Case Studies

Our approach to social media is tested and informed by our experience leading some of the social web's most innovative projects. The social media presences and online communities we've launched have attracted thousands of members and served millions of page views. They've deepened our clients' relationships with their customers and supporters, and they've changed the way our clients understand their mission and value offering. And each and every project has helped us discover new possibilities for building value and connection through the social web -- possibilities we share through the lessons contained in these case studies.

BerlinStories.org

We worked with the creators of the Berlin Stories radio programme to build a simple, elegant site within a very limited budget. Their team wanted a site where they could post podcasts from the shows as well as stories submitted by listeners. A comments function allows users of the site—mainly anglophones living in Berlin—to talk to each other about the Berlin stories and share their own experiences.

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Change Everything

To celebrate Vancity’s 60th anniversary, and to support their advertising campaign (slogan: “You can change everything when you change your bank”), we helped them create ChangeEverything.ca. Visitors can make a list of the changes they want to make (from small personal changes to big world-changing transformations), join other community members’ changes and blog about them. Twice honored by the prestigious Webby Awards, ChangeEverything.ca is recognized as the leading credit union innovation in social media.

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Green Gifts

BC Hydro, one of Canada’s largest utilities, wanted to extend their Power Smart energy conservation brand into the world of social networks. To do that, we conceived and built Green Gifts: a Facebook application – the first ever built by a British Columbia Crown corporation or government agency – that allows users to send free virtual “gifts” to their friends. Each gift (actually a conservation-themed icon) includes a simple, practical tip for reducing energy consumption.

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telecentre.org

Around the world, grassroots technology centres help communities put technology to work, building local economies and strengthening their social fabric. Regional networks knit those telecentres together, offering support and coordination – but who supports those networks? The IDRC, together with Microsoft and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, has answered that question with telecentre.org, a five-year initiative to help those regional networks through knowledge sharing, peer support and services.

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Tyze.com

Take the power of social networks to organize people, couple it with the intimacy and personal connection of small groups... and you have Tyze. It’s a platform for hosting personal support networks the most isolated and vulnerable in our society, grounded in the proven methodology of the Planned Lifetime Advocacy Network. Tyze offers scheduling, task planning and messaging – supporting the real-world work of the network – but the heart of each Tyze network is the storytelling that celebrates the person at the centre of the network. Tyze launched in closed beta in 2007, and is now working with organizations across North America to deliver Tyze networks to the people in their care.

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Untape

BACI has supported people with developmental disabilities for over 50 years, with supported housing, employment, educational and recreation programs. With a shared vision of on-line community building, Social Signal approached BACI with a proposal for Untape: a site where people with and without disabilities could help each other make sense of government and corporate bureaucracies. BACI was excited about the potential for this project and we worked together to design the website and access funding to build it. Untape emphasizes the value of personal experience and advocacy: there's nothing better than getting tips from people who’ve been there themselves. Members of the Untape community can help each other find the workarounds that will enable them to get the information or services they need.

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