Archive for November, 2008
Groundswell, Hit and Miss
5 page synopsis of the book, download my summary notes here. 
Groundswell is a how to guide for social media in business. The authors were analysts at Forrester research, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. Forrester reports a lot of the stats out there on social media, so they know the numbers and help big clients on these issues daily – the credibility is there.
My overall impression of Groundswell is very positive. They explore social media solutions for many aspects of business and do it in an easily digestible way. They also include great real world examples to cement the many lessons. Anyone using social media, or planning to, should read this book. I highly recommend it.
I will, however, add a few caveats to my endorsement. I understand that no book can squeeze in all the lessons of social media or please everyone. But here are some things to keep in mind when reading Groundswell:
- Groundswell is written to corporate America more than smaller businesses and entrepreneurs. It suggests some of the most expensive options out there to build social technology solutions and track your brand online. But there are tons of free, open source solutions that are much more realistic for most of the people that will read the book.
- The authors break down social technology users into 6 categories, The Social Technographics Ladder: who creates, who reacts, etc. This is a helpful guide, but a creator in one place is a spectator elsewhere and may not be either for your company. Understand your demographics, but at the same time, do not be afraid to follow your instincts. There are content creators in every demographic, after all. Groundswell is great for helping you generate a plan of action. But, I think one of the keys here is creativity and capturing the imagination and ownership of your audience. Experiment, test and do not be afraid to fail.
- Lastly, Groundswell alludes to this but it deserves more emphasis. Simply get out there a participate in social media. If you want your company to use social technologies to improve your business, you need to be out there experiencing it personally, asking questions, learning lessons, and creating. The experience is nothing without an overall plan, true, but the opposite is just as true. Creating a plan and goals without being involved in social media is also ill advised. This goes for the best and the brightest of everyone in your company.
Happy Social Giving
The insight here is a simple, but great example of using social media (Twitter specifically) to raise money for a very good cause.
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, a new site, Tweetsgiving has captured the giving spirit on Twitter and hopes to capture $10,000 for a classroom in Tanzania. Mashable described it as “one part meme, one part fundraiser”. Beyond their push to raise 10k in 48 hours, they are also asking everyone to “Share something you’re thankful for with all your twitter followers”.
EpicChange.org is the non-profit behind Tweetsgiving. Give them some Twitter love and donate if you are able.
They have reached 75% (7.5k of their 10k) of their goal as of Midnight on Wednesday night. With 24 hours to go, I am hoping Turkey Day does not distract from the momentum they are building.
Magpie Tweaks its Feathers
Magpie has jumped on the Twitter scene with a force and much of the more vocal initial reactions have been negative (check the 100+ comments on a Magpie post by @GeekMommy). However, with the amount of money they are paying out for occasional Tweets, I believe they are going to have a presence on Twitter for a little while, barring any declarations from Twitter to the contrary.
After receiving some initial feedback from their fast growing user base, (last reported to have over 500,00 combined followers) they have already made some significant changes to their service that should give them even more longevity.
- Old Feature – Tweet/Advertisement Ratio has 6 options from 1/1 to 1/20
- New Feature – Tweet/Advertisement Ratio has 11 options went from 1/1 to 1/200
- Old Feature – Each Magpie ad includes “#magpie” before the ad
- New Feature – Each Magpie ad can include “#magpie” or any text before or after the ad, or nothing at all
- Old Feature – Advertisements entered your stream when they saw appropriate keywords
- New Feature – Advertisements can be set to be pre-approved before entering your stream at all
I have used Magpie for 5 days now. I have had 3 advertisements so far worth a combined €18.33. To get any cash from Magpie you must reach a €50.00 minimum, which I could easily do earning over $5 a day, but for now I have turned off the ads.The original reason I signed up for Magpie was to review it as a new media technology. It is my industry and I need to know how these things work. I will not lie, when I saw I could earn over $2,000 in year with just 1 ad per tweet a day, I considered rolling with Magpie for the rest of the year. There are two issues I would have to see cleared up before I adopted Magpie as a regular service.
- Issue 1: Ad approval, which Magpie has already made a reality within the 5 days I have been testing the service. I think this will make Magpie much more appealing to most Twitter users as it allows you to control the content and retain the trust of your community. Blindly sending ads does comprehensive the ability of your community to trust your content.
- Issue 2: Flooding Twitter with duplicate content. If 100 ads are launched from 100 different Twitter accounts at the exact same time, the flooding of people’s timelines will become a huge issue. I had not thought of this when initially signing up until I read it as a possibility on @GeekMommy’s post, although I have yet to see a real example of it happening. This could be fixed by adopting some time delays or allowing Magpie users to choose 1 of several message options or custom times. But as of now, those options are not there.
