it.

1123 blog post does not seem so much in a country like USA but you have to remember that Sweden is a small country with 9.3M people – that’s what makes it so amazing.

So when you hear someone say that blogging is dead and you should totally switch your focus to Twitter & Facebook tell them to think again: In Sweden blogging still kicks ass!

You thought blogging was dead? In Sweden it’s still the king! is a post from: Late Night Marketing

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A couple of months ago I got an invitation from DreamHack to speak at their event and also to visit and get to know DreamHack and what it really is.

It didn’t take me long to decide and therefore I packed my bag and took a train down to Jönköping to visit my first DreamHack ever.

I deeply regret that this was my first time there – because when I was there I realized something – DreamHack is one of the most magnificent and biggest events in Sweden, and also probably even a national symbol that we Swedes can be proud of.

WTF is DreamHack?

“Isn’t DreamHack an event whee 15-year old geeks who’s doing piracy and drinks Coke and smell bad?”

NO! It’s time to kill this myth once and for all. I was there – so let me explain what DreamHack is for those who does not know about it.

DreamHack can be explained as an event with three pillars:

1. Culture/LAN
2. Festival/event
3. eSport

1. DreamHack Culture/LAN

The core of DreamHack. It’s the culture of bringing your computer and connect it to a LAN. It’s a cultural phenomena that has been around for many years and it has steadily been growing each year.

People share content, demo scene, creativity and also to play games with each eother. It’s the DreamHack culture that still is a big pillar of DreamHack.

This part as a lot more teenagers participating than the other pillars of DreamHack. It’s teenagers that bring their computer from their small room from the family house and want to hang out with other people. live and sleep in a big hall together. This in a completely drug free environment where they just can be themselves.

It’s a big difference from the ordinary High School life.

2. DreamHack Festival/event

DreamHack is also a big festival and expo with a lot of events that happen simultaneously. Slagsmålskluppen and Italo Brothers perform on the main stage, there’s dance competitions, it’s Dice that show off their new game Battlefield 3.

It’s companies, organizations that have booths, seminars, Paintball, Foam parties and much, much more.

It’s just like any other festival but with the difference that they have a digital connection that other festival does not have.

3. DreamHack eSport

The biggest and most growing pillar of DreamHack. Competetive gaming, eSport, is one of the pillars where people all over the world competes in a computer game. It’s everything from games like Quake Live, Counter-Strike, Street Fighter 4, League of Legends, Bloodline Champions and StarCraft2.

DreamHack has during the last years become a place with the fiercest competition within this world and from outside countries it’s regarded as one of the most serious and most important tournaments during the entire year.

At DreamHack you can watch super stars like MC, Thorzain, Cypher, Get_Right, Markelov and many others. These stars are as important as Zlatan, Messi, Federer, Woods or LeBron. Exactly like in “normal” sports the fans follow everything from big arenas – like in a tent or at the DreamArena.

At the same this is streamed to the whole world and people gather around to watch their heroes compete in Sweden. We are not talking about a couple of thousand watching it live, it’s Millions!

DreamHack Culture, Festival and eSport are all three important pillars in the digital world of DreamHack. Personally I didn’t bring my computer to be a part of the DreamHack Culture – I was there for the Festival but mainly for the eSport. At the same time people just come to be a part of the Festival or for just the Culture/LAN pillar of DreamHack.

My first visit to DreamHack

Now let’s get over to my personal story from DreamHack. The first thing to say is that  it was an event that I got a lot from personally and it’s also an event that I will remember for a very long time.

Early Saturday I took the train to Jönköping and my expectations were a bit mixed – I had heard a lot great about DreamHack but is it really that good as people say?

My mixed feelings were shattered pretty much the first minutes I walked around DreamHack. I suddenly realized why over 10 000 people two times every year travel to the small town Jönköping to attend DreamHack.

My first impression when I came to Elmia was pretty much this: “It’s sooooooooooo huge!”. It’s hard to explain but you see thousands of computers at the same place – and at the same time there’s hundreds of events and competitions.

