You don’t necessarily need an expensive MBA or a degree in environmental sciences to learn about social and environmental responsibility. In fact, many could learn from school children armed with about $17.

One of my favorite quotes I was lucky enough to hear in person. It was imparted by one of my favorite people — David Attenborough, the famous naturalist and owner of a voice that sends women over 60 weak at the knees (at least true in my mother’s case). Asked when he first became interested in the natural world, he boldly replied, “I prefer to ask most adults when they stopped being interested … after all, you won’t find many children that aren’t fascinated by nature, it’s just that my adolescent curiosity just never went away.” Perhaps not the most perfectly crafted of sound bites, but one that captures Attenborough’s magic and the boundless curiosity of youth.

A little while back I teamed up with a friend, Oli Barrett, to help create a scheme called “Make Your Mark with a Tenner.” The aim is to challenge youngsters to see what they can achieve with just £10 (slightly less than $17 in the U.S.) in one month. In the last couple of years, close to 30,000 school kids have participated in the program, aiming to make a profit and assessing the difference their schemes made, if any. (The photo to the right and the one below show the problem tackled by the Torquay Boys Grammar School and “The Chillow,” the product the students created to solve it.) The largest profit was £736 and the average £42, compared with a return a savings account would have provided in the same month — a heady 2p! That’s 4,200 penny sweets, versus a mere two. In a world of economic crises, these enterprising teens are proof that measures to support young entrepreneurs and startups are of vital import.

I’ve also been lucky enough to participate in a BBC2 series called “Beat the Boss,” in which our team of “bosses” was trounced by a team of enterprising children. Plus, I was a trustee of Young Enterprise, an organization that encourages young people to start businesses, with a bit of expert guidance, while at school. It comes as no surprise to discover that the youth of today are resourceful, entrepreneurial and enthusiastic. What continues to surprise me is the passion that children have for making a positive impact.

Although social awareness seemed somewhat of a misfit for a profit-focused enterprise, we asked “Make Your Mark with a Tenner” participants to report on the difference that their £10 schemes had. An overwhelming number wrote passionate and insightful pieces, demonstrating a deep thoughtfulness and understanding of the interconnectedness of their actions within their local environment. A large number of students donated all of their profits to charity, despite there being no compulsion to do so. In fact, money seemed to be one of the least important of their motivators. So when exactly does the materialism kick in … when the pocket money ends? Perhaps.

Or, perhaps not. At Bright Green Talent, the No. 1 reason we hear from people hunting for a green job is that they crave meaning in the workplace. At about the same time as my “Tenner” involvement, I worked on a piece of research to assess what young people felt about social enterprise. Without getting bogged down in the definitional discrepancies, a social enterprise is an organization that achieves a social or environmental change while operating as a business, pursuing profit. Inevitably, most of the youngsters were unclear about what a social enterprise was. However, almost everyone we spoke to understood the principle — that a business could and should operate to benefit society.  In fact, most children thought that was what a normal business did and couldn’t understand why it would ever be otherwise. When asked about their ambitions, the children expressed a desire to make a difference and make money. Rarely did they want one in the absence of the other, and the desire to make a difference was often greater than the materialistic.

What my experiences demonstrate is that social entrepreneurship, environmentalism and creating meaning in the workplace are not new concepts, but inherent, natural ambitions. Our children dream of sustainable workplaces that contribute positively. Perhaps these ambitions get lost when bankers and businessmen focus only on making profit rather than principle and put production in place of pleasure.

In the case of the people coming to Bright Green Talent, many mention that they have awoken from their stale jobs in traditional businesses, and are desperate to create meaning. I believe that one of the reasons why there is such a clamor for green jobs and why companies like Patagonia, Innocent, Sawday’s and Howies have done so well, is that they’ve harnessed the power of our natural working instincts.

There is no shortage of hope, enthusiasm, entrepreneurship and environmental awareness to be found amongst the next generation — our job, dear adults, is not to “change the world” for our children, but to nurture much of what’s there. After all, it is often when children go from natural naturalists to adults that the world strips them of much of their innate wisdom. It can takes heroes like David Attenborough to bring out the child in all of us and remind us of the power and beauty of our natural instincts.

Tom Savage is the founder of Bright Green Talent, helping to place people in green jobs worldwide. Tom also writes a blog on simplicity; www.simpletom.co.uk and can be found Tweeting at http://twitter.com/brightgreen.

Editor’s note: Also see Donna Fenn’s new book, Upstarts, about How GenY Entrepreneurs Are Rocking the World of Business.

Max Gladwell founder Rob Reed joins Zumbox as VP of Marketing and Government Relations. Our second one-on-one interview.

We’ve covered Zumbox several times since the site went live in late December of last year. The so-called Paperless Postal System was featured in our posts on True Innovation, the New and Improved Matrix, and most recently in our third 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media. During much of this time, Max Gladwell founder Rob Reed was consulting for the company. In July, he joined the company as VP of Marketing and Government Relations.

To shed light on this new development, the following is our second one-on-one interview with Rob Reed.

Max Gladwell (MG): How did your joining Zumbox come about?

Rob Reed (RR): They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Which is to say I was quite compelled by playing a key role in building this company. Zumbox represents a new online platform and communications medium. It’s truly a nexus of Web 2.0, sustainability, and entrepreneurship—the core principles of Max Gladwell—so it made sense to commit myself to the mission.

MG: What does this mean for Max Gladwell?

RR: I still have the flexibility to blog for and represent Max Gladwell. For example, I spoke at the Sustainable Stakeholder Engagement conference in New York last week on behalf of Max Gladwell. My presentation just happened to include Zumbox because some of what I’m doing at Zumbox is engaging stakeholders through social media. [See presentation below.] That said, I don’t have as much time as I’d like to blog for Max Gladwell. So I’m starting to recruit more guest bloggers. In particular, I’m looking for thought leaders in Web 2.0, sustainability, and entrepreneurship who have an appreciation for the Max Gladwell ethos.

MG: Which means they should have read Atlas Shrugged?

RR: Exactly.

MG: So what is your specific role with Zumbox?

RR: Despite the title, I’m pretty much the company’s Chief Evangelist. I’m the one promoting how Zumbox will change the world and pushing to make that happen. This includes marketing, public relations, and a bit of evolving the product toward a more consumer focus.

MG: Now that you mention it, there has been some concern about coming up short on the consumer value proposition. How are you addressing that?

