How Facebook could change the game for sustainability

With Facebook’s 900 million monthly active users spending hours sharing, commenting on and “liking” photos, using apps, and connecting with friends, the social media giant has essentially the world’s biggest platform by which to influence its users. And the future of Facebook’s influence will increasingly be focused on sustainability, if the company’s new(ish) manager of energy efficiency and sustainability, Bill Weihl, has anything to say about it.

In an interview last month, Weihl told me that one of the reasons he joined Facebook from Google — where he was the search engine company’s Green Energy Czar — was because of the massive opportunity to help deliver sustainability through Facebook’s social platform. Over the next six to 12 months, we’ll increasingly connect with third party app developers that can help us deliver this goal, and “the potential there is just enormous.” said Weihl.

The first of these types of third party partnerships is a deal announced late last year with energy software company Opower. Opower created a Facebook application that enables users to check out their energy usage compared to friends and national averages, get energy efficiency tips and, down the road, play games that make energy savings competitive. The app was launched in April in beta with 16 utilities (representing 20 million h0useholds).

While there is plenty of this type of energy efficiency software out there, building an energy app on top of Facebook’s social platform has unique opportunities to change people’s behavior. Because the app can compare their energy usage to their actual friends, it “is much more personal and seems likely to help people pay attention more and make a change,” explained Weihl.

The open social graph could be a fundamental key to cracking the code for behavior change — everything from turning off lights, to lowering air conditioning to buying LEDs, to participating in utilities’ energy efficiency programs. People are influenced by a variety of things, explained Weihl, but most people can be covered under some combination of: saving money, competing with peers, and doing good. Beyond energy efficiency apps, Weihl says Facebook has been looking to work with developers building apps around things like recycling and electric cars.

In 2010, Facebook says it “woke up” to using its platform for sustainability, and increased those efforts in 2011. The company has been working with environmental groups like the Environmental Defense Fund, and came to an agreement with Greenpeace last year to move up clean power on its list of criteria for siting where it builds data centers. Facebook also has an industry-leading project to open source the energy efficiency hardware for its data centers. However, the work with third parties around delivering sustainability apps for social good has been relatively modest at this point.

Weihl will also help Facebook monitor and manage its overall company energy usage and carbon emissions. Weihl also intends to help Facebook work with utilities to find more options for clean power for data centers.

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from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/cleantech/how-facebook-could-change-the-game-for-sustainabi...

How To Write A Startup Marketing Plan

When someone asks you for a Marketing Plan, your first instinct will be to create a laundry list of things you think it makes sense to do. If you’re any good you’ll define budgets for each line item on your list, and eventually you’ll convert that list into a 63-slide PowerPoint deck. The second-to-last slide will be a “High Level Gantt Chart,” and it will look great and make you feel like a real marketer. The last will say “Next Steps.”

Congratulations. You’re an amateur.

The right way to create a startup Marketing Plan is to begin by reflecting on the work of the great Prussian military strategist Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke, considered by some to be the father of modern battlefield strategy. While the name may not ring a bell, you’re likely familiar with his most famous quote: “No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength.” As simplified through the ages: “No plan survives contact with the enemy.”

Some people interpret this statement as meaning that planning is a waste of time, whether for marketing, or for something…er… important. But the quote above was only half of Moltke’s central thesis. The second half was this: “Strategy is a system of expedients.” No simplification of that phrase survived into folklore, but what Moltke was really saying was that military strategy had to be understood as a system of options, since only the beginning of a military operation was plannable. He wasn’t against plans… in fact just the opposite. Moltke considered the main task of military leaders to be extensive preparation for all possible outcomes after the initial engagement. Our own Dwight D. Eisenhower summed up the concept rather elegantly, 100 years later. “Plans are worthless,” said the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II, who as President oversaw one of the greatest periods of American expansion and prosperity in our history, “But planning is essential.”

OK, so enough with the history lesson.

A startup Marketing Plan “Moltke-style” starts with defining 6 terms that are too often conflated by young marketers:

  • goal – what we hope to achieve.
  • objective – how we will measure success in reaching our goal.
  • strategy – an approach we think will meet our objective.
  • tactic – execution to convert our strategy into action.
  • program – a collection of related tactics.
  • plan – what needs to be done when, given the above.

