APRIL 6, 2009

Social Media Summary 4/6/09

Welcome to the latest Social Media Summary, covering the last couple of weeks. Below are some highlights from interesting news in social media that illustrate changes and trends in the industry. You can read previous summaries here.

Climate Culture, Smart Power, and the U.S. Department of Energy have teamed up to issue a new eco-focused challenge that pits colleges and universities against each other in a carbon footprint reduction competition. The challenge is called America’s Greenest Campus, and will award the winning schools up to $20,000 to put towards further greening their campuses. The contest makes a simple but powerful statement, and has a lot of potential to spread energy-saving habits. Additionally, this is one of the most aggressive green-themed launches through social media I’ve seen - everything is structured around a social media element. The sign-up on the site features Facebook Connect, the contest taps into existing networks by allowing anyone with a .edu email to join, and the promotional video features social media celebrity Obama Girl. Green blogs and social networks have flourished in the last couple years alongside the rise in general public awareness of global warming, and America’s Greenest Campus could be a good indication of how the green movement online will continue to gain momentum by using social networks.

Digg has released a new toolbar called the Diggbar for use with internet browsers. This toolbar will let users share, view comments, vote, and more while browsing different sites online. As with most other browser add-ons, the toolbar is definitely meant to integrate Digg more seamlessly into a user’s browsing routine. Mashable writer Muhammad Saleem reviews the Diggbar and goes even further, saying that the Diggbar could actually be the site’s best business decision in a long time. Digg is link sharing and conversation tool with a large community, which, as Saleem points out, is an area that Twitter (and even Facebook) has been quickly gaining prominence. With a toolbar, Digg can add a level of convenience to link sharing that gives it an advantage over Twitter - it cuts out the need for url shortening services by shortening links automatically and then makes it easy to send content to an already-established community without having to navigate away. It’s clear that link sharing is an extremely popular activity on social networks and it’s good to see a site like Digg, which is meant to specialize in link sharing, assert itself as a leading service with new tools.

A recent Wired article examined how the U.S. military has struggled with creating rules for how troops are allowed to engage in social networks. After banning access to most social networking sites, the military recently began approving the use of alternate, Pentagon-approved sites such as TroopTube. However, access to TroopTube has been restricted on several bases lately, revealing just how confused the leadership must be on the issue of social networks. According to the article, TroopTube hadn’t even been very popular due to content scrubbing; by exercising too much control over video sharing, the site lost flavor and personality. Governmental organizations naturally have more issues to deal with on the subject of social media because of information sensitivity, but leadership will have to figure out a way to monitor security in a way that still encourages active participation and organic community growth.