Green Options

You know, I been quite flattered with the attention my April Fool’s Day joke has gotten. I didn’t think a story about marshmallow whales would hit the front page of digg, or make it on to Comedy Central’s blog…but this takes the cake!

Original Story: Whale-Sized Marshmallows Deployed to Thwart Japanese Whalers

It can be tough determining if you should focus on your blog and driving readers to it via Digg, Delicious and similar sites or rather you should focus on interacting with customers and potential customers on Facebook and Twitter. Developing metrics by which to measure your success in social media is key and then following through with analyzing the traffic generated by use of various social media tools leads to success using these new marketing tools.

Campaign politics dominated the headlines in 2008, making it a banner year for the armchair pundit. 2008 was also a year that issues like energy use, climate change and carbon footprints came to the forefront of popular culture and political reality. Put all of that together and you have 2008’s top environmental politics stories.

Editor’s note: This week we’re serving up the first ever year end best-of Gas 2.0 series with our most Dugg, most up-voted reddit, most Stumbled, and most viewed stories of 2008. As a special bonus, we’ll finish off the week by handing out the first ever (yet sure to be highly coveted) Gas 2.0 Post of the Year Award.

Ah, reddit. In many ways the cute little bugger is the forgotten genius brother to Digg, and, no matter how hard he tries, his smartness can’t seem to shine above Digg’s trophy-winning varsity jock prowess (if you hung out in the periodical room in high school, you know what I mean). But perhaps this is for the best, because what we’re left with is what civil commentary can look like on the internet when it’s dominated by graduate students, scientists, know-it-alls, and the generally reserved.

And as it turns out, all of those folks enjoy reading Gas 2.0. So, without further adieu:

Editor’s note: Today we inaugurate the first ever best-of Gas 2.0 series with our most Dugg stories of 2008. During the rest of the week look for the most up-voted reddit, most Stumbled, and most viewed stories of year as well. As a special bonus, we’ll finish off the week by handing out the first ever (yet sure to be highly coveted) Gas 2.0 Post of the Year Award.

Ah, Digg. That beautiful beast. There are some who say she even controls the internet as we know it. In her all-knowing and random wisdom, she giveth and she taketh away. Actually, if truth be known, she mostly taketh. Yet when she does giveth, man does she giveth in a huge way. For that we pay her tribute by exposing the loins of her Gas 2.0 grace. Uhhh… ick. Sorry.

So, before I make myself sick, let me present you with a stroll down the Gas 2.0 memory lane.

As news broke late last week that there might be yet another delay in the eight year battle to get Cape Wind approved, I had to wonder if Kennedy’s hand was somehow behind it. And according to reports, that is at least plausible.

A tea company dedicated to saving the world, inspired by none-other than Digg founder Kevin Rose? No kidding. You can even get a discount below.

As an eco-minded foodie, I can often be found touting the benefits of going organic. It’s healthier, better for the environment and you can feel good about doing your small part to help farmers, as well as helping to limit the use of pesticides in produce and antibiotics and growth hormones in animals.

But I recently stumbled upon a new organic tea company whose primary goal is to literally save the world through tea.  Save the world by drinking tea? I was intrigued and determined to find out more.

Blogging, social news, peer-to-peer philanthropy, microblogging, social networking, wikis, video sharing, and more. These are the new agents of change.

Back in May, we penned the original 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media. Though most of those first 10 are still relevant, the pace of innovation and advancement on the social web means many more have emerged in the past five months that deserve attention. These are the tools and resources that individuals, corporations, and nonprofits alike can use to communicate, create, and connect on the social web…for social change.

1. Blog It Out: When the die is cast on social media and final judgments are made, blogging will reign supreme as the single greatest force in Web 2.0. Whereas social networking is broad and shallow, blogging is deep and focused. That’s the power behind Blog Action Day, which takes place this Wednesday, October 15th, 2008. It’s a day when bloggers the world over draw attention to a single issue and (hopefully) inspire action. This year’s topic is poverty. And given the current financial crisis, it would seem many bloggers have gotten a head start.

2. Twitter Green Events: In the first 10 Ways, we wrote about the Twitter greenstream, a tagging mechanism that organizes and aggregates Twitter messages (Tweets) about doing green things. What’s evolved since then is the widespread use of unique Twitter tags at events. Most recently, we covered West Coast Green by tagging our Tweets with #wcg08. This helps people at the event to find and meet up with fellow Twitter folk. It also enables those who aren’t attending the event to follow what’s going on and what’s being said in real time. There are a couple ways to do this. One is to follow through Twitter Search (formerly Summize), where you can track keywords and tags. Another is to send a Tweet as follows: “track word: [insert keyword]“. And then you’ll start receiving all Tweets with that tag or keyword directly into your feed.

Editor’s note: We’re pleased to welcome Max Gladwell, of MaxGladwell.com, as a regular guest writer on sustainablog. Max Gladwell covers the nexus of social media and green living. We feel that these two trends and technological developments hold tremendous promise for improving quality of life for everyone on the planet.

If you’re reading this blog, then you’re on board with social media. There’s a good chance you belong to social networks like Facebook or MySpace. It’s likely that you Digg stories and even possible that you Twitter. These technologies and services, together with a growing number of others, make up the social web. It’s much like the regular web, but more interactive. More…social. It invites and even demands active participation from everyone. It has a global reach with viral capacity, and yet it’s bringing local communities closer together. It enables people to connect, organize, and make a difference as never before. Indeed, social media is a powerful force, one that the world’s CEOs are starting to acknowledge and take seriously.

Many entrepreneurs, activists, and marketers are leveraging the social web for positive change. In the process and by its very nature, they are giving each of us the tools to change the world and make it a better place. There are thousands of examples, which is precisely why Max Gladwell exists. Here are 10 worth exploring.