A great startup marketing plan starts with a clear-eyed consensus on the specific Goals of your marketing effort. Think big for now, about what you’re really setting out to accomplish over the next n months. A few examples from our new marketing plan:

  1. Deliver leads that support our sales goals.
  2. Develop tools that make sales more effective.
  3. Establish copy data in the market conversation.
  4. Build infrastructure to support scaled growth.
  5. Shape culture to reinforce brand and values.


You can take each one of those goals and translate them into specific and measurable Objectives. This won’t always be easy… but remember the purpose of objectives isn’t to provide legal proof of success. It’s just to get consensus on specific metrics that will be useful in focusing the strategies you’ll define next with the goals you’ve already put to paper.

Next come the Strategies themselves. Expect a range of high and lower level ideas here, but keep it simple and stay focused on what will be required to meet your agreed-upon objectives. More examples from our plan:

  1. Simplify and Align Actifio Positioning & Story
  2. Refine Inside Sales Model
  3. Shift Focus of PR Effort
  4. Launch Community Marketing Program
  5. Improve Global Marketing Collaboration


Under each of these strategies is a set of Tactics, actual stuff people need to go do to make it happen. Those tactics tend to be grouped in natural clusters called Programs that require some kind of coordinated execution. Finally you need a Plan to assign resources to these tasks, and keep everyone on the team aligned with everyone else.

But remember your Moltke, folks: No plan survives contact with the enemy, so strategy is a system of expedients. Focus your time and energy on getting alignment on and clear definition of your business Goals and Objectives. After that make sure the quality of your execution against Strategies and Tactics is good enough for you to learn what works and what doesn’t, then adjust your plan accordingly as you go.

That’s how you win the war, baby. And that’s what makes you a Startup Marketing Pro.

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/channels/how-to-write-a-startup-marketing-plan/

Twitter as media: Its ambitions grow with NBC Olympic deal

Just a few weeks ago, we wrote about how Twitter was dipping its toes into the media business by hiring editors and producers to curate content, followed by the launch of a NASCAR media hub that made it obvious where the company’s intentions lay. Now it is about to jump into the global media game with both feet: as reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by us, Twitter will launch a landmark partnership with NBC Universalfor the Olympic Games later this week that will see a team of curators or editors producing a Twitter-based news hub — turning the service into what the Journal describes as “the official narrator” of the Games. The deal marks another step on Twitter’s path towards a media-based future, one in which it tries to navigate the grey zone between being a partner for media companies and being a competitor.

The Journal story describes what sounds like a fairly traditional editorial operation: a team of Twitter staff will be based in an office in Boulder, Colorado and will spend their days filtering through a never-ending stream of reports about the Olympics, picking out the interesting or newsworthy ones from participants, onlookers, officials and others. The only thing different in this case is that all of those editing and curating functions will be directed at the stream of tweets coming through Twitter — and the people doing it will be employed by Twitter, in concert with staff from the NBC Olympic team. Says the WSJ report:

“Twitter’s Olympics hub… is one of the first times Twitter will serve as an official narrator for a live event. NBC will tout the website with on-air promotions and links to athlete interviews or video clips.”

Twitter’s role as a media entity is increasing

This kind of operation, which Twitter confirmed it is launching later this week, seems like an obvious extension of the moves the company has been making recently to expand its media relationships — and in the process become more of a media entity in its own right. The tip-toeing started with the acquisition of Summify and the launch of a curated email for users based on Summify’s recommendation algorithms, and then progressed further with the hiring of a “sports producer” for the NASCAR partnership that Twitter ran in June. Along the way, Twitter has also announced new features such as expanded tweets that highlight content from media partners (while keeping that content contained within Twitter’s apps and website).

Much like the description of the Olympic offering provided by the Journal, the NASCAR arrangement involved a news hub for the event featuring curated and filtered content from a host of different Twitter streams, including those from drivers, official team accounts, fans and others. Although Twitter has downplayed the work involved in doing this — describing the producer’s function as simply reading the stream and “pinning” noteworthy tweets to the top of the NASCAR hub — it’s pretty clearly an editorial function, very similar to what news entities like NBC and the Journal do (or could do) with similar events.

