Hemnet & Bovision are feeling the pressure from the upcoming residential portals

Maybe it's true, what Lars Kilander, former CEO of Mäklarsamfundet (the Association of Swedish Real Estate Agents), said, it is too complicated for many that there are more than one (read Hemnet) residential portal. However, the competition is for sure pushing the service level offered to the buyers and sellers.

The tipping point
For many years the only two portals on the market was Hemnet (owned by the two largest broker federation and two newspapers) and Bovision (back then part of Capitex). Then in 2008 things started to happend. Booli, Bospindeln (two Swedish start ups) and Boliga (Danish portal) entered the market and offered a much more intuitive search engines. Read more here.

Reaction I  -  Bovision goes from listing to search engine
Bovison, since 2006 owned by the Finnish media group Alma Media, made a major strategic move in April by adding listings collected as a search engine (not just paid listings by the brokers). Bosvion also started to blog. The goal is to be the largest portal, which is quite away to go, since they today has one 10th of the traffic compared to Hemnet. Read articles at Dagens Media and InternetWorld. 

Reaction II  -  Hemnet goes 2.0
Hemnet is the largest real estate portal in Sweden but also dumbed by many as the most underdeveloped site in the area (compared to the possibilities). However, changes are on the way and they are making no secret that the reason behind it; the pressure from the new players. The new CEO Carl-Henrik Borg (his Twitter) is quoted saying "... it is great if our engineers are challenged by the new services..." (my translation). The new version is to be launched on the 1st on June. Read more at DN, InternetWorld,  PropertyPortal (in english).   

It will be interesting in deed to see how those upgrades will make the services even better.

spotify invites - 7 to go... (update! 0 to go.)

Update: the invites are gone 

Are you ready to get Spotified?
I've few (so much sought-after) invites to give away to my readers.

Actually, 7 to go... 
Leave a nice comment to this post (and I got your mail, not displayed).
Do not send me an email or use the contact form, just leave a comment. 

Haven't heard about the service?
This is what Guardian is saying about the service...

"Welcome to nirvana
Imagine iTunes, but free. Chris Salmon finds the stream of his dreams.

This could well be the year when the wider public decides that online streaming is the best way to consume music. After all, why spend time and money on CDs or downloads, when you can instantly stream that same music for free via your computer or, increasingly, your mobile phone? And if one service is going to provide that tipping point, it's Spotify.com"  The Guardian 16th January 2009

And of course, at the wikipedia.

Two 'cloud' events in Stockholm

The SIME organization is creating two events worth visiting.

SIME & SUN Breakfast
A seminar on the 7th of may on the topic 'the cloud'.
Read more here.

SIME Conference  11-12th November
The premier event for the media/web community in Sweden.
If you're never been to one, you have to go. The host, Ola Halvarsson, for sure know how to put together a show! And he's been 'in the cloud' for too many years than to count.  Read this excellent sum up (Swedish) of the dot-com crash in 2001.