Each year, the WWF encourages individuals, businesses and communities to participate in a global rolling blackout of sorts by shutting off the lights for a solid hour. Called Earth Hour, it’s an awareness campaign that leans pretty heavily on social media to get the word out. But is WWF tweeting up the wrong tree?
Take my experience. At 8:30 pm on Saturday, March 27, I dutifully shut off all of my PCs, most of my electronics and finally all the lights. On my couch, in near total darkness, I used my iPhone to follow #earthhour on my Twitter client (Twitterific, in case you’re wondering) as a way to connect with the cause and participate virtually. An hour later, at 9:30 pm, all the lights came back on. Sure, some organizations have reported impressive energy savings during those 60 minutes but it’s a blip, a mere hiccup that’s eclipsed by the energy consumed globally during the rest of the 8,759 hours in a year. What the WWF and other eco-advocacy campaigns really need is sustained engagement.
As I point out in my weekly column over at GigaOM Pro (sub req’d), Facebook and Twitter are great for reaching like-minded individuals, but let’s be honest, “participation” via these social networks is a bit of a misnomer. Racking up “likes” and hitting the retweet icon are a long way from effecting change in the real world. What environmental groups should leverage are services — like Foursquare or augmented reality, e.g. — that blur the barriers between the virtual and real world and can help transform keystrokes and touchscreen taps into everyday action in meatspace. Sure, it may not be as grandiose a gesture as plunging the Syndey Opera House into darkness, but it’s likelier to have a substantial, sustained and more measurable carbon-cutting impact than an hour of darkness every year.
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