Some of us have mourned the apparent demise of CitJ site iNorden.org, a service we all hoped would once become the Scandinavian response to the Korean success OhmyNews, which, evidently, never came to pass. After about a year’s existence, iNorden flopped big time last autumn, at which time I decided to retire myself as editor, leaving it all to co-editor Øyvind Strømmen, who clearly didn’t have much time to spend on the project either.
The remaining staff, if that’s an appropriate term, was unable to uphold the regularity we came to rely on during iN’s first year, leaving us all to believe it had come to an end. Until Øyvind mailed a few of us the other day, wondering if any of us had any ideas. Along came iNorden 3.0 – a full-fledged social media outlet, boasting functionality never before seen in the open (seeing as Facebook provides a log-in), and I have to say: For the first time in about a year, I’m all about great expectations, if Dickens will excuse my insolence.
Click for full size (1:1).
iNorden 1.0 started out as an online newspaper, really (as seen in screendump to the left, click for full size), with an ever-growing number of contributors – up until a certain point of time. Personally I have to admit to losing faith as I discovered that I was left to edit the whole thing single-handedly for the last couple of months prior to my “retirement”. By then we were already slightly connected to other social media, boasting a few functions ourselves, but nothing close to what we see in today’s version, offering blog pings, feeds from major Scandinavian ping services, Twitter-style dialogue and an integrated, filtered blog search engine, courtesy of Google. For now.
Apparently the ambition is to offer Nordic newspaper listings (feeds, perhaps?) and a host of additional functions, undoubtedly, and in all honesty, this may very well turn out to be the place to be for Nordic on-line socialites, citizen journalists, bloggers and all of you who are simply interested in Nordic goings on.
I can tell you this much, though: Even if I’m no longer involved, other than as an average contributor, I keep my hopes up high for iNorden’s re-introduction, which is much more in line with the 21st century social media requirements. That said, much remains to be done about the interface, and several functions are yet to be implemented, according to Øyvind Strømmen. In other words, it’s early days yet, but I can say this: Here’s a site with potential aplenty.
If you read this: Please don’t hesitate to spread the word. These things tend to rely on a certain participatory level, but are more often than not short of funds necessary to make themselves known.
iNorden 2.0 is still available, by the way, in a very crude, default WordPress theme.
Top photo: The Nordic social media outlet and ping service iNorden.