October 25th, 2007

By Darren Barefoot

Filed under:
Social Media, Web 2.0
6 Comments »

Green Gifts and Facebook Fatigue

Rob, of Social Signal (among other) fame, emailed me about their first Facebook app. It’s a project for BC Hydro, and has a sunny conservation message:

We’ve created Green Gifts to give Facebook users from B.C. and everywhere else a fun way to keep in touch with each other while spreading the word about energy efficiency and sustainable living.

Green Gifts are free to send and receive. Each one comes with a Green Gift picture and your personalized message. And it also comes with a Power Smart tip: a simple, practical way you can conserve energy and shrink your environmental footprint.

The app enables you to send your friends environmentally-friendly gifts (well, little icons really) such as reusable coffee cups and bus passes. It’s all viral-ready, because the gifts are free (unlike the standard Facebook presents) and it’s easy to pass them on to your friends. Plus they offer an “I’m green” subtext, and green equals cool these days.

Moi, J’ai Facebook Fatigue

While I’m on the subject, can I confess to some Facebook fatigue? I was talking (er, on our Facebook walls…walling?) to Meg about this yesterday, and said that I’d found Facebook good for the following:

  • Organizing events
  • Starting and joining affinity groups
  • Finding old friends (this is time-limited, of course–there are only so many old friends)
  • Losing at Scrabble

There are plenty of professional applications (see, for example, the aforementioned Facebook app), but personally, I’m kind of spent. I guess everything else (well, the Scrabble too) feels like a time-waster, and I’ve already optimized by time-wasting elsewhere (swimming, biking, World of Warcraft and so forth)?

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Comments: 6 Responses so far

alexis
October 25th, 2007
5:47 am

I’m with you on the facebook fatigue. I do find it useful for organizing events, looking at peoples’ photos (people who aren’t on flickr) and sending messages to people to organize things. But other than that, I’m losing interest rapidly.

Raul
October 25th, 2007
10:03 am

I think that incorporating sustainability tips on to Facebook is good, but I am skeptical about the whole thing. See my post here:

http://hummingbird604.blogspot.com/2007/10/caving-and-getting-on-to.html

Check the links, I am sure you’ll laugh a lot about the Crackbook!

Beth
October 25th, 2007
12:04 pm

I love the use of the word “optimize” with reference to “time-wasting”

Metro
October 25th, 2007
12:40 pm

I enjoy FB, since most of my friends were made and lost touch with long ere the intertubes were a thought in Al Gore’s brain.

But I refuse to add or use crappy spam apps. Starting with “Poke”–which is nothing but an invite to an endless round of poking, or at the extrme ends throwing sheep at, people.

And I detest app spam:

“Insert-name-here gave you a cute/funny/sexy/alcoholic-gift-we’re-pimping.”

{Delete}

zoom!
October 28th, 2007
5:18 am

I’m mystified by all those people who claim to be addicted to facebook. What exactly are they doing on there? Sometimes I wonder if there’s a whole other layer of facebook I haven’t discovered yet, because after five minutes, I run out of things to do. (It’s better now that they have scrabble though. If it weren’t for scrabble, I would have quit facebook by now.)

Heather
October 28th, 2007
6:15 pm

I love Facebook because it reminds me of birth dates, because I’m far too inane to actually remember them myself. This, and the event functionality are the main reasons I try to sign in every few days or so. As for the applications, I find the sheer volume of options incredibly daunting. I think have three or four active ones, and even then, they kind of annoy me.

Oh, and the ‘Kill Zombies/Werewolves/Accountants’ applications are the Facebook equivalent of an animated gif background on a MySpace page. Just sayin’.