Twingly Blogstream
Twingly Blogstream was an embeddable widget that connected blogs with mainstream media by displaying relevant blog posts on news articles. Launched in 2007 on Sweden's largest newspapers, it became the flagship product that established Twingly as a bridge between the blogging community and traditional publishers — and its unexpected success on rival newspapers simultaneously revealed as much about luck as strategy.
The Founding & Launch (2006–2007)
Four technicians from Linköping founded Twingly and developed a widget-based solution to publish blog data at scale. By spring 2007, both of Sweden's two largest newspapers—Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet—had launched the Twingly widget within two days of each other, each convinced the other went first.
The Newspaper Race. Asked about the key to Twingly's early success, Martin explained the gap between the sanitized version and the true version—and chose to tell the true one. DN had signed first but delayed its launch; meanwhile, SvD's tech lead let slip that something was coming. DN saw that and rushed a test version live; SvD saw DN's move and launched the same day. Neither newspaper had wanted to be second. The result: an enormous breakthrough thanks to both morning papers going live simultaneously—a collision Twingly hadn't engineered, even as a young company naïve enough not to know that supplying a shared product to both Bonnier and Schibsted titles was practically forbidden.
Why it mattered. The launch was revolutionary for democratizing media—bloggers now could receive attention from newspapers, a massive shift at a time when blogs were still emerging outside the mainstream gatekeepers.
Product & Technology
Twingly's widget platform allowed blogs and news sites to embed rich functionality. Publishers could display recent posts, recent links, and most linked-to posts—turning articles into discovery hubs. Bloggers, in turn, could embed Twingly search functionality on their own blogs.
To handle massive traffic from newsroom widgets, Twingly used Amazon S3 storage to publish blog data in JSON format, including JavaScript code and images, allowing Amazon's infrastructure to absorb traffic from 45 major media sites instead of Twingly's own servers.
Reach & Impact
By 2010, Twingly's blog-linking widget had reached approximately 300 million views per month. More than 40 partners signed up to use the Blogstream widget for integration into media systems. By the early 2010s, the widget had spread to 14 European newspapers and one South African publication.
When Twingly acquired Bloggportalen.se in 2011, the deal included moving both Aftonbladet.se and E24.se to Twingly's service for displaying blog links on news articles—cementing Blogstream's role as the standard bridge between blogs and Sweden's largest publishers.