Social Media for Good

Looking at the Facebook strategy used by Bank Transfer Day

2011-10-19T18:24:00.001-07:00

The American version of the Arab Spring (2011) is underway as I write in late October 2011. The encampment near Wall Street is now in its second month and there are Occupy encampments in other cities around the world. One of the side actions is Bank Transfer Day, which is a call for people to transfer their money out of big banks into credit unions, and to do so before November 5, 2011. The

Is "lots" of followers a good idea? Or is the idea to have valuable conversations?

2010-11-26T09:31:00.001-08:00

We’re looking to create social good via social media networking websites. There are plenty of competing ideas on the best way to operate a social media networking account to create the most impact. I recently got a twitter follow request from someone who’s obviously following the “gain as many twitter followers as possible” strategy. I follow a different strategy (see: On pruning twitter

Green Transportation Examiner - my main social media for social good project

2010-11-22T08:01:00.001-08:00

For a year and a half I’ve been privileged with the role of Journalist, covering the greening of our transportation system. My main gig is on examiner.com with the title Green Transportation Examiner. Examiner.com operates a “citizen journalist” organization with 10’s of thousands of people writing on whatever special topic ﬂoats their own boat, and I am one of them. I’m currently learning

TED: Ze Frank's web playroom

2010-11-21T17:08:00.001-08:00

The following is an excellent example of using social media networks in a way that creates positive social change and positive social connections. Ze Frank rose to Internet fame in 2001 with his viral video “How to Dance Properly,” and has been making online comedy, web toys and massively shared experiences ever since. The video shows several projects he did using social media networks to

On pruning twitter followers and why it matters who follows you

2010-06-29T04:20:00.001-07:00

I listen to a couple podcasts by Cliff Ravenscraft (Podcast Answerman and Social Media Serenity) and really value the information he gives. But something he’s said a few times recently has been bugging me but a couple brain cells just clicked and I think I get it now. One of his recommendations is to look through your followers on Twitter and remove those that you don’t like (e.g. if they’re

Many people are working alone on great ideas that could improve the way we all live

2010-03-07T10:11:00.001-08:00

For the last one and a half years I’ve been working on launching Transition Silicon Valley. It’s meant to be the Silicon Valley branch of the Transition Towns movement. The work is paying off right now in that we’re running a movie series called “Films of Vision and Hope” that’s drawn about 50-60 people per night. The overall message is there are a doom and gloom scenarios in the area of peak

Social networking in the workplace

2010-02-24T22:55:00.001-08:00

This evening I attended a panel discussion about “Social Networking” as it is used inside businesses. Obviously there is a wildﬁre like phenomenon where “Social Networking” and “Social Media” is growing very popular. Why should it stay out in the public only used for sharing with friends and family? It can and is being used within organizations for internal communication within the

Initial look at Google Buzz - the newest social networking service

2010-02-11T21:49:00.001-08:00

This week Google unleashed some buzz upon the net causing, uh, some, uh, murmurings among the masses (hey, I did that without using the word ‘buzz’). Considering my last post was about taming the social networking ﬁrehose maybe one thing to ponder is that the last thing we need is another social networking ﬁrehose to explore. But given that it’s a different playing ﬁeld with different

Keeping the social media firehose under control, keeping balance in your life

2010-01-30T17:24:00.001-08:00

There’s a lot of people teaching that the way of success in social media is to get as many followers as possible. It’s a numbers game where if 1% of followers click on your links and take a desired action (buy a product) then to me n$’s in sales it’s possible to calculate the required number of followers. However it’s likely that making positive social change using social media requires a

Creating Facebook fan pages

2010-01-23T11:39:00.001-08:00

You don’t have to be a hollywood celebrity to have fans. All you need is a facebook account. What happens from there is up to you. While it’s true that many of the popular facebook pages are for the usual celebrities, some are clearly not (a.k.a. “I <heart> sleep”). Clearly some people have created fan pages and through some means of manifestment they’ve managed to get millions of people to