For NBC, partnering with Twitter probably makes sense: the network and its staff understand the dynamics of the Twitter stream and can make sense of things more easily, and having real-time tweets appear on a branded news hub and on television during the Games probably still seems like a cool and geeky addition to the broadcaster’s coverage — in the same way that newscasters now seem to see reading celebrities’ tweets on the air as a necessary part of almost every news event.

What happens when Twitter no longer needs NBC?

The deal clearly makes sense for Twitter too, since it gets a big marketing boost from being associated with the Games, and that will likely translate into a bunch of advertising revenue. And there is probably also some Facebook-related jockeying going on as well: the giant social network has its own deal with NBC for the Olympics, in which the two have agreed to provide content to each other (no money is changing hands in either the Facebookor the Twitter partnership), so that NBC can show viewers what is being talked about on Facebook and the social network gets access to NBC videos and other material.

As I’ve tried to point out before, these kinds of deals are a natural extension of Twitter’s decision to become a media entity powered by advertising — something that has been the subject of much debate recently, and has led at least one entrepreneur to try and launch his own user-supported alternative to Twitter. But they are also a double-edged sword for traditional media companies: they get the benefit of access to curated streams of content, but they are also providing more fuel for Twitter’s own ambitions in the media department, as critics such as blogging pioneer Dave Winer have noted a number of times.

In a sense, Twitter doesn’t really need to partner with NBC to provide this kind of curated news content. It could hire staff and filter public tweets and create a news hub without the broadcaster’s help, just as it could with any other news event. For now, partnering with media outlets makes sense for the company, especially for a tightly controlled one-off event like the Olympics — but that might not always be the case. And Twitter’s ambitions are clearly growing.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user Umberto Salvagnin

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from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/2012/07/23/twitter-as-media-its-ambitions-grow-with-nbc-oly...

There is No Bubble in Boston

This is from Nick Bilton, The New York Times‘ tech writer who moved from New York to San Francisco a year ago:

The money here is obscene. The newly minted rich are obsessed with outperforming their rivals. One industry party I attended had a jungle theme. This included a real, 600-pound tiger in a cage and a monkey that would pose for Instagram photos. A prominent Googler’s Christmas party in Palo Alto had mounds of snow in the yard to round out the festive spirit. It was 70 degrees outside. Sean Parker, a founder of Airtime, threw alavish, $1 million party that included models he hired to roam the room and a performance by Snoop Dogg.

Eat dinner with start-up founders and venture capitalists, and the conversation can quickly shift from industry banter about the latest billion-dollar acquisition to the type of private jet people own.

It’s not like that here in Boston, or at least it doesn’t feel like it to me. And that strikes me as a good thing.

Bilton is writing about the bubble that envelopes the Valley, and I’m proud to say I don’t think such a bubble exists here in Boston, in part because of the diversity of the city’s strengths. I certainly bump into more entrepreneurs than I did in my previous home of D.C., but I also bump into more doctors, nurses, and academics. If LA is movies, D.C. is government, and San Francisco is tech, Boston is some mix of medicine, science, tech and academia.

Perhaps I’m misguided, but I think this diversity helps us. Here’s Bilton again:

This is where a select group in the Valley are oblivious to the rest of the world, ensconced in their own protective bubble. In the rest of America, where the unemployment rate is stuck above 8 percent, people are struggling to cover their mortgages or to find jobs that won’t be replaced by technology or sent overseas. In Silicon Valley, some people are worrying about which multimillion-dollar home they can buy — there are only so many available, after all — or whether their handcrafted jeans subtly signal that the wearer is more attuned to aesthetics, like, say, Steve Jobs was.

I haven’t spent much time in the Valley so perhaps Bilton’s description is unfair. But I think Boston’s prowess in medicine and academics helps buttress against this sort of a bubble. It’s why Boston entrepreneurs take such pride in solving hard problems.

There’s undoubtedly still a lot about Silicon Valley that Boston still needs to work to replicate. But the bubble that Bilton describes isn’t one of them.

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/07/22/there-is-no-bubble-in-boston/

Nielsen to use watermarks to enhance local channel rating accuracy

Nielsen to use watermarks to enhance local channel rating accuracy

While we're watching our favorite shows in HD, it's easy to forget that they live and die by ratings, and those ratings aren't always collected with the latest technology. In an effort to improve the sample size and accuracy of ratings for local TV channels, Nielsen is starting to roll out a hybrid technology consisting of watermarks and return data from supporting pay-TV provider's set-top boxes, like DirecTV and Charter. The first three markets to get the upgrade are St. Louis, Dallas and Charlotte, with 17 yet to be announced markets to follow in 2013, and finally, the remaining 190 about two years after that. The system will work in parallel with the older Local People Meters and Diaries for three to six months and will lay the groundwork to collect ratings for online, tablets and other platforms. All the inside industry details and more are in the release after the break.

Continue reading Nielsen to use watermarks to enhance local channel rating accuracy

Nielsen to use watermarks to enhance local channel rating accuracy originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 Jul 2012 13:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/22/nielsen-to-use-watermarks-to-enhance-local...

Stackable Dressers Maximize Storage Options [Furniture Hacks]

Most small kids can't handle a tall dresser for their clothing until reach double digits agewise. Chigo, a Japanese kids store, developed a stacking dresser tree for kids so that you get three two-drawer dressers that can later combine to form one six-drawer dresser. This item costs a cool grand (plus shipping from the Land of the Rising Sun) but you can take the one unique feature and add it to any two-drawer dresser. More »


from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5928037/stackable-dressers-maximize-storage-options

Droplings Uploads Files and Folders to Dropbox with a Pretty Preview Page, Ready for Sharing [Dropbox]

OS X: Droplings is a free menubar app for the Mac that makes it even easier to share files with friends and colleagues through Dropbox. Just drop a file on the menubar icon, and the app builds a preview page for the file, uploads them both to your Dropbox account, and then drops the URL for the page (with the file on it) in your clipboard. More »


from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5928178/droplings-uploads-files-and-folders-to-dropbox-...

Hulu Updates with a Good-Looking New Web Player, Simpler Settings, and 10 Second Rewind [Video]

Hulu's web video player got a major face-lift this weekend, and now features a completely chromeless player with hover-over controls, a newly organized home page that puts your favorite and most often-watched shows front and center, and a new 10 second rewind feature that skips back with a single click so you can catch up on a scene you may have missed. More »


from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5928177/hulu-updates-with-a-good+looking-new-web-player...

Friday Is a Personal Assistant that Learns All About You and Can Tell You Anything You Need to Remember [Video]

Android: Friday, a new personal assistant app for Android that keeps an eye on the things you do with your Android phone, collects and organizes them into a kind of "personal Wikipedia" that's all about you. It then uses that database to help you make smart decisions about who you call, where you go, and how you spend your time. You can ask Friday questions about your own life and activities, and Friday will have the answers for you. More »


from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5927914/friday-is-a-personal-assistant-that-learns-all-...

Yahoo shows off Beyond Gold Olympics app for its connected HDTVs

Yahoo show off Beyond Gold Olympics app for its connected HDTVs

While NBC has already shown off its official Olympics apps for mobile devices, Yahoo is readying an onscreen companion app for connected TVs built on its widgets. While smart TV platforms and boxes are practically everywhere, Yahoo's is built into HDTVs from several manufacturers, and the app is available for TVs from Sony, Vizio, Samsung and Toshiba. It gives users access to Yahoo Sports coverage with video, news and analysis including daily updates on the games and a real-time medal count. If you have a TV with the Yahoo Connected TV store, it should be just a few clicks of the remote away, and content updates are scheduled to start coming in early next week. We're still waiting to see the second screen action we previewed at CES put to use, but maybe this event is just the reminder the world needed that this is on more TVs than Google's effort and actually exists unlike the often-rumored Apple HDTV.

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Yahoo shows off Beyond Gold Olympics app for its connected HDTVs originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Jul 2012 06:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/23/yahoo-shows-off-beyond-gold-olympics-app-f...