sustainability | Social Signal

When BC Hydro asked us to help them develop a new social media project - building on the success of the Green Gifts Facebook app - our thoughts naturally turned to the 2010 Winter Games. BC Hydro is an Official Supporter; organizers are aiming to have their greenest Olympic Winter Games yet; BC Hydro's ad campaign is built around the slogan "Save power. See the games."... hmm...

One of the reasons we're seized with the power of social media is that we've seen its potential for engaging people in the most important conversations of our time. With such urgent crises as climate change on the global agenda, I draw a lot of my hope for the future from the way I see people coming together from a wide range of backgrounds - some of them unlikely - to tackle the big challenges.

When you're a company looking to make your first foray into the thickets of social media, building your own online community from scratch – and taking on everything from usability issues to platform selection to how you get that critical mass of people to sign up in the first place – can seem pretty daunting, and with good reason.