Randy Paynter of Care 2 brings up a good point when he says that businesses no longer controls their brand or marketing. This is because of the increasing interactions and communications in the digital world which are not controllable by an organization. He points out that today’s purchasing habits allow consumers to access reviews and alternative products with just a few clicks. In the past glossy advertising guided the public perception of a product, but today consumers are no longer limited to canned marketing campaigns medium to inform their opinions.

Randy maintains that this massive shift in power from the seller to the buyer comes in part from the plethora of choices, thereby creating a commodity of any product. In order to achieve brand success he touts the importance of differentiating a product as well as influencing the conversations surrounding it. He suggests that we need to create and engage ‘fanatical evangelists’ to build and communicate brands online.
Listen to the full session here

Steve Newcomb has high aspirations. His company, “Virgance, is a startup incubator that finds great ideas and turns them into companies that change the world. Steve wondered if he could “break the rules and build companies that do good.” His commitment to 100% transparency puts him in front of the public so that they can ask any question about how business is conducted.

Steve has approached the idea of sustainability as he would any market sector and he sees the market opportunity as enormous. The change needed will require not a single Apollo-sized project by hundreds. Seeking to change the very nature of capitalism, Virgance companies adhere to five tenets:

1. “Cause as much direct and measurable change as possible.”
2. “Always use the carrot and never use the stick.”
3. “Use technology and the powers of social networks to get the job done.”
4. “Have business models that allow these businesses to be self-sustaining.”
5. “Try to involve and empower people to make the change.”

But the plenary wouldn’t have been complete without Malika Chopra, who began the session by guiding the SVN community in a beautiful mediation of gratitude, showing her heritage as the daughter of internationally renowned, Deepak Chopra. While her childhood exposure to the self-help arena and her presence around people who were on a journey of self-exploration, Malika’s early interests steered her to work for MTV initially. But it was while in Bombay that she had a change of heart after seeing a group of barefoot children huddled around a TV watching MTV. “Oh my God, what am I doing?” was all she could think and she decided to quit MTV the next day.

Today, Malika spends her time building a community on Intent, a sanctuary on the web for users to share their intentions and dreams with each other. Malika, a self-proclaimed “social media maven,” has a unique perspective on things because she is coming at it from the perspective of a mother and a woman.

Both Malika and Steve remind us that powerful movements and changes have been created through the use of blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Activities like ‘flash mobs,’ ‘tweet storms,’ and ‘carrot mobs’ can or have been used to create positive social change. The energy generated by this group’s discussion seemed to electrify the air, and that crackling interest will likely lead many of the participants to delve further into their own use of social media in order to create change.

I find that with information and newsletters that I otherwise wouldn’t have time to read I can scan their tweets for titles of the important and pertinent articles. I follow a number of great environmental and evolutionary voices such as the Grist (@grist), Yes! Magazine (@yesmagazine) and EnlightenNext (@ENextMag).

But, beyond this I believe that twitter has another interesting potential use which is recently emerging in the form of two different experiments in alternative currencies, namely Twollars and KayGroschen.

Twollars are cash based, like a movie ticket or a bus pass, as in you can buy them with ‘real’ money. When you give someone a twollar the recipient can get money for this through donations on the Twollars website. It will be interesting to follow whether this catches on and becomes the helpful tool that the makers intended. Charities could potentially get Twollars for good tweets, good work, or general support.

NooPolis whose slogan is “A new world starts with you and me,” can be found on twitter as well (@NooPolis). When a friend who knew I was interested in learning more about alternative currencies told me about KayGroschen I had a hard time finding information that wasn’t in German. While my German is passable while visiting the country, this was out of my league. I finally struck gold on Twittter where I found users @RalfLippold and @kujawa0708 who were able to direct me to information in English. What I found was that KayGroschen is the virtual internal currency of the virtual MicroNation Noopolis (@NooPoBot). This wiki based simulation might prove to be an interesting exercise on re-thinking our systems.

As more people use twitter I am interested in seeing if any other twitter-based alternatives to currency pop up.

When I decided to change my status to ‘In a relationship with…’ I was thrilled to be in the beginning of a new relationship.  Happy and in love, I had no problem sharing this information with my Facebook friends via social media.

I had never felt upset changing something I had publicly posted, until it the breakup.  The relationship crashed with little warning and one of the first things I had to confront was the change my public status.  It was so early on that the last time anything had been said, I was happy.  UGH!  I don’t want to have to publicly dump myself!  But I certainly wanted to be the one in control of the process and get to it before he could.

My first line of attack, I decided to go from ‘In a relationship’ to ‘Single’ and immediately erased the update so that I could keep my hurt as private as possible.  Then I realized that I could just make the relationship section go away and not have to say single by setting the status to (blank) so I went in to make that change.

Instead of the desired quiet and solitude I started getting comments like  “Congrats! Who’s the new person in your life?” or “Ooh do tell!”  It was then that I realized that when I changed my status from Single to nothing at all, Facebook sent out something to my friends saying that I was no longer single, which they interpreted to mean that I was in a relationship.  In a panic that my private breakup was getting very public I erased the update as soon as I could.  Fortunately, this quickly made additional well wishers go away.

I was ready to get over it on my own, which is what I wanted in the first place, and then every time I logged in the feed from my ex’s page would pop up.  His friends kept saying how sorry they were to hear.  They assumed he had been dumped and were comforting him.  It made me want to scream “He dumped me!  He shouldn’t get condolences for being an idiot!!”  but I held back.  Post after post.  They wondered if I had worn crocs (a major fashion faux pas to him.)  Everything I had tried to avoid in erasing my status update was still in my face.  If we were no longer friends I could have turned away by unfriending him, but I didn’t.

In the end I coped by hiding his updates and erasing the update that said I was no longer single.

If you too want to have an extremely private, public break-up here’s what you have to do:

How to hide the jerk’s updates (don’t worry this can be undone in the case you make the mistake of getting back together)

1) To the right of an update from the the person who you are trying to block there is a box that appears that when you scroll over it.

2) Click on the word ‘Hide’ and then again on ‘Hide (person’s name)’

How to change your relationship status so that none but a Facebook stalker might know.

1) Go to the box on your profile on the left that says ‘Information and click on the pencil in the right corner.

2) Go down to and click on ‘Edit Information’

3) Under Relationship status change the line to be blank.  This will hid your relationsip status in the Information portion of your profile.

4) Finish editing/ save changes

5) Go to your profile and next to the update that touts your new realtionship status a ‘remove’ button will appear to the right when scrolled over  (just like the ‘Hide’ feature). Click on it.

Now go buy some fair trade chocolate, read a good book or go for a hike and move on.  He/she wasn’t worth your time in the first place!