RR: First, you have to understand the magnitude of what Zumbox seeks to accomplish. It’s no small task to build a parallel postal system online, and one could easily get off track in trying to do too much all at once. So the bulk of the infrastructure, the platform and actual postal system, is in place. There are more than 150 million Zumboxes—one for every street address in the U.S.—which enables mail to be sent online just as it’s sent on paper. Every residence and business in the U.S. it digitally connected and networked via Zumbox. Now it’s time to build on this and make it truly useful.

Currently, I’d describe the Zumbox user experience as passive-reactive. You register your Zumbox, wait for mail, and react when it arrives. So the first thing we’ve done is to launch PaperlessPlease.org.

This is the proactive element of Zumbox. It’s the campaign. The site enables people to invite their friends and share “the campaign for paperless mail” through social media. It features a unique letter-sending tool that uses the Zumbox API to send Paperless Please requests to some of the largest senders of mail in the U.S. You can then use Twitter to notify these companies that they’ve received this letter in their Zumbox. It’s a grassroots push. We’ll soon add a set of community features, where you’ll be able to login using your secure Zumbox ID, build a profile, and do some networking. There may also be additional tools that use the Zumbox API.

MG: This site seems to serve the paperless evangelists, if you will, but what about the actual value and usefulness of having a Zumbox?

RR: That’s the next step. I can’t say too much right now, but we’re looking at Zumbox as a new platform for publishing, media distribution, connecting or networking locally, and various types of applications that will add a lot of value to the experience and to having a Zumbox. Your Zumbox will become a central part of your online life; getting mail there and going paperless will only be part of that.

MG: So it will be more than just an e-mail inbox for your house?

RR: It’ll be much more than that. But the e-mail comparison is worth addressing. Zumbox is really designed for everything e-mail wasn’t. E-mail is a great messaging tool for personal and business use. We use e-mail to communicate with one another. Anything else amounts to an interruption. So e-mail wasn’t designed for bills. You don’t get bills via e-mail; you get a notification that your bill is ready to view, which I find annoying. When an e-mail hits my inbox, it better be a message from someone I know or who knows me. Otherwise, it’s a distraction. Perhaps some people use an alternate e-mail addresses for this stuff, but, again, e-mail isn’t designed for it. E-mail also wasn’t designed for media, content, and running applications, and it has no geographic relevance.

MG: What’s up with government relations?

RR: I’m also working with municipal and state governments on ways they can use Zumbox to better connect and communicate with their residents. I’ve always been a big fan and supporter of Government 2.0, and Zumbox clearly serves the goals of more open and efficient government. It’s pretty compelling for a mayor to be able to instantly communicate with all of his or her residents electronically and exclusively for free. This is possible, of course, because paperless mail (i.e. that which gets sent via Zumbox) can be sent to an entire city using street addresses as the criteria for delivery. Plus, these municipalities have the potential to save on printing, paper, and postage costs while reducing the  waste and environmental impact caused by paper mail.

MG: How exactly can they save money and reduce waste?

RR: One of the key features in Zumbox is the “Paperless Please” button, which notifies the sender that you wish to go paperless. This assumes the mail was sent in parallel via Zumbox and the USPS. Provided the sender honors the request, you’ll no longer receive the paper version. Over time, a city can realize considerable cost and waste savings by encouraging everyone to go paperless on public notices, tax bills, parking ticket reminders, utility bills, etc. The bigger picture, though, is the amount of paper mail that arrives in these cities each day and then enters the waste stream. Some of this gets recycled, which is OK, but the bulk ends up in landfills. The ideal scenario is that this paper never arrives in the first place because it can all be sent via Zumbox. It’s the first of the three Rs: Reduce.

MG: Any big news we should look out for?

RR: Indeed, we’re about to launch a national rollout that will focus on select U.S. cities and regions. This will take place throughout the rest of the year and into 2010. Several of these cities will be fairly recognizable.

MG: Any reservations about interviewing yourself for this?

RR: None whatsoever. I think more bloggers should embrace the format.

This is a re-post from Nick Aster of Triple Pundit. Please vote for our SXSW panel(s).

Every March in Austin the South by Southwest Interactive Media conference kicks off. The event attracts thought leaders on a wide spectrum of technology, mostly digital. Think of it as junior TED conference with a lot more twittering. Despite implications that readers of 3P might find obvious, sustainability and business have always been secondary threads to the ‘gee whiz’ factor of the latest Drupal theme.

A number of worthy panel propositions at next years’ conference aim to bring the sustainability conversation more prominence where it needs to be. Three of them involve 3P contributors Nick Aster, Ryan Mickle & Gennefer Snowfield as well as 3P friend and ally Rob Reed (aka Max Gladwell).

As a key part of the selection process, SXSW takes community voting into account – that’s where you come in. Without further ado, please take a minute to vote for these panels if you have a few minutes:

1) Cluetrain 2.0: Environment, Society, Economy
2) Can Social Media Change Global Consciousness?
3) Putting a Fork in the 30 Second Spot

If you are planning to be in Austin next March, please let us know via a comment below and we’ll get you on the list for other sustainability-focused events we’re working on. We would love to see you there.

By Tom Savage of Bright Green Talent and Simpletom

Who would have predicted the world of science fiction films would prove so prophetic? Our planet is being over-run by machines and we need people like Arnold Schwarzenegger to save us.

In the world of the film The Matrix, robots, machines and other perennially nasty automatons have taken over the world – another normal day in Hollywood. However, it’s a pleasant surprise to find out that the film’s creators have gone so far as to think about the energy crisis that must ensue from such a power hungry group of captors. In order to sustain themselves, the machines grow humans in cozy little pods and use the energy our bodies generate to power their world.

Ingenious really, aside from the fact that our bodies are way more efficient than any machine yet invented – so the energy output would hardly allow them to make a cup of tea (or warm oil), let alone enable them to achieve their (presumably unconscious) goal of world domination. We mere mortals only need a meal or two a day to power something capable of building the pyramids, reconstituting itself, and designing the combustion engine. Of course, we do all this with a handy little bit of consciousness and, sometimes, ethics along the way.

Although reality might not excite science fiction aficionados as much as the Matrix was able to (after all, the film is aided by Hollywood necessities such as flip-phones, leather trench coats and ballet-rich gun battles), the energy fight between man and machine is perhaps as significant. Energy, and our ability to wield it, has arguably been the most important factor in our societal development. It could also lead to our demise. Without it, we would wave goodbye to the advances of the industrial and technological revolutions. With it, if we continue as-is, we might wave goodbye to mother nature, as we know her. Humankind, in this case with the aid of machines, is at war with our planet.

Yet the truth needn’t be this inconvenient. There is more energy than we could ever need at our disposal. We can capture the sun’s rays, the power of our tides, convert the wind and play (perhaps the wrong choice of word) with nuclear fuels. Our problem is the cost that the energy takes to create – not just the economic cost of deriving our energy from coal or from solar or other forms of production, but the holistic cost to the economy and the planet.

