Can Act.ly keep Sen. Brown Green?
If you are someone who regularly makes your views known by participating in petition campaigns, and are also someone who tweets, chances are you have heard of Act.ly. It is a brilliant use of twitter to allow people to not only tweet to sign petitions, but also to allow the person they are petitioning to respond. Case in point: The new Senator from Massachusetts, @ScottBrownMA.
43 tