KPwebben.se, Kamratposten's Web Site, Gets Swedish Youth Talking

KPwebben, the community for Kamratposten, Sweden's 115-year-old magazine for 8 to 14 year olds, is less than two years old.  But you'd never know it from how active the site is -  56,000 members log on KPWebben.se to chat with each other, buy stuff to fill their virtual rooms, or play the "Sort poop" game. Assistant web editor Per Palmqvist keeps things running behind the scenes.

" We can get 30,000 new posts a week in our forums. Mostly the 12-13-year-olds discuss things there. The younger members do more with their virtual rooms on their profile page. For virtual rooms, kids can buy things with KMoney, which is entirely fictional. Members get more every Friday when they receive their 'allowance'," says Per.

Per is called KP-Perpa on KPwebben and he gets to ensure that there is content every day, including articles, movies and contests, like today's "Draw your best spaceship" contest.

"It's fun to work with young people. You get so much feedback," says Per.

These young readers obviously have strong opinions; that's what has kept Kamratposten so popular over the years. The editorial staff receives about 2,000 letters per week via e-mail and post. Most are for Kropp & Knopp, who answer readers' questions about the body and mind. Letter-writers also sound off on new web features, or let the editors know what they want to read about.

"When we added the rule that anyone over 18 years would have the word 'Adult' in his nickname, so that members could see who was a child and who were adults, many became upset. But when we had a malfunction, so that everyone got twice as much allowance as they should, things were very quiet," says Per.

KP also empowers young readers to make their voices heard. When KP wrote about a new law in Lithuania meant to "protect young people" by forbidding all positive talk about homosexuality, readers were outraged. KPwebben received more comments on this article than they had in their history. The editors printed out all of the comments, over 100 pages, and brought some KP readers to the Lithuanian embassy to hand them over. They got to meet the Ambassador Remigijus Motuzas and ask him more about why Lithuania introduced the new law.

KPwebben launched in September 1, 2007 on the initiative of the editor-in-chief Ola Lindholm. Before that, the site consisted basically of a "Click here to subscribe" link.

" Our readers are online, so we figured we should be there too. We quickly gained so many members, "says Per.

There were so many members that an additional community manager came on to take care of all the forums and to ensure that members behave well. Per says that most KP readers help each other on KPwebben.

The magazine Kamratposten has approximately 50,000 subscribers. 80-90% of them are also members of KPwebben.se. The magazine reaches one third of Swedish children between the ages of 8-14 and comes out 17 times per year.