The price of our power needs to represent the cost of creation – namely we must include the environmental cost of production and the externalities they cause. In the case of a coal-fired power station, this would incorporate the environmental impact of extracting raw coal, its delivery and the cost of carbon and pollution produced. Renewable energy sources should not be excluded from this examination – we must also lay the same ground rules and establish the environmental cost of a solar field or a new dam. It is only when we can accurately measure the true holistic cost of the power we consume that we can start to determine its value. It is only when we understand the true value of consuming energy that we can judge what constitutes wise usage. If it suddenly costs $100 more to fly from New York to San Francisco (because the true cost of producing energy at 37,000ft has a greater cost), it would better enable the consumer to make a decision about the value of their journey.

If leaving a skyscraper’s lights on at night costs a company an additional $1m/year, we might find that we would see the stars more often. If the holistic cost can be measured, the argument that we mustn’t tax certain industries because of the immediate economic ramifications would no longer hold water. Airlines beware.

It might seem like a pipe dream to be able to measure the externalities accurately, but we’re not as far away as you might think. By putting a price on, and creating a market for, carbon, we’re taking a step in the right direction—the direction toward accurately reflecting the cost of our energy on a global scale. Given the potential ramifications of significant climate change, such as famine, drought, flood, sea-level rise etc., creating a global marketplace for carbon could prove to be a more important world event than the creation of the United Nations.

As Copenhagen rounds the corner, it is up to us – the citizens of the world – to encourage our leaders, somewhat like Keanu in the Matrix, to swallow the green pill (note to Matrix purists, please excuse my choice of color) and shape up to the reality of what is actually happening, rather than that which we’d like to believe.

Only then, will we have Hollywood-esque happy endings.

This is a re-post from Mark Lovett of Global Patriot. Please vote for our SXSW panel.

Social media continues to affect change at an ever increasing rate. Schools are built, water wells are dug, children are fed, and medicine saves lives – all because someone used social media to get the word out, raise money, and ultimately make a difference.

2010 South by Southwest Panel Proposed

The Interactive side of the South by Southwest Conference, held each March in Austin, continues to grow in both size and influence.  If you’re into social media, the Interactive Track is the place to be.

The 2009 conference was a non-stop educational experience, and while every session provided value, the panels that influenced me most were those associated with nonprofit organizations.

Numerous discussions, both during the sessions and afterward in the bars, nightclubs and lounges, drilled deeper into the topic of how nonprofits were utilizing social media tools (Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) to build their community and raise funds.

Social Media for Social Good was a phrase I heard many times, even serving as the title of a lunch panel co-hosted by Jeff Pulver and Porter Novelli with panelists Beth Kanter, David Armano, Scott Goodstein, Stacey Monk, James Young & Randi Zuckerberg. I was impressed by that fact that social media was being used to help millions of people around the world.

But in the ensuing months I kept wondering if it was simply a matter of treating the symptom, instead of finding the cure. Was social media actually changing the way people think and act?

When the email arrived, soliciting panel ideas for SXSW 2010, I knew it was time to seek an answer to the question that had been haunting me: Can Social Media Change Global Consciousness?

The Moderator

It would be nice to say that I wanted to moderate this panel because I’m the leader, or most talented, or the smartest. But the fact is, everyone on this panel can run social media circles around me, so it only made sense that I would ask the questions, then get out of the way and let the experts answer.

• Mark Lovett – Global Patriot – @GlobalPatriot

The Panel

There is no requirement to choose panel members at the time of proposal, but in this case the following names came to me instantly. I’ve seen their work, know their reputation, and felt they would provide a magical mix of opinions, thoughts and insights.

To be honest, when I contacted this esteemed list I figured I’d be lucky to get half of them to sign on. (I’m still in shock that they all said yes and I’m now quite certain they think I’m someone else.)

• Amy Sample Ward - NetSquared – @AmyRSWard
• Danielle Brigida – National Wildlife Federation – @StarFocus
• Danny Brown – 12for12k Challenge – @DannyBrown
• John Haydon – John Haydon – @JohnHaydon
• Rob Reed – Max Gladwell – @MaxGladwell
• Stacey Monk – Epic Change – @StaceyMonk

Your Vote

This is where you come in. One of the factors in determining which panels are chosen involves how many votes each proposal gets from the public at large. So head over to the Panel Picker to find out more about this proposal, and if you agree that this is a worthy question to bring up at SXSW 2010, give us a Thumbs Up! (Please note, as in real life, you do have to register to vote).

Voting is open till September 4th – we’d love to see you in Austin, and your vote would mean a lot!

We’re pleased to welcome Mr. Tom Savage as a Max Gladwell guest blogger. Tom is a recognized social entrepreneur and expert on social and environmental business. In 2007, Tom co-founded Bright Green Talent, an environmentally-focused executive search and recruitment firm. –MG

Many of us are a somewhat adolescent when it comes to using social media. You’ll find the political set making blunders and  fugitives exposing themselves. I’ve met preeminent scientists and Harvard, professors who are terrified by Twitter, and self-proclaimed networkers who only have 5 contacts on LinkedIn.

My Mum, who fortunately falls into none of these categories, would certainly be happier if social media had never seen the light of day. In fact, perhaps we should stretch that discontent to computers as a whole – she suffers a rare condition of inverse learning that ensures that the more she uses them the worse she gets (similar to my own algebraic affliction). At her current pace, it won’t be long before I’ll be receiving telexes… stop.

Yet the main source of her anguish is that her only son, yours truly, wouldn’t be living thousands of miles away if it hadn’t been for a random interaction on LinkedIn. That interaction resulted in me starting Bright Green Talent and my resulting global peripateticism. Fortunately the odd Skype video call helps alleviate that pressure. Although these are often interrupted by the perils of holding laptops to one’s ears, or teacups placed on keyboards. Or the rest of the family barging in to say hello (the following photo was taken during a recent call to my family – that’s mum, second left)!

Nonetheless, I’ve a feeling that her frustration holds weight. For all the advances in online participation, I’m skeptical about how much meaning we currently create online.  Perhaps it’s time for me to retire too… If only.

Is it really possible to change the world on these new, crowded online platforms, where we need little bravery or skill to climb atop our soapboxes? Or are the creators of these platforms, the wickedly wealthy and status-anxiety-initiating youngsters like Mark Zuckerberg, the ones reaping the benefit? They claim to be connecting us, but are they really disconnecting us so that ‘connections’ can be made in an environment where they can monetize the interaction?

