Svenska Spel, the largest gaming operator in Sweden, is now connecting their site to the blogosphere using Twingly Blogstream. Being owned by the Swedish government makes them quite a special gaming company with a need of openness and trust, which we think Twingly is a lot about. Overall, it’s great to see an increasing number of companies outside of the media world developing an interest towards bloggers and social media.
So check it out at svenskaspel.se and happy blogging!
Another great launch this week: The Swedish political party Moderaterna decided to use Twingly Blogstream for boosting transparency and discussion on their official site moderat.se .
It’s election in Sweden in September and we believe that social media will be more important than ever for the political sphere this year. Twingly already helped partners like The Swedish EU Presidency, Centerpartiet, Socialdemokraterna and Folkpartiet in successfully opening up the political discussion with the blogosphere. From now on we will support Moderaterna in achieving the same.
We’re thrilled to see an increasing number of political organisations getting into conversations via social media, and we work hard on the development of our solutions to see even more of them starting to use our products Twingly Blogstream, Twingly Channels and Twingly Live this year. Please get in touch if you have ideas, thoughts or simply are interested in what we have to offer.
We’re happy to announce that Brandos.se and Brandos.no are launching Twingly today. Brandos.no is also the first e-commerce site in Norway with our service.
Fashion blogs are a huge phenomenon both in Sweden and Norway, so it’s a great marketing method for a web shop selling shoes to work with blogs here just like Lindex, Halens and Stadium are doing so with clothes.
Happy blogging, fashionistas!
Soon it will be one year since Handelsblatt.com as the first German partner ever went live with Twingly – and in total it were twelve exciting and inspiring months for us working in the market of a country that is and has been so close to Sweden in many ways.
One can start with Gustav II Adolf’s invasion of Germany in early 1600, Swedish soldiers during the 30-year war on Saxon soil (battle at Lützen, close to Leipzig, where the same king found his death), the Hanse (Visby was in 1200 an important Hanse-town – and don’t say it is not Swedish, you Gotland critics 😉 ) and one must not forget Swedish soldiers joining the German army in WWII (to name a darker chapter of history).
Nowadays there are lots of German tourists in Sweden, plus the silent invasion (as I’d like to call it) of Germans working in Sweden or finding their love there (me = one example), Swedes moving to Berlin for working and living (maybe loving, too?), Germans buying Volvos even though most still prefer VW, Mercedes, BMW, loving their Sony Ericsson mobiles, chatting on Skype and longing for Spotify – and maybe even for Twingly. Although we are a little different to Spotify or Skype.
Anyway, Germany in many ways is one of the most important business partners for Sweden. And in 2009 it also became one for us at Twingly.
During 2009 we probably went from “Who the f… is Twingly?” to “What? You don’t know Twingly? Check it out!” if you would have asked someone in the German blogosphere.
Some newspapers online joined us on our path of recognition in Germany by using Blogstream to connect their content with blogs. These are Handelsblatt, Wirtschaftswoche, Karriere, Freitag, Lausitzer Rundschau, BILD and FOCUS. The last two decided to give it a few months try only, though, but keeping in touch and with our further development of services we are pretty confident to welcome them back as partners at some point later soon.
We also welcomed the German first shop to use Twingly to connect to blogs – check out Yomoy.
In 2010 there will be a few more German Blogstream partners joining which really glads us and we feel honoured to be entrusted with supporting them in their online strategies.
The year to come will bring new Twingly products and therefore also a greater variety of business models that will suit different types and sizes of businesses. All new products like i.e. Twingly Channels or Twingly Live (to name the ones already somewhat out there) will incorporate real time web – which has been stated as one of the top trends for 2010, as every digital native by now knows.
Twingly Live already now supports lots of events and conferences. Twingly Channels will be doing the same and a lot more like i.e. Social Media Monitoring for everyone or “channeling” the media around one event or in general givving the opportunity to get all important news in one place. Possibilities with Channels as we imagine it to be will be endless, and that’s why right now we work hard on getting all you want into place before we launch the open version some time in the first half of 2010. Stay tuned.
We will also develop our Enterprise Solutions like i.e. Blogstream further and it goes without saying that the results for Germany on the Twingly blog search will be better and better. Not sure if I have to mention this, but – we do love feedback and we want yours. So let us know if you have a great idea or a problem!