Overall, I believe Magpie is a value add to the Twitter community. They will be forced by their advertisers to produce a product that is not ignored by everyone, so I believe a balance will be reached or Twitter users will reject and bankrupt Magpie as a company. The latter seems less likely to me considering the changes they have made thus far. If nothing else, Magpie is the first of many and might encourage Twitter itself to start trying to make some money and ensure the service is around for the long haul.
Green Hosting Options
I am a web developer as well as someone very interested in sustainability and helping the environment. Green Hosting, or hosting that is carbon neutral, is something I am naturally interested in. I am currently in the process of shopping for a new hosting service for a few websites I take care of for other people as well as for some personal projects. I am taking this opportunity to find options that offer less environmental impact.
Over the last couple of days I have been researching what options are out there. Below is what I have learned and hopefully it will help you if you ever decide to make the same switch. My goal is to have all my web hosting carbon neutral by this time next year (when all my hosting accounts will have cycled through renewals).
I will break down the 5 options I see out there and then let you know which one I am choosing and why.
1. Buy Your Own Offset Credits – Just keep doing what you are doing and do enough research to figure out the carbon footprint of your hosting use. Buy carbon offset credits to neutralize your footprint. This is harder than it seems. There are a lot of questions about how companies use offset credits, so this requires a lot of research and you need to answer for yourself which companies are doing it in a way you agree with. I suggest buying credits directly from a wind or solar farm.
Resources: How to buy carbon credits (Ehow.com) | Carbon credit price comparisons
- Tip: Overestimate. If your hosting company will not let you know how much electricity they use for your hosting, or are unable, estimate it yourself. My unscientific recommendation is to take 75% of your hosting cost and define it as “electricity use”. Run that $ amount through a tool like this with your zip code. My estimate for $100 annual hosting bill was 1,379 lbs CO2 per year. Round that up to 2,000 or 1 ton (that is how they sell the credits) and you will pay anywhere from $5 to $100 annually. Like I said, a lot of options, a lot of research.
2. Use Hosting that Buys Credits – Same process as above, except the hosting company does all the math for you. A lot of hosting companies are offering these options these days for a little extra cost. For some hosting companies this is the only option, without a geographical move or a massive investment. One major con, is since they do all the research and make all the decisions, you have less control of the quality and legitimacy of the offsets. One good option in this direction is Dreamhost.
3. Use Hosting that Buys Green Energy – With more and more utility companies building and buying into green energy from wind farms, solar panels, and others – more hosting companies are investing in these options. This is better than buying credits as it is a direct buy of green energy and encourages utilities to invest even more in these solutions.
Resources: ThinkHost | HostPapa | HostGator
- HostGator is my personal choice for now. While they technically buy credits, they are buying them directly from a wind farm in their home state. And they buy 130% of what is required for carbon neutral, in their words “We’re not just neutralizing our environmental impact, we’re reversing it!” They also are not marking up a special “green” option but have converted all of their shared and reseller hosting over to this process. I know this is not the greenest option, but for me they are offering the best combination of sustainability and webhosting services that suits my needs.
4. Use Hosting that Produces Green Energy - Not all of these companies are 100% carbon neutral, but many of them are very close. Their costs and uptime look pretty competitive. I plan to start using these guys as a green options when I pitch clients. My only hesitation to switching all my hosting to them is a lack of knowledge of their multi-domain options and additional services that I need. Further research is needed here, will keep you posted.
Some, but not all, in this category (from Treehugger.com):
- WebCtel – Solar
- SolarWebWorks – Solar
- EcoSky – Solar & wind
- The Green Web Host – Mixed sources, mostly wind I think
- Locomotive Media – Wind
- Elfon – Wind
- SustainableMarketing – Wind
- Aiso – Solar
- Taproot Hosting
- SolarHost – Solar
5. Use Your Own Green Powered Servers – Buy and setup your own servers, build a wind turbine in the back yard, load up the rooftop with solar panels, and bask in your carbon neutral glory.
Did I miss any great Green Hosting options out there? Let me know in the comments. Also, which option are would you choose?
UPDATE: In response to this post I had requests for a second post on Green Business Card Options
Modern Fears
Some new phobias I have been working on personal solutions for:
- Tabdevotophobia – n. Fear of closing internet browser tabs
- Photogonophobia – n. Fear of deleting photo memory card files