To better understand this I recommend Gamelux video that pretty much shows the different parts of DreamHack.

Right after entering DreamHack I was greeted with open arms by Tomas “Greykarn” Hermansson that showed the whole area. Everything from the big halls, event area to the player area. Just by walking around the area you could watch journalist doing interviews, participants play in front of their computers and also people that enjoy the cultural LAN-feeling in the big hall.

In another part of DreamHack you could see the professional stars play and also a lot of people gathering around to watch their heroes.

It was like going through a area where Champions League and Wimbledon were played at the same time. Even if computer game and eSports is not big as these championships but for this audience it’s the same principle – DreamHack is sucha a big event in the pro gaming world.

I could watch Counter-Strike teams like SK Gaming meet Fnatic, with as much feelings an tension as a math between Real Madrid and Barcelona. I could watch the Swedish StarCraft player Thorzain face JulyZerg which for many is like watching Roger Federer vs Djokovic.

My seminar at DreamHack

During the first day I also had a seminar about Marketing for Gamers at Dreamarena Orange.

The seminar was focused to gamers and therefore I talked a bit about my experiences from that and what you have to think when it comes to Marketing.

Here you have my slides from this seminar:

The Mecca of eSport and gaming

As most of you know gaming and eSport is a bit of an interest for me and to be at DreamHack is like being in the middle of the gaming- and eSport Mecca.

What struck me the most during this event was that everything was so open and anyone could watch the players and also talk to them. The fans stood in a queue to  get their autographs from legends like July and White-Ra.

At the same time you could watch them play just 2 meters away. Just 3 meters away from them I could watch YouTube-stars and casters like TotalBiscuit commentate and stream a match together with one of the best players in the world: Jang Min Chul, oGsMC + right next to them the Swedish superstar on YouTube, Tejbz, is being interviewed by DJ MorFar.

To better understand the charm with all of this I could watch the Korean superstar Bomber watch while the Swedish Thorzain was playing a match:

At Monday DreamHack was nearing its end and the big event during this day was of course the final between Chris “HuK” Loranger and Jang “Moon” Jae Ho.

I happened to film the long line 1,5 h before the final, just so you could get an idea on how many people love eSports: (Yes, it’s a bit shaky)

DreamArena was directly filled with 1200 fans, but probably there was about 2-3000 people that didn’t get int. They had to watch the match outside or from their own computers that they brought.

What about the feeling in the room during the match? Well, it was pretty much like this when HuK finally beat Moon:

With the amount of people in DreamArena I think it’s time for DreamHack to kick the Hockey out of Kinnarps Arena (They usually play hockey matches with thousands of people 100m from DreamHack). To be honest – I think it will be pretty much as easy to fill the whole Kinnarp arena as it is to fill it with hockey fans.

Networking and enjoyment of DreamHack

During the last two days of DreamHack I had the opportunity to meet and talk to a lot of developers and executives from companies like Minecraft, Dice, Bloodline Champions as well as eSport Managers, players and casters.

There is so much to be written about these two days, about the official afterparty, the inofficial afterparty and the smart people I met there.

In the end there are a fewe people that make DreamHack what it is:

• Robert Ohlén
• Tomas “Greykarn” Hermansson
• Christian “Hellspawn” Lord
• Nicklas Andersson
• + The others at DreamHack.

How big is DreamHack? 3 Million Unique viewers is a pretty good sign…

During this weekend I also helped measured the effect in social media for DreamHack and I can directly say that it’s a huge event. This year it broke the record on how many people that were there fro DreamHack Summer (Winter is still bigger).

The number of people watching at the venue was a record with thousands of people wanting to watch the StarCraft2 final.

The big thing is though the live-streaming of the even worldwide that made it to an enormous success! From the data I’ve seen and from good sources we are talking about over 3 Million unique viewers!

Yes, it’s unique viewers – duplications are gone and the data here is correct data and not some beefed up TV-stats. This is correct data provided by services like Justin.TV and OWN3D.

The big games that were the biggest was of course League of Lends and StarCraft2 – both of them had over hundreds of thousands simultaneous viewers.