I’ll admit that my cursor has bravely hovered over the ‘cancel profile’ button on Facebook a few times. I’m still undecided as to whether the advantages, of Facebook particularly, outweigh the disadvantages – the (ridiculous) concern that people are having better lives than you, the lack of privacy, and the wasted time spent dawdling. I’ll admit that my bravery leaves a little to be desired.

From Bright Green Talent’s perspective – that of helping people find green jobs – we hear frustration from both employers and jobseekers. Certainly job searching is potentially easier. At the touch of a button on the larger jobsites, such as on Monster, Dice or Simplyhired, I can now find 3,778 jobs that I’m perfect for and send over my CV in a matter of seconds. But suddenly, ease-of-use has created a flood of applications that devalue each interaction; making job searching easier, but finding a job more difficult – the maze that was the traditional job search has tangled, Giordian-style.

Social media and the web enable breathless laziness. For all you jobseekers who curse the labyrinth that is the online recruitment process of a bigger firm – you’ve probably contributed to that maze if you’ve sent your resume over for a job you know you’re not going to get. At a guesstimate, about 60% of resumes we see at Bright Green Talent are plainly not a good fit for the role advertised. Yes 60%! When you add it up that’s a whole lot of time we could be helping our mothers clean their keyboards.

But, before you start writing your resumes by hand or abandon ship completely, social media IF used wisely, carefully and perhaps moderately is hugely powerful. Obama’s presidential campaign was perhaps the best example of someone securing a job through social media. Organizations like Kiva, Avaaz, Virgance and Change.org, to name but a few, are helping change the way we engage. I’m not a social media pessimist… just a grouch. The facilities are available to the wise and thoughtful; but I want people to start being more mindful when they interact online.

At Bright Green Talent, we’re continually surprised about how often people get the basics so very wrong. Here is a small collection of our recommendations for those using social media for professional purposes. Simple, perhaps obvious, but regularly overlooked:

• Demonstrate judgment when requesting a link to someone or accepting someone’s request. Ask yourself – would I feel comfortable contacting this individual on behalf of another friend or introducing them to my mother?
• Fix your privacy settings to keep the wrong people from being able to find you – mum’s especially – unless you’re as confident of their ineptness as I am.
• Rely on high-quality interactions. Don’t let the impersonal nature of social interaction online affect your integrity – gracious people in person can become demons online. Try to interact with people as you would face-to-face.
• Recruiters and employers are increasingly using social media to find people. Tweeting things like “omg SO hungover for interview this morning; hope they didn’t notice” is funniest for the interviewers, not your friends.
• Social networking should accentuate getting to know, or doing business with someone – don’t overdo it, leave people wanting more rather than less!
• “Meeting” people online DOES NOT EQUAL knowing them, see this nice little video from meetup for inspiration (ironically an online site promoting offline meetings).

If you’ve read this far, you probably want to use social media to benefit the environment, and there’s no point saving it if you don’t spend time in it. Use your online presence wisely. Ask yourself whether you’re creating meaning, deepening friendships and building value. As for me; as my thirtieth birthday rounds the corner and I’m forced to face the fact that I’m too old to still be under my mother’s influence and too young to retire, I will be indulging in more chatting and less tapping, and so should you.

This post is a collaboration between Max Gladwell and Mashable’s Summer of Social Good charitable fundraiser. It is the second in our series of #10Ways posts being published simultaneously across as many as 300 blogs.

Social media is about connecting people and providing the tools necessary to have a conversation. That global conversation is an extremely powerful platform for spreading information and awareness about social causes and issues. That’s one of the reasons charities can benefit so greatly from being active on social media channels. But you can also do a lot to help your favorite charity or causes you are passionate about through social media.

Below is a list of 10 ways you can use social media to show your support for issues that are important to you. If you can think of any other ways to help charities via social web tools, please add them in the comments. If you’d like to retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

1. Write a Blog Post

Blogging is one of the easiest ways you can help a charity or cause you feel passionate about. Almost everyone has an outlet for blogging these days — whether that means a site running WordPress, an account at LiveJournal, or a blog on MySpace or Facebook. By writing about issues you’re passionate about, you’re helping to spread awareness among your social circle. Because your friends or readers already trust you, what you say is influential.

Recently, a group of green bloggers banded together to raise individual $1 donations from their readers. The beneficiaries included Sustainable Harvest, Kiva, Healthy Child, Healthy World, Environmental Working Group, and Water for People. The blog-driven campaign included voting to determine how the funds would be distributed between the charities. You can read about the results here.

You should also consider taking part in Blog Action Day, a once a year event in which thousands of blogs pledge to write at least one post about a specific social cause (last year it was fighting poverty). Blog Action Day will be on October 15 this year.

2. Share Stories with Friends

Another way to spread awareness among your social graph is to share links to blog posts and news articles via sites like Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg, and even through email. Your network of friends is likely interested in what you have to say, so you have influence wherever you’ve gathered a social network.

You’ll be doing charities you support a great service when you share links to their campaigns, or to articles about causes you care about.

3. Follow Charities on Social Networks

In addition to sharing links to articles about issues you come across, you should also follow charities you support on the social networks where they are active. By increasing the size of their social graph, you’re increasing the size of their reach. When your charities tweet or post information about a campaign or a cause, statistics or a link to a good article, consider retweeting that post on Twitter, liking it on Facebook, or blogging about it.

Following charities on social media sites is a great way to keep in the loop and get updates, and it’s a great way to help the charity increase its reach by spreading information to your friends and followers.

You can follow the Summer of Social Good Charities:

Oxfam America (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube)
The Humane Society (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr)
LIVESTRONG (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr)
WWF (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr)

4. Support Causes on Awareness Hubs

Another way you can show your support for the charities you care about is to rally around them on awareness hubs like Change.org, Care2, or the Facebook Causes application. These are social networks or applications specifically built with non-profits in mind. They offer special tools and opportunities for charities to spread awareness of issues, take action, and raise money.

It’s important to follow and support organizations on these sites because they’re another point of access for you to gather information about a charity or cause, and because by supporting your charity you’ll be increasing their overall reach. The more people they have following them and receiving their updates, the greater the chance that information they put out will spread virally.

5. Find Volunteer Opportunities

Using social media online can help connect you with volunteer opportunities offline, and according to web analytics firm Compete, traffic to volunteering sites is actually up sharply in 2009. Two of the biggest sites for locating volunteer opportunities are VolunteerMatch, which has almost 60,000 opportunities listed, and Idealist.org, which also lists paying jobs in the non-profit sector, in addition to maintaining databases of both volunteer jobs and willing volunteers.

For those who are interested in helping out when volunteers are urgently needed in crisis situations, check out HelpInDisaster.org, a site which helps register and educate those who want to help during disasters so that local resources are not tied up directing the calls of eager volunteers. Teenagers, meanwhile, should check out DoSomething.org, a site targeted at young adults seeking volunteer opportunities in their communities.

6. Embed a Widget on Your Site

Many charities offer embeddable widgets or badges that you can use on your social networking profiles or blogs to show your support. These badges generally serve one of two purposes (or both). They raise awareness of an issue and offer up a link or links to additional information. And very often they are used to raise money.

Mashable’s Summer of Social Good campaign, for example, has a widget that does both. The embeddable widget, which was custom built using Sprout (the creators of ChipIn), can both collect funds and offer information about the four charities the campaign supports.

7. Organize a Tweetup

You can use online social media tools to organize offline events, which are a great way to gather together like-minded people to raise awareness, raise money, or just discuss an issue that’s important to you. Getting people together offline to learn about an important issue can really kick start the conversation and make supporting the cause seem more real.

Be sure to check out Mashable’s guide to organizing a tweetup to make sure yours goes off without a hitch, or check to see if there are any tweetups in your area to attend that are already organized.

8. Express Yourself Using Video

As mentioned, blog posts are great, but a picture really says a thousand words. The web has become a lot more visual in recent years and there are now a large number of social tools to help you express yourself using video. When you record a video plea or call to action about your issue or charity, you can make your message sound more authentic and real. You can use sites like 12seconds.tv, Vimeo, and YouTube to easily record and spread your video message.

Last week, the Summer of Social Good campaign encouraged people to use video to show support for charity. The #12forGood campaign challenged people to submit a 12 second video of themselves doing something for the Summer of Social Good. That could be anything, from singing a song to reciting a poem to just dancing around like a maniac — the idea was to use the power of video to spread awareness about the campaign and the charities it supports.

If you’re more into watching videos than recording them, Givzy.com enables you to raise funds for charities like Unicef and St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital by sharing viral videos by e-mail.

9. Sign or Start a Petition

There aren’t many more powerful ways to support a cause than to sign your name to a petition. Petitions spread awareness and, when successfully carried out, can demonstrate massive support for an issue. By making petitions viral, the social web has arguably made them even more powerful tools for social change. There are a large number of petition creation and hosting web sites out there. One of the biggest is The Petition Site, which is operated by the social awareness network Care2, or PetitionOnline.com, which has collected more than 79 million signatures over the years.

Petitions are extremely powerful, because they can strike a chord, spread virally, and serve as a visual demonstration of the support that an issue has gathered. Social media fans will want to check out a fairly new option for creating and spreading petitions: Twitition, an application that allows people to create, spread, and sign petitions via Twitter.

10. Organize an Online Event

Social media is a great way to organize offline, but you can also use online tools to organize effective online events. That can mean free form fund raising drives, like the Twitter-and-blog-powered campaign to raise money for a crisis center in Illinois last month that took in over $130,000 in just two weeks. Or it could mean an organized “tweet-a-thon” like the ones run by the 12for12k group, which aims to raise $12,000 each month for a different charity.

In March, 12for12k ran a 12-hour tweet-a-thon, in which any donation of at least $12 over a 12 hour period gained the person donating an entry into a drawing for prizes like an iPod Touch or a Nintendo Wii Fit. Last month, 12for12k took a different approach to an online event by holding a more ambitious 24-hour live video-a-thon, which included video interviews, music and sketch comedy performances, call-ins, and drawings for a large number of prizes given out to anyone who donated $12 or more.

Bonus: Think Outside the Box

Social media provides almost limitless opportunity for being creative. You can think outside the box to come up with all sorts of innovative ways to raise money or awareness for a charity or cause. When Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with cancer, for example, he created Blame Drew’s Cancer, a campaign that encourages people to blow off steam by blaming his cancer for bad things in their lives using the Twitter hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer. Over 16,000 things have been blamed on Drew’s cancer, and he intends to find sponsors to turn those tweets into donations to LIVESTRONG once he beats the disease.

Or check out Nathan Winters, who is biking across the United States and documenting the entire trip using social media tools, in order to raise money and awareness for The Nature Conservancy.

The number of innovative things you can do using social media to support a charity or spread information about an issue is nearly endless. Can you think of any others? Please share them in the comments.

Special thanks to VPS.net

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About the “10 Ways” Series

The “10 Ways” Series was originated by Max Gladwell. This is the second simultaneous blog post in the series. The first ran on more than 80 blogs, including Mashable. Among other things, it is a social media experiment and the exploration of a new content distribution model. You can follow Max Gladwell on Twitter.

This content was originally written by Mashable’s Josh Catone.

A clever new brand challenges consumerism with a line of ethically sourced products and an ironic message: use less.

How many consumers does it take to wreck a planet? More importantly, how many people will it take to fix it?

It might seem like semantics, but there’s a fundamental difference between people and consumers. As marketers, we tend to think of them as one and the same. We refer to consumer packaged goods, consumer value propositions, and business-to-consumer models. It’s the catch-all term for all those who buy, use, and dispose of stuff. Of course, there’s no escaping the consumer designation. At the end of the day, each of us becomes one of them. Unless.

Unless we make the conscious decision to stop being consumers. This isn’t to suggest that we stop buying and using things but that we simply stop using the term and falling victim to the designation. This semantic shift could lead to a psychological shift, where we stop using this short-sighted and demeaning term to refer to ourselves and others in the collective. Are we consumers or people? If we decide on the latter, perhaps we’ll stop acting like a blind mob with zero accountability and start behaving like conscious individuals. Perhaps.

All of this is a long way of introducing a new consumer people brand known as USELESS.

When we first heard of USELESS, it immediately struck us as brilliant. USELESS is a brand that is well ahead of its time. It’s aspirational. It challenges and speaks up to you. You either get it or you don’t. And while USELESS defies comparison, we’re tempted to call it FCUK with a purpose. It’s that good. And so is its mission and underlying story.

We met with USELESS founder Mark Simmons on a few occasions to discuss the brand and his goals for it. He’s made several appearances at BlobLive LA, where he pitched it to a live audience of fellow entrepreneurs. That’s how we got the below interview. Today, USELESS is a line of branded products, but we see it as much more than that. The brand is a universal message. It’s a reminder that we should not think of ourselves or others as merely consumers. Because we’re people, and we can always strive to use less.

Max Gladwell (MG): What’s the story behind the USELESS brand?

Mark Simmons: Two years ago I was working with Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection trying to work out what to say about climate change that would get people from all walks of life involved to help solve the crisis. I saw that, while many people thought of climate change as a left wing conspiracy, they all felt, regardless of their political views, that we Americans use too much stuff. The thought of “use less” lodged in my mind and a year later when I was trying to develop a brand around reducing use of disposable water bottles and bags it struck me that “useless” would be a perfect name because on the face of it, while it is quite negative, if you scratch just below the surface you see it’s not negative at all, it’s a positive way to message about the desire to use less. And if on the one hand we in the developed world are using too much stuff and that’s contributing to climate change, on the other hand there are people in the developing world who are going without the very basics of life such as clean water and sanitation. In fact, 2.6 billion lack proper sanitation and resulting diseases is the biggest killer of children under five. So there is a natural counter-point to use less, which is to give more. The pieces then all fit into place for me. The brand would be called USELESS and its mission would be to help people USE LESS and GIVE MORE in a cool, thought-provoking way.

MG: What types of products are you selling? Why are they so great?

Simmons: So far we have a small line of products that help people use less and give more, including t-shirts, hoodies, hats, messenger bags, totes, notebooks, and reusable water bottles. They are so great because we’ve sourced amazing products that are highly functional, or utilitarian, are made to last, are made of organic, recycled or recyclable materials, and are all made in the USA. That last ingredient, being made in the USA, has made the whole journey 10 times as difficult. Finding products made from the right materials made in the USA is almost impossible, as manufacturing for this stuff all seems to be overseas. But we wanted all our products to be locally sourced, both to keep our footprint small and so we could support local jobs, and felt it was worth the effort to find the right manufacturing partners here in this country. The messenger and tote bags, for instance, are handmade for us from recycled billboards in a small workshop in Colorado. These products are just the beginning, though. We’re planning on adding new ones over the next few months that meet our strict criteria, including some digital applications for the iPhone and Facebook.

MG: How do you reconcile the contradiction of selling stuff and telling people to use less stuff?

Simmons: We are only selling things that are useful and that people need. But, having said that, we are not anti-consumerism, we just believe we can get people to think about what they consume and the power they have to make a positive difference in the world, whether it’s by reducing their use of natural resources, spreading the USELESS message or helping people who need it most. We also have a “non product” called USELESS Earth that costs $25.00, for which people get absolutely nothing – other than the knowledge that all the proceeds go to fund water and sanitation projects in the developing world. In addition we are starting to produce USELESS stencils cut from recycled steel so people can put our message on their old clothes without having to buy new ones. And then there’s the digital products I mentioned that will help raise revenue and awareness but that will use negligible natural resources.

MG: Is this a for-profit company? What is the revenue model?

Simmons: We are for-profit but are what I guess is called a “triple-bottom line” business in that, in addition to making profit, we aim to do environmental good and social good in equal measure. It used to be the time when there were corporations who were all about maximizing shareholder value and non-profits that were trying to make the world the better place but had no commercial reality. Now I firmly believe you cannot be a corporation (we’re an LLC, in fact) without doing good or a non-profit without understanding how business works. It’s the collaborations between the two that will change the world and I think our business model is one of a new breed that do so. We sell products, whether virtual or real, for a profit but give at least 10% to water and sanitation projects in the developing world and promote a message about responsible consumerism. The money we make will allow us to sustain ourselves and grow without relying on the kindness of strangers, but rather the margin on our products.

By the way, all our giving to water and sanitation is tied to very specific projects down to particular villages in Africa, Asia, or Latin America. People can see exactly where the money goes and what effect it will have. The one we’re currently funding is for a water tank and toilets in the village of Kundorwahun in Eastern Sierra Leone.

MG: Someone at BlobLive recommended USELESS-brand toilet paper. Would you consider everyday CPG products like that? Maybe white labeling Seventh Generation?

Simmons: I think doing post-consumer paper products and other consumer products that meet our standards – of helping people use less, are made in the USA and are well made, is a great idea – if we can find a business model to make it work. Currently, we’re selling products through our website, but plan to start wholesaling in certain stores such as college bookstores where there might be a demand for what we sell. We couldn’t really sell toilet paper online as the economics just don’t make sense, but could help someone like Seventh Generation develop a sub-brand by licensing out the USELESS brand to them, again only if the products meet strict criteria. In fact, the plan has always been to do a bit of a product (RED) by branding products made by other consumer brands.

MG: How do you plan to market USELESS? Who is the target audience?

Simmons: We’re starting to build our presence online through the usual suspects like Facebook, and we are still experimenting with how to do it best. We have a MySpace page but I don’t love MySpace and don’t think we’ll be doing much with it until we have our music strategy worked out. We have a blog of course that feeds directly to Twitter, and I’m trying to post meaningful content that gets across the USELESS philosophy, without being too heavy-handed. And then we’re starting to connect with other like-minded intelligent (did I mention, good-looking?) bloggers like you. Our targets are primarily college students and young adults who appreciate the irreverence of the brand. The brand is not for everyone by any means – older more conservative people seem to hate the name with a passion – but I actually like that, it’s designed to get a reaction.

MG: Where do you see USELESS in five years? What are your long-term goals and objectives for the brand?

Simmons: I think we can be a large niche player in five years time. I’m impressed with what American Apparel has done for instance, and how they manage to combine good products with a social conscience all delivered in a sexy way. I think we can do that but with a broader range of products and less of the sleaze! We’d also like to open USELESS stores to let people experience the brand in the way that Apple lets people live and breathe their products through their stores, and I already mentioned how I think we can partner with other consumer product brands. It’s important to stay true to our principles along the way, something I know is very difficult to do as you grow, but without maintaining that integrity there’s sort of no point.

The 11th way to change the world through social media: a coordinated and simultaneous multi-blog post.

On May 12th, 2008, we published Ten Ways to Change the World Through Social Media as a guest post for Sustainablog. It was our first-ever guest post and came just six weeks after the launch of Max Gladwell.

We had a sense that this would be a significant step. We saw the potential for this content to establish the brand and clearly communicate the Max Gladwell message. This was our mission articulated in a headline.

The post became popular on Digg and generated plenty of discussion. We followed up five months later with 10 More Ways, which also found its way to Digg. The list became part of the Max Gladwell identity.

On May 12th, 2009, we published the third 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media, but we took a much different approach. As we considered the first anniversary of the list, it occurred to us that there might be a better way to share and distribute the content. There might be a better way to get it to more people who would find it valuable. The brainstorm lead to the idea for a simultaneous guest post across multiple blogs. Had this ever been done before? We weren’t sure. So we set a goal of publishing the third list concurrently on 100 blogs in a coordinated fashion. This is how it went.

Shared Content

As soon as the idea crystalized, we started reaching out to our blogging colleagues to garner feedback and get support. The response was almost universally enthusiastic. Our success rate was better than 95%, and we attribute this not just to the appeal of the message but to a predisposition among bloggers to embrace new ideas in this new medium. We tend to be an open-minded bunch.

The story was about changing the world through social media. And yet this exercise amounted to an experiment in changing the world through social media. In this sense, the social media was both a topic and a tactic, which is a founding principle of Max Gladwell.

The key piece of the puzzle was coordinating the simultaneous nature of the post. This would be a guest post authored by Max Gladwell, much like the original on Sustainablog, and though it would be published on multiple blogs, this would not be a re-post. The idea was for it to be viewed as original content by each blog’s immediate audience. Those who faithfully subscribe to that blog’s RSS, e-mail, or Twitter feed and who happen to be visiting at that moment would see it there for the first time. As such, the post might spark 100 simultaneous conversations about ways to change the world through social media.

We also decided to make the content open source. In other words, we proposed that bloggers could customize it and make it their own. We offered that numbers nine and 10 on the list could be wild-card spots, where they could substitute one or two “ways” of their own. Given our goal of 100 blogs, this had the potential to produce a total of 208 ways to change the world through social media. True to the spirit of open source, we also didn’t require any approval process for making changes or additions for any reason. The only restriction was the publication date and time: Tuesday, May 12th at 11:00 am PT / 2:00 pm ET.

Our friends at Triple Pundit opted to tailor the actual headline and in so doing pay us a most generous complement:

Cluetrain 2.0: Rob Reed, the venerable mind behind MaxGladwell.com had an idea today – get 100+ websites to simultaneously publish a post on ten ways in which social media can “change” the world. Longtime readers of this site know my affection for The Cluetrain Manifesto, written 10 years ago which states:

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.

Rob’s site is devoted to this principal and to making the best, most intelligent use of social media for positive change – not just in business, but everywhere else.

We’re clearly fans of Cluetrain, as well, so this came a pleasant surprise. Incidentally, our favorite quote is that “a press release has all the dramatic tension of a phone number.”

Several days before the publication date, we supplied bloggers with the HTML content in a text document complete with links and images. For most it was a simple cut, paste, and publish. As Sommer Poquette of Green and Clean Mom remarked, we “made it way too easy to not be on board!” Several blogs set up author accounts, which we’ll use moving forward, while most just noted that this was the first guest post from Max Gladwell.

Below you’ll find links to all those who participated. The total was roughly 80, though not all published simultaneously. Note that the content is still available to be re-posted so we can reach the goal of 100. We’ll update this post with new links as necessary. And if we missed you this first time, please accept our apologies and let us know so we can add your blog to the list.

Twitter Strategy

The 10 Ways post included a specific Twitter strategy. We realized the likelihood of retweets was high given that it would be so widely published. However, we went a step further and attached a unique hashtag, which was noted in the introduction. We asked people to use #10Ways if they wished to take the conversation to Twitter. So not only could we monitor the headline itself, but we had a unique mechanism for (a) aggregating and following the conversation, (b) promoting it as a Twitter trending topic, and (c) getting a sense for the level of engagement. The strategy appears to have been successful.

All told, we estimate there were more than 4,000 Tweets about the post and it could easily be 5,000. Unfortunately, Twitter Search doesn’t go back farther than 1,500, so we have to estimate based on the Tweet rate. We can clearly see that there were more than 900 Tweets using the specific #10Ways hashtag. This speaks to the level of engagement with the content because one had to be aware of it in order to use it.

At its peak, the post claimed two concurrent spots in Twitter’s top-10 trending topics. The #10Ways tag was fourth, while “World Through Social” occupied the fifth spot. It appears Twitter gives a preference to hashtags. Otherwise, these two topics fluctuated in the top 10 for the bulk of the day.

When a single blog post becomes a trending topic on Twitter (this could be a first), it’s much like hitting the front page of Digg with one key distinction: the traffic goes to more than one place. It’s distributed. We suspect that this can provide more aggregate traffic than Digg, especially considering Twitter’s growth, and that the quality of the traffic, measured by page views and time spent per visitor, would also be greater. But this is pure speculation at this point.

Since Twitter’s trending topics is now integrated to the main user interface, it exposes these topics (together with the underlying content in this case) to all of Twitter. There’s a natural curiosity about why #1oWays or “World Through Social” is trending. And when these topics trend, it becomes self-reinforcing if the story is compelling. It exposes the content to a huge new audience, which might also decide to retweet it.

This particular strategy might only be possible under a scenario where the content is distributed across multiple blogs. It requires a collective effort of Tweeting and retweeting for a single headline to trend. When it does, though, it drives awareness across the Twittersphere, which drives traffic to any and all of the blogs involved. It’s quite possible that many of the blogs that posted 10 Ways received higher-than-average page views for that post. This would be counter intuitive because we typically rely on a combination of search and exclusivity to drive traffic. Twitter alone may have disrupted this formula.

And more than a week later, the #10Ways and “World Through Social” Tweets and retweets are still coming.

Distribution Model

We plan to survey all those who participated, both as a blogger and a subject of the post, pursuant to publishing a detailed case study on this social media first. We’re analyzing the data that is currently available and hope to report on everything in July, which will coincide with the next 10 Ways list. But first we’re interested to hear various perspectives and points of view about this experiment.

Is it possible this represents a new content distribution model? If content is well written or produced and if publishers agree to an embargo (date and time), is this method of distribution viable? Does Twitter make it more viable? If so, could it sustain itself with relevant, embedded sponsorships or advertising?

This assumes, of course, that content authors and producers maintain high levels of integrity and transparency. It also assumes that publishers will be willing to post duplicate content, albeit in a coordinated and simultaneous fashion, on a frequent basis. The quality of the content may have to overcome any perceived loss of value in not being unique. Or the Twitter strategy would have to pick up the slack. Then again, publishing duplicate content has historically been the norm.

This model is not all that different from the Associated Press…except for the part about providing the content free of charge. In our distributed scenario, the author of the content (and/or their partners) can monetize it through embedded ads and receive fair compensation for their work in proportion to its quality and performance. Publishers can monetize the page where that content resides, provided the advertising messages aren’t competing. This is obviously something they’d know beforehand and could decide accordingly.

It’s possible that this model could provide a solution to the imminent downfall of journalism and the Fourth Estate. Because it’s not newspapers we’re concerned about. It’s the content they publish and the vital role the press plays in our democracy. Just as we no longer need CDs and music labels, we don’t need newspapers and publishing conglomerates. We can do without the dead trees. But we do need journalists, and journalists have to make a living.

