Again this year New Media Days has nominated 7 media business initiatives from Scandinavia for the “New Media of the Year” award. Let’s take a look at the nominees:
The Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) is Denmark’s oldest and largest electronic media enterprise delivering public service television since 1951. As part of the project of digitizing the vast amount of content hidden away in the archives, the Bonanza website was launched to bring DR gems back where they’re really made to shine: In the eyes of the viewers. And soon ears too – the service has been a huge success and will soon host DR radio nostalgia as well.
Only if you’re between 16 and 24 years-old you’re qualified to a subscription at Blyk, the first free mobile network to be funded by advertising. Users signing up with the Finnish-based company will receive advertising messages on their mobiles, and in return are given an allowance of free texts and minutes each month. Merging wants of both consumers and businesses – low cost and targeted ads – Blyk is on a roll and planning for pan-European spread.
Where are you off to? Dopplr is an online tool aimed at frequent business travellers that keeps track of when and where you’re heading for your next international appointment. “You put in your travel schedule and link to your friends. It allows you to see where everyone is,” as Wikipedia-founder Jimmi Wales describes the simple and useful service. Recent investing has secured Dopplr additional finances for plans of global expansion.
Making travelers’ lives easier is also the focus of Momondo, an easy-to-use flight ticket search engine, with a motto of “Don’t spend it on the flight – Splash it on the night!” A Danish initiative by experienced people from the travel business, Momondo provides a much-needed overview of a de-centralized market by comparing prices from 450 travel web sites. Expanding their business, Momondo has recently opened up to user recommendation with a travelers’ forum and city guide articles.
Headquartered in comfortable Copenhagen, MyC4 is working towards the end of world poverty by raising capital for African entrepreneurs. Such noble core values as transparency, openness and trust are the driving forces behind MyC4’s micro credit financing service. Besides investing in small African businesses, users on the MyC4 platform are also encouraged to share their knowledge and resources in a social forum. MyC4’s aim is high – but so is the need for tools of change like this.
Maybe the largest social movement in the world, soccer and its fans are paid honor in this brand channel joint venture by Carlsberg and Brandzation. Some consider merging professional journalism with commercial interests sacriledge, but PartOfTheGame has shown that a firm grip on innovation through professional sparring can result in succesful content with no quality compromises. Beautiful HD-content combines with user engagement to show a likely TV business model for the future.
More of a technical achievement perhaps than an actual medium, V8, the final nominee, is the high performance javascript engine behind Google’s new open source browser, Chrome. It was developed by a team of programmers at Google’s offices in Århus, Denmark, and has attracted international attention for its speed and redesign of web data processing. As an open source development, anyone who wishes to equip their own applications with V8 turbo can download and build with help from these documents. Vrooom!
An independent jury of Danish media business representatives will decide who takes home the title, which will be announced at the award show on the first evening of the New Media Days conference, October 8th.