I also analyzed with Lissly the amount of buzz in social media around the world. This is pretty much how it looked like.

Some key social media stats from DreamHack:

• 711 Unique blog posts were written about DreamHak during the event and the day after.
• Over 28 0000 unique posts where DreamHack was mentioned in social media we monitored during DHS 2011.
• Druing the StarCraft2 final the amount of posts about HuK and Moon was 2240 posts/hour.

* Posts and mentions in social media where the keyword DreamHack, MLG and GSL was mentioned. Spam, reposts, automatic posts, blog comments and posts from official brand accounts from leagues above have been excluded to provide a more correct measurement.

During monday when the StarCraft2 final was played the amount of buzz was so much that the winner, HuK, became a Trending Topic on Twitter – worldwide.

This during middle of the day in US – which is the hardest time to get a topic trending on Twitter.

Today there is no eSport event outside South Korea that are in the same league as DreamHack when it comes to streaming viewers. The only one close is Major League Gaming in US, but they still only have a few games and the live streaming numbers are not on par with DreamHack yet – the Swedish pride is still dominating.

DreamHack is something so unique as a Swedish pride. It’s something unique that the whole world looks at – it’s might even a national symbol that Sweden should be proud about.

A big thank you to DreamHack – I’ll definitely come back this to DreamHack Winter!

DreamHack – the Mecca of eSports & gaming is a post from: Late Night Marketing

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What is Twingly and what has it to do with links?

To get all of these things right we have to explain some things about Twingly and why it’s one of the best tools to have on a news site to attract links from blogs. Twingly have a lot of products but the most interesting I’m going to talk about here is their blog widget that you can add to any site/page.

Here’s an example on how it looks on SvD.se in Sweden:

And here’s an example on how it looks on the newspaper Telegraaf.nl:

The funcionality is quite simple – with Twingly you can show every blog that links to the given page/article with title and description. With this you add value to the visitors who reads an article about a current topic and can then see interesting blog post about it. Twingly also have good spam-detection so news papers don’t have do moderate everything.

The bloggers gain from this from the easy perspective that they gain traffic from the given posts and thus can benefit from this. It’s also some form of ego boost for the bloggers.

Bloggers and the faithfulness of linking, Twingly = Link Love!

If you have Twingly on your site and your competitors don’t have it you have an advantage, because where do you think that the bloggers will link? To the article about Princess Madeleine that doesn’t give you credit for linking or the article that gives you credit?

Of course – if you’re a blogger your blog posts links will go to the newspapers with Twingly. This is exactly what’s happened in Europe and especially Scandinavia where a lot of sites have the Twingly Blog Widgets.

How Dagbladet.no lost 5000 natural inlinks!

In Norway the major newspapers had Twingly installed on their sites and enjoyed a lot of incoming links, but one day some stupid person decided that they didn’t want Twingly on their site. The result?

Above you see VG.no and Dagbladet.no compared when it comes to number of incoming links from blogs. As you can see in October 2009 Daglbadet.no had a huge drop when it comes to incoming links but VG.no stayed the same and actually had a increase if you compare January/February 2009 with January/February 2010.

If you look closer at this graph you’ll see a drop of over 5 000 new natural inlinks per month! Here you see the true value of adding incentives to bloggers.

If you scratch their backs you will get a lot of links, if you don’t – they will link to your competitor.

The first thing here is that Dagbladet.no now looses a lot of blog traffic but this is not the most important thing because the traffic from blogs is not enourmous compared to the traffic a newspaper can gain from good rankings on search engines.

What do you think that Google will think of your site if you suddenly have approximately 5 000 fewer incoming links per month?

So to summarize this Dagbladet.no has managed to do the following things:

• Impacted their relationship with bloggers
• Lost traffic from bloggers that won’t link anymore
• Making it harder to rank on current topics because of fewer incoming links
• Worsen their total SEO job due to the fact of lesser incoming links

Great job Dagbladet.no – you screwed up big time!

P.S. f I were VG.no I would order some Twingly-cake and cheer

How to lose 5000 new natural inlinks… per month! (Dagbladet.no story) is a post from: Late Night Marketing

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For those who know me I have the track record of breaking iPhones. I manage to drop them but like a miracle they still work even though the glass is broke – but they are not that pretty.

The first reaction you have when this happens is that you get sad. Your love no #1, iPhone, is broken!

But after a while you don’t cry that much anymore, simply because the broken iPhone has turned into a enormous tool with a lot of possibilities.

Why? It’s your perfect pick up tool! Forget all that’s been written about peacocking, dressing up like a rock star and everything else.

If you want the techy, cool, iPhone-loving girl or boy – all you need is a broken iPhone.

This is how you do it by the playbook:

Playbook – The Broken iPhone

1. Make sure you’ve got money to buy a new iPhone or a bulletproof insurance that covers it.
2. Smash your current iPhone so the display breaks (see pic above). You don’t want to break it too much, you want the iPhone to work afterwards.
3. Prepare an amazing story on how it was broken:
   “I was on safari in Africa last week and then a lion came and started chasing me…”,
   “I was at the release of the movie Shutter Island and at the party Leonardo Di Caprio and I had a drinking game. Suddenly…”
   - You can pretty much come up with anything. Just make sure the story boost yourself.
4. Find a girl/boy that have a nice phone. Preferrably it would be best if it’s an iPhone.
5. Walk towards her and stand next to her. Look important while you put up your iPhone so she/he clearly can see that it’s broken.
6. Wait for it… She/he will ask the question: “Oh, what happened to your iPhone?”
7. Game on! Start telling the amazing story with the lion or Leonardi di Caprio, lions or another amazing story.

That’s pretty much it. Now you’ve broken the ice and the rest is up to you.

Don’t cry over a broken iPhone – it’s perfect for Pick Up! is a post from: Late Night Marketing

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During 2009 Twitter Search has become the natural place when it comes to real time search, especially during live events like Michael Jackson death, Iran election etc.

Search + Integrated Search = Twitter Search

One problem many people do when they try do analyze Twitter Search is that they only look at search.twitter.com which is a big mistake. In July 2009 Twitter launched their new site and there you could see something quite interesting. They focus with a big search box and every search made through the homepage are done on integratedsearch.twitter.com.

Many people just look at search.twitter.com and the they see that the traffic didn’t increase that much during the last couple of months.

Twitter growth 2009

To solve this problem I’ve added upp both search.twitter.com & integratedsearch.twitter.com to see how the growth has been during 2009. The data below is from the fantastic Compete.com where you can find good data for U.S.

As you can see in the graph the growth of Twitter Search have been quite amazing in the US during 2009. From December 2008 to December 2009 the growth is 457%. Twitter Search was launched during 2008 so we can only see data from July 2008 and forward, therefore you can’t compare whole 2009 with 2008 but…

If you compare Q4 2009 with Q4 2008 it’s a 586% increase in traffic.

It’s not fair at this point to compare the traffic with big competitors like Bing, Google or Yahoo Search but you can indeed compare it with niched search engines like Google Blogsearch, Technorati, Yahoo Images etc.

Here you can see the interesting regarding Twitter Search growth. In comparison with these Twitter Search has grown and today Twitter Search has 4 times as many visitors than Google Blogsearch.

Twitter Search may not be the largest engine right now, but if it continues to grow like it did during 2009 it will become an engine that marketers need to focus on.

Twitter Search Growth 2009: +586% is a post from: Late Night Marketing

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Google Zeitgest 2009 sucks

Yes, do not believe Google says in the official Google Zeitgeist 2009. The reason is quite simple: More than a month ago, before the last month of  2009 has started Yahoo launched a Press Release of the most popular searches for 2009. Bing/MSN couldn’t be far behind so they released their data as well. The Spin Doctors at Google then thought this through for maybe 2 seconds before they released their own Google Zeitgeist 2009.

There is only one problem…

The data is not correct, 2009 wasn’t over at that time.