We’d love to hear your thoughts, either in the comments or privately. And if you’re a blogger or publisher of any size who would like to be included on the distribution list for the next 10 Ways post in July, feel free to contact us.

Lastly, in the spirit of #10Ways, feel free to re-post this content (whole or in part) on any relevant blog, pursuant to starting your own conversation about this social media experiment and a new content distribution model.

The 10 Ways Blogs

These are in no particular order (except maybe the first few):

Max Gladwell

Huffington Post

Huffington Post Green

Mashable

TreeHugger

Sustainablog

Greenopia

Grist.org

Planet Green

Pop!Tech

Twilight Earth

The Daily Green

Mother Nature Network

Social Actions

The Good Human

Current Green

GreenUpgrader

Green and Clean Mom

Ecopreneurist

Gaiam

Causecast

Ecosalon

GreenSmith Consulting

Triple Pundit

Chris Baskind

Greendig

Solve Climate

Ecoble

SocialVibe

The Green Girls

Max School Bus

On Site Group

People For Earth

Eco Libris

Social Media Club

Natural Papa

Ideablob

Green Grown and Sexy

Green Living Ideas

Live Earth

Liberty Hill

National Wildlife Federation

NowSourcing

Your Daily Thread

Social Media Mom

Live The Green

Puma Blog

Yahoo! Green

My Green Side

Chrity News

Idealist.org

Opportunity Green

Viva Green!

Modern Eco Homes

Eco Matters Daily

Fashion Loves People

Ecopolitology

Global Patriot

Groovy Green

Eco-Chick

Heavy Bag Media

Muse Green

CauseWired

Business Ethos

NurtureNature!

Eco Child’s Play

Super Cute

Creative Citizen

Holistic Show

Organic Life

Social Media Today

Sustainable Cities Collective

Eco Worldly

SpurSpectives

WebGuild

Elite TV

fav.or.it

Off The Grid

Stimulist

Hedgehogs

eMarketing and New Media

the mcmilker group

Op Ed News

Bloglost 42 Y 195

Argam DerHartunian

Street Knowledge TV

NewsCloud

Update:

Action for a Sustainable America

The confluence of events that lead to the serendipitous success of the #EcoMonday Twitter meme.

The genesis moment for #EcoMonday was April 24th, 2009, at precisely 1:34 pm Pacific Time. We know this because Twitter keeps up-to-the-minute records of everything we Tweet and Retweet. It was a Friday, and a unique series of events would lead to this Tweet.

On the previous Wednesday, Brian Wallace of NowSourcing Skyped us about trying the #HealthyHumpday follow meme for health-related Tweeps (Tweeps  = people who Twitter). Two days later he wrote Beyond #FollowFriday: 24 Daily Twitter Memes, a guest post on Mashable.

“So, how can we create a lasting meme? Simple. Make it happen weekly. Much of this started with the genius of @micah’s #followfriday. But hey, why stop with #followfriday? Here are 24 daily Twitter memes to help you meet new Twitterers and discuss common interests.”

We read the post and found it curious that despite a large green contingent on Twitter there wasn’t a follow meme for the sustainable set.

Concurrently Shea Gunther was dealing with a slow news day at Mother Nature Network (MNN) and decided to post 10 Green Twitterers You Should Follow. This was published at 11:24 am Pacific Time and happened to include Max Gladwell. Two hours and ten minutes later, we sent the original #EcoMonday Tweet.

It was the combination of Brian’s and Shea’s related but disconnected posts that lead us to the following consideration:

There was already #FollowFriday and, evidently, #HealthyHumpday (Wednesday) among others. The problem with #FollowFriday is that it’s far too general. It’s a lot of noise with very little signal, especially when it comes to finding specific types of Tweeps. Even Twitter itself is too broad, which is why we see viable competitors emerging with a more vertical focus. In the meantime, we need various mechanisms to cut through the noise and tune into the feeds that are most important and relevant to us. Round-up articles like Shea’s are quite helpful, but they come and go like any other blog post.

The green Twitter community needed a permanent mechanism. Since there’s not much to look forward to on any given Monday, it made sense that it would be the one day each week that we build and strengthen the green Twitter network by recommending and following one another using the #EcoMonday hashtag. And while the need was clearly there, it almost didn’t happen.

That initial #EcoMonday Tweet on Friday was all but lost in the Twittersphere. It wasn’t Retweeted or acknowledged in any way. It fell on deaf #FollowFriday ears. And it might have been lost forever if Shea didn’t pen a follow-up post for Monday…the Monday that would become the first #EcoMonday.

In the wee hours of the morning on April 27th, Shea followed up his top-10 list with The Great Green Twitter Follow Parade, in which he listed additional green Tweeps to follow and called for everyone to post their Twitter handle in the comments in order to follow one another. “It’s time to connect all the green Tweople!” he wrote.

The post was already generating rapid-fire comments when we sent this Tweet at 10:28 am Pacific Time, roughly six-and-a-half hours after Shea’s post went live: “We suggested starting #ecomonday last week as the #followfriday for green. @sheagunther gives it a boost: http://bit.ly/17EqZ5.”

#EcoMonday was born.

Shea was the first to Retweet it, and several more influential green Tweeps followed. We then added #EcoMonday to the comments of the Follow Parade. All told, that post generated 174 comments, most of which are green Tweeps. A chord had clearly been struck, as #EcoMonday addressed an unmet need in the Twittersphere: to unite and network the green community. In its second and third weeks, #EcoMonday became a top trending topic on Twitter, and more than 1,600 have been referred to date. We know this because that’s how many @EcoMonday is following.

We decided to take this meme a step further by starting the @EcoMonday Twitter account with a specific approach: to follow only those who are referred through the #EcoMonday follow meme. This means that @EcoMonday isn’t playing the quid-pro-quo game of I-follow-you-and-you-follow-me-back. Each Tweep that @EcoMonday follows was referred by a third party. And while it isn’t perfect, @EcoMonday does provide an effective filter mechanism for the green Twittersphere.

In addition to following the #EcoMonday meme, you can simply follow those who @EcoMonday follows in the knowledge that each is a referral. We manage the account and do our best not to follow spam referrals. We’d also like to make the @EcoMonday feed public if that’s possible so others can follow this focused stream of Tweets while enabling the community to @reply unfollow requests for irrelevant and/or spam accounts that manage to get through.

Finally, we set up the Max Gladwell EcoMonday page, where you can monitor the #EcoMonday meme in real time.

A special thanks to @mcmilker for her Ecopreneurist post, which gave #EcoMonday a nice boost.

Happy #EcoMonday to all!