Sherlock Holmes in the blogosphere

 
Teaser campaign Free Internet caused a stir among bloggers.  
Last week, the alleged interest group "Free Internet" caused a stir among bloggers. The group claimed to be campaigning for free internet access. The group wants to emphasize this demand with a nude demonstration in Zurich's Niederdorf district, for example, as well as online advertisements and TV and radio spots. However, bloggers were quick to speculate as to whether this was in fact a teaser campaign by a company. Sunrise was suspected, with Klartext editor-in-chief Nick Lüthi giving the first hint that the telecommunications company could be behind it. The Swiss Metablog then found out that the Freeinternet.ch website had already contained Sunrise content years ago. And BloggingTom contacted several telecom companies: Apart from Sunrise, all of them denied that they had anything to do with the matter. Sunrise spokesman Konrad Stokar also told Werbewoche that he "couldn't say anything" about the whole thing. This enigmatic answer naturally fueled speculation.
Another reference was made on the Tou blog: its operator was informed by "a person from the media sector" that spots from "Free Internet" were labeled with Sunrise. The Abendzeitung Heute newspaper provided proof of this: in the Publisuisse commercial database, the clips from Free Internet were indeed labeled with Sunrise. On Tuesday, however, the commercials disappeared from the database. As Peter Kaufmann from Publisuisse said, the client in question had exercised the right to have the commercials removed.
The mystery surrounding "Free Internet" now seems to have been solved, even if Sunrise is still only saying: "No comment". It will be interesting to see the solution - and whether the many clues to the solution were perhaps even deliberately laid.
Carole Scheidegger