Some people will then say “Well, 11 months is good enough to release this”. When I look back at 2009 you can easily say that the answer is simple: NO! This because Google missed two of the most searched keywords during 2009…

Tiger Woods

One of the most interesting phenomenon of 2009 was the Tiger Woods scandal where it came to light that he constantly cheated on his Swedish wife, Elin Nordegren. This led some weeks of massive reporting regarding the scandal. It didn’t make things better that he also crashed his car after being chased by a raged Swedish girl.

But if you look at the list from Google News for the most searched keywords:

Google News – Fastest Rising (US)

1. swine flu
2. susan boyle
3. jon and kate
4. adam lambert
5. rihanna (chris brown)
6. new moon
7. inauguration
8. michael jackson
9. nadya suleman
10. missing link found

Wasn’t Tiger Woods a lot in the news in December? And why isn’t Tiger Woods in the section which they specifically call “Celebritiy Scandals”

Tiger Woods (and his mistresses) have been on top of Googles Hot Trends since the car accident 27th November and the scandal has risen to the most talked about scandal of 2009. In retrospect we will see this as a huge blow to Tiger Woods image and the largest celebrity scandal of 2009.

We love scandals and gossip and if we read it or hear it somewhere the first thing that we do is “Google it“. That’s how our brains work and it doesn’t matter how much we try to resist it, we are a searching people and we are curios to find information. If you also look at the most searched keywords on a daily basis you can see that his mistresses are there as well and the reason is quite simple: We want to search for the mistresses he’s been with to see which ones hotter than the other.

No matter how you look at it the Google Zeitgest is wrong, because from every search data I can find on the web Tiger Woods should be on the top of 2009.

Avatar

But it is not only Tiger Woods. Google Zeitgeist have not taken in the massive searches that will be done when Avatar opened wide in december. It’s was of the most hyped movies of 2009 with director James Cameron that  revolutionized computer technology on screen.

It was talked about in social media, it was a trending topic on Twitter all the time and we heard stories of the amazing 3D technology. It has since the release been a huge success and as I write now it’s only a matter of days before the movie will break the record for All Time Grossers Worldwide, beating Titanic.

But let’s take a look what Google Zeitgest 2009 says about this:

Fastest Rising in Entertainment (Global)

1. michael jackson
2. transformers
3. eminem
4. naruto shippuden
5. beyonce
6. peliculas id
7. paranormal activity
8. anime online
9. natasha richardson
10. poker face lyrics

Transformers is there and also Paranormal Activity but not Avatar. You bet that we searched for Avatar. It doesn’t matter if it will flop or be a box office success – we will search.

Do not believe Google Zeitgest

As a conclusion, let’s look at how much people searched and the trend locally the US for Avatar & Tiger Woods during december:

Number of searches in December for the phrase “Tiger Woods”: 45,500,000

Number of searches in December for the phrase “Avatar”: 24,900,000

Google Zeitgeist has always been a good source for looking at trends for each year, but this year it sucks! Really bad. I hope that Google will fix this with correct data, but I’m afraid that it will be printed in the history books and there we will see no signs of two of the biggest phenomena in the World 2009.

But in Googles History Books they will not write about this, and it’s bad…

Google Zeitgest 2009 Sucks! Really bad. is a post from: Late Night Marketing

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2. Google Sitelinks, actually not so good…

Nice to have Black Hat associated to me, thanks Google! The interesting thing here is that I have almost never written anything about Black Hat except for on my Glossary. The other silly thing about this is that the SiteLink does not point to this Glossary, but instead to my WordPress admin page.

I investigated this a bit more and I realized that one time I had a broken link on my Glossary that instead of linking to http://www.joinsimon.se/ordlista/#Black-hat linked to http://www.joinsimon.se/wp-admin/#Black-hat. This was up approximately for about 12 hours.

Come on Google! One small mistake that links to WP-Admin should not result in these kind of SiteLinks, especially not if it was up 12 hours and then taken away…

I know that I can take away this in Google Webmaster Tools, but I will let it stay up for educational purpose for some days.

Google Sitelinks, actually not so good… is a post from: Late Night Marketing

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