At this point I would like to say thank you to all our German business partners who allowed us helping them to improve their connection with social media.
But the same thank you goes to all the great people that I have met over the year online via i.e. Twitter but also offline and in real life on for example the Microblogging Conference in Hamburg, the re:publica in Berlin and the dmexco in Köln in September. It is just so nice to be a part of the German blog and social media world, although we are located rather remotely in Sweden. But thank goodness Germany is in the end only a couple of flight hours away. So thank you for your friendship, support and trust!
For 2010 the following these events are already scheduled: the MBC (so it hopefully takes place), the re:publica (tickets bought, hotel booked, flight to be booked) and the dmexco in autumn.
Also, since there are some quite innovative things cooking at our end we would be interested in taking part in some more happenings and/or competitions in Germany. Any hot tips, anyone, for what we absolutely should not miss this year? Get in touch.
Let’s bring it on in 2010 then! Or how was that again in German? “Es gibt viel zu tun. Packen wir es an”.
Looking forward to see you soon, in real time and in a brand new decade!
Wow, what a year full of laughs, hard work and a lot of new friends. To summarize the year, we did just like last year – a resume based on some of the blog posts from our blog archive. Enjoy!
Januari
We recognized that Twitter was taking some big steps towards mainstream in Sweden, we launched our popular Microblog Search and we got our first customers in Germany.
February
We attended two microblogging conferences in Sweden and Germany, listened to Chris Anderson and wrote about why social media search matters. Unfortunately we also had some trouble with our servers.
March
Ica launched our new product Blogwatch, Björn Jeffery and Niclas Heurlin joined our board of directors and we where among the 7 hottest web companies from Sweden.
April
Lavanguardia and Handelsblatt wrote about their experiences with Twingly and we shared Twingly’s vision for our products for newspapers, tv and magazine websites. And we had an April fools joke that we still can laugh at here at the office…
May
A great month in many aspects and especially when it comes to new Blogstream Partners. Some of the new partners where Ionline.pt, Ving.se, Freitag.de, Göteborgs-Posten and Vårt Land. We we’re also named as “IT Challenger of the year” in Sweden by Veckans Affärer and Martin wrote a great blog post about entrepreneurship.
June
We announced Project Shinobi and the launch date of it. Martin, Björn and Niclas went to Reboot11 and made a wonderful video. New partners where BBC, iMente and TCO-tidningen.
July
Summer! Many of us where on vacation but we did talk a little bit more of Project Shinobi (and coded a lot…), Svenska Kyrkan used our widget on their campaign site and Drytrend.com become a new partner.
August
Stadium.se and LR-Online.de was two new partners launching the Twingly Blogstream widget and Judith Wolst wrote a great guest blog post for us. We also went to the archipelago in Southern Sweden and presented Project Shinobi to the web 2.0-people in Sweden at Sweden Social Media Web Camp.
Photo credit: Pelle Sten
September
Not far from the launch of Twingly Channels (earlier mentioned as “Project Shinobi) the 1st of October and we finally told everyone what it was all about. We got a new partner in Portugal, Maisfutebol and we worked harder than ever to be able to launch Channels in October.
October
THE month! We launched Twingly Channels, and went to BlogWorldExpo to meet with international bloggers. We also got some new partners, and developed a top list of Channels after your great feedback. Thanks a lot everyone involved for the help before, during and after the launch!
November
We launched Twingly Live, had a great guest blogger in form of Marit Woody, Poker.se and some other became new partners and the Swedish EU Presidency started to use Twingly. We were also nominated as one of The Rising Stars of the North by SIME. Even we still where a little bit exhausted after the Channels launch, we find the time to also make som improvements for it.
December
Twingly was awarded as one of the Top 10 international web products of 2009 by ReadWriteWeb. Sponsored realtime services for media websites became a new business area for Twingly, we predicted what we think will happen on the realtime web 2010 and Anja told us a wonderful little story about social media charity. Fritidsresor.se, Topleague.co.uk and TVI24.pt became new Blogstream Partners.
Thanks for a great year everyone. Now lets make 2010 to another top notch Twingly year!