Lunarstorm was a popular Swedish social media site created in 2000 to help users meet others with similar interests. At its peak, it had over 1.6 million members, including 90% of Swedish high school students. The site allowed users to create profiles, share photos and posts, and interact with friends. It also had innovative features like "statuses" to track user engagement. However, Lunarstorm declined as Facebook and Twitter rose in popularity. It shut down in 2009 after losing most of its users to other platforms.

1. SOCIAL MEDIA IN
SWEDEN
By Hugo Phan

2. Top Sweden Sites
 1. Google.se
 2. Facebook
 3. Google.com
 4.Youtube
 5. Aftonbladet - News
 6. Wikipedia
 7. Windows Live
 8. Blocket -Craigslist clone
 9. Blogspot.se
 10. Yahoo

3. Social Media Stats
 Social media usage
has gone up 15
percent since 2009 in
the country among
the 15-24
demographic.
 The next
demographic of 25-44
has grown 50% on
the matter of only 3
years.

4. The state of Social Media at the
beginning of the millennium.
 Here in the USA, it
was dominated by
Xanga and MySpace
 Specialty sites like
PureVolume and
Asian Avenue existed

5. Sweden was going through
something similar as well
 Europe was going through
internet boom with the
creation of various social
media sites like Skype
 Lunarstorm was created in
2000 by Richard Eriksson
 He created Lunarstorm
because He had grown up in
a small and isolated
community and that “knew
the same ten people for
years and wanted to meet
others of his age with similar
interests”.

6. Lunarstorm Stats
 In 2006, Lunarstorm was
projected to reach $77.4
million dollars in revenue
 60% of that coming from ads
and 40% coming from paid
services like a Pro version of
the site.
 It had 1.6 million members
then and was also available in
the UK where it had 60,000
members. By then, 10% of the
population was on the site and
that included 90% of high
school students.

7. Lunarstorm Mobile
 It was also one of the first few social
media sites to try and utilize mobile in
trying to connect people together. To do
this they had partnered with Asprio, an
internet service provider, to help and
create this.

8. Site Features
 Like many features on other
social media sites you could
create pages, share
information about yourself,
post pictures, and talk to one
another. Eriksson called this
”ego-boosting products” and
it contributed to the success
of the site.
 There was also a premium
version of the site called
Lunarstorm Pro which cost
25 kroner a month which is
about $4.36 here in the
states. It allowed users to
add backgrounds and
personal photographs to the
site (something that we got
for free with myspace here in
the states.).

9. Signing up
 When joining Lunarstorm,
you get a page called
“My Nook”. It serves as
your own personal
website in Lunarstorm.
Much like social media
websites here, you are
given control of your
digital identity which you
create through a series of
pictures, posts, and links
 Your prompted to answer
a survey when joining to
gauge what your
interests are as well as
your hobbies.

10. Statuses
 One thing that Lunarstorm had
that other sites did not was
something called “status”. It
differs from our own definition of a
status today (defined by
facebook) because it was about
gaining points. It is kind of like
score of reputation. When you
finish creating your page you get
one point. If you post a picture of
your actual self you get one point.
Points get collected even further
when interact with other users
and logging in. It essentially a
monitor of your own usage of the
site, but EVERYONE can see
how often you are on it. Imagine if
all your friends knew how much
time you spend on facebook?

11. Guestbook
 The place to leave
messages and comments
was called “The Guest
Book” and your blog was
called a “Diary”. You also
have the ability to create
lists of your favorite things
and share them with your
friends. Much like my own
High School, Lunarstorm
was blocked in swedish
schools in fear that it
would interfere with the
learning of the students.

12. User Experience
 One user described
Lunarstorm as a way to
communicate with her own
friends, not to meet new
ones. For her, it was a better
and cheaper form
of communication then the
telephone.
 During the tsunami that hit
Asia in 2005, People went to
Lunarstorm to grieve and
mourn for those who the have
lost. The site even hired
priests to help console the
bereaved in online chat
rooms.

13. The fall of Lunarstorm
 Like most social networking sites,
Lunarstorm was not without trouble.
Complaints of privacy issues and
safety was present throughout it’s
whole lifespan and like may others,
would not survive the rise of
Facebook and Twitter.
 An attempt at offering their
premium service for free did not
help retain members that were
fleeing in droves by 2007. A new
format change came too late to
stop the bleeding.
 It closed down in 2 other countries
that it was available in at that point.
The site had fallen from the millions
of users to around 1,500 users by
2009

14. The Attempted Revival
 An attempt to revive
it is available on the
site
http://www.hamsterp
aj.net/#ls8, but it
looks nothing like
what the site used
to.

15. Sweden and Twitter
 Sweden has been in the
news in the past year for
an initiative to boost
tourism by giving their
twitter account to a new
citizen every week.
 This has not gone without
controversy…

16. In the end…
 Which one would I use if I lived in Sweden?
Facebook. Duh.
Thanks!!