Norway and Social Media
February 23, 2009 by Kine
In Norway there has also been a rapid change in the way people, especially the young ones that tend to be early adopters and innovative users of new technology and media, use new social media, such as YouTube and Facebook. Norwegian social networks are also very popular, and you could say that the web community has exploded in Norway. Knut-Arne Futsæter (TSN Gallup Norway, 2007) explains about this “phenomenon” in his presentation about the “Increasing use of social media and decrease of traditional media in Norway.”
In 2007, Blink was Norway’s largest web community and was launched by Dagbladet.no (a Norwegian newspaper) on 1 February 2002. In January 2007 Blink had over 316 000 members, which means around 7 % of the population in Norway have a profile on Blink. Members of Blink.no can write their own news and blogs, participate in debates and upload photographs and videos to share with others. It’s free to sign up and become a member, but some of the accessory device you have to pay for.
On 14 September 2006, Norway’s largest website launched Nettby, along many of the same lines as Dagbladet’s Blink.no, and by January 2007 Nettby.no had 329 000 citizens and were growing by 15 000 members each week. That is quite impressing when you think of the population of Norway, 4.8 million people by the end of 2008, and together Blink.no and Nettby.no have acquired more than half a million people.
It seems like Norwegians want Norwegian produced content in a local setting. But will Norwegian social networks pass the foreign equivalents like e.g. Facebook and Twitter in Norway? Futsæter belives so, but I’m not that sure.
Blogging and various discussion forums are also another type of user created content that has become really popular in Norway, as in other countries, there is a wide spectrum, ranging from private diaries in plain text to advanced blogs with graphics, audio and video.
My own experience with social media started with mIRC, a popular Internet Relay Chat, then I “upgraded” to The Microsoft Network (MSN) and Windows Live Spaces (MSN Spaces). Now there is Facebook who embarrassingly enough takes a lot of my time, beside trying to figure out Twitter and writing this blog. In future blog posts I will write more about social media that I used before, the ones I use now and applications I consider to exploit in the future.
I feel like I’m part of so many different social networks, because I have to be a part of the Norwegian Networks as well as the networks that are more used in the UK. Feel like I’m using to many minutes a day, week, year to update them.
Yeah, I know what you mean! Sometimes I feel like all I ever do is spending time being social on different networks rather than actually be social in “real life”…a bit sad actually..he he However, when you are studying in another country etc. Social networks is great to use when it comes to keeping in touch with your friends (and family) back home!
Gosh I remember irksome mIRC, did you try that too?! how far did we get to. Yeah, same here relating to foreign social sites. I have friends fragmented across many different social networks. Just this weekend a very close cousin of mine invited to Hi5. What do you do then? You could just ignore or spend all your time moving between different social sites.