pure and applied

Change2 - a propietary site or a community site?

A few weeks ago as part of some research into sustainability websites I encountered a new Australian sustainability community site called Change2.

I was initially excited and - to a certain extent - I still am that there is a social network for people interested in sustainability.

In Change2's own words: "The Change2 network is a free central resource on sustainability that brings together individuals, business, government and NGOs."

However Change2 is also a business that sells consultancy services to the sustainability community. See their identically branded business site. Indeed the call-to-action to become involved with their business is to join the social site. Until the last few days their business URL also pointed at the social site.

I was confused and so raised this with one of the founders Leon Young (see the thread). Whilst I acknowledge Leon’s response, the critical question remains for me: how successfully can Change2 function as a social site for its community stakeholders while it is so closely aligned to a single vendor in the industry?

The answer, I argue, is "not very successfully".

Commercial goals and social goals don't mix happily and there are two stakeholder groups in a gnarly spot:

• Clients (current and potential) of Change2
• Competitors of Change2 (and its partners)

Clients

Sustainability managers, particularly at large listed corporates, face the following questions:

• What are the conflict of interest issues for a member of the Change2 social site in considering a competitive tender from Change2 the business?
• Am I endorsing Change2 if I join? Am I breaching my organisation’s corporate governance policies if I join?
• I want to be involved in a community, but I don't want to join a vendor site!
• It's just not obvious what's on offer. While the brand of the business and the social site remain identical there will be confusion about what’s on offer and how Change2 is engaged as a business.
• The Corporate Environmental Managers Group (CEMG) is a independent membership group for environmental managers. This is a group that doesn’t allow vendors to be members. Yet CEMG itself has now joined Change2's site. Are CEMG endorsing Change2?

Competitors

Competing sustainability consultants would encounter some of the following complexities when considering activity in the site.

• Change2 is an uneven playing field.
  How can I compete with Change2 in their own site? They win every time when the role of selecting which posts, videos and forums are featured are determined by Change2 editors.
• My client just joined Change2’s site!
  What does that mean for our relationship?
• The client I'm pitching is a member of Change2.
  In a pitch against Change2 some competitors would perceive client members of the site to have a vendor bias, possibly a conflict of interest.
• Is this a way for Change2 to generate new business leads? I can't access that database - not fair!
• What is the relationship between Change2 and other parties in the site? Is the Eco Investor business independent of Change2?

Problems as a social site

Taken together the above issues will discourage some industry stakeholders from any involvement at all, and I’d suggest result in a degree of reticence amongst some others that do join. Therefore the site is not delivering its aims.

For those joining there are some further problems around the implementation of the social site.

• The brand position is weird.
  Imagine for a moment a company called Telstra created a social site called “Telstra” as a "free central resource on telecommunications that brings together individuals, business, government and NGOs." There would undoubtedly be legitimate questions about Telstra's motivation, the credibility of the site, and endorsement of Telstra that membership entails.
• Change2 writers lead the blogs
  The vendors have so far had a strong voice in the site. The diversity is growing, but the collective voice of the community, the crowd, is comparatively quiet.
• Social discussion - forums and site activity, as opposed to blogs - in Change2 is demoted on the homepage below the fold, below blog posts (mostly from Change2) and other items selected by Change2, or videos made by Change2. The implication being that your voice is less important than our voice.

Whilst it's possible there are good answers to some of these questions, the fact they can be asked at all reveals a troubling ambiguity about the position of site, one which will see its social aims off to an under-achieving start.

Compare Change2 to the eminently more democratic, independent and vendor neutral sydneycyclist.com or the cancer support site i2yaustralia.ning.com. Both are built on the same free platform (Ning) as Change2 and are full of vibrant exchanges between engaged members. Notice there are no bike shops or cancer charities running these sites (although these organisations may be members).

How can this be fixed?

If others agree with my case, then Change2 can be easily modified to address the problems.

Here's what I'd recommend:

1. This post gets a good discussion in the site.
2. The change2 social site is rebranded with a new name and brand to make the break with change2 the business.
3. The administration of the site is opened up to members of the community unaffiliated with Change2 the business.
4. Named blogs are removed. There is simply the open blog of the site (like that of sydneycyclist.com).
5. Forums become the main site channel, and administrator effort is devoted to encouraging discussion.

I remain excited about the site, and its potential, and I’m looking forward to responses from the community of Change2.

This article is was originally posted on the Change2 site.

Ethical E-commerce

Ethical e-commerce sites are a growing phenomenon with EcoGeek pointing to buygreen.com in the US, and with the local start-up GreenPages site launching today to service the Australian market.

The comforting thing about this is that it points to a perception amongst businesses that there is a significant and growing market for ethically produced, sustainable products.

Undeniably this is a step in the right direction, but I'm also looking forward to a time when the values such sites espouse, and market to, are ingrained more widely in retail and e-commerce so that ethical e-commerce is no longer a point of difference, but a point of sameness.

What do you think?

Link.

UPDATE: It was remiss of me not to mention Neco Superstore in my original post. You can even buy carbon credits there!

Ethics and sustainability in websites

After reading scenariogirls' thought-provoking post on ethics in website development I was inspired by the considerations raised there to extend my own thinking about ethics, and also about sustainability, in the online world.

In the context of work on gambling sites scenariogirl asked the excellent question that online practitioners should ask themselves more often (and I paraphrase) - is the work I'm doing ethical?

In gambling sites it would seem to me the issues are fairly clearcut - online gambling is not an ethical business for a practitioner to be engaged in. It's a business that creates significant impoverishment in some sections of the community, and one built only on the precept of taking money from the community, but providing no valuable service or product in return. Online gambling sites can't even claim to make a cheap dinner for the oldies like the clubs do!

(As a side note - while even great projects such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Sydney Opera House and NSW state hospitals have been built on the proceeds of lotteries, I nonetheless think it's a terrible cost to the integrity of the NSW state government that it is so beholden to the proceeds of gambling.)

What though, I wondered, would be the questions worth asking where the case is not so clearcut. What are the ethics and sustainability issues around work for other organisations with more acceptable business models. What would make one client better to work for than another? Would it be ok for example to work at the more desirable employer Yahoo when its activities in China have seen the imprisonment of a dissident but the management has expressed contrition and a desire to do better, or what about building a website for a mining company or a bank?

Such questions are obviously complex and intriguing:

• What is an ethical online activity?
• What is a sustainable online activity?
• How can practitioners assess potential employers on these questions?
• What about an employer's offline activities?

Using a phrase 'online activity' sounds a little contorted I must admit, but I wanted to ensure the scope of my thinking is broad and includes all the inputs, processes and outputs of an organisation's online activity, and in each case ask this question: is it sustainable in all its facets, and is it ethical?

What are the ethical issues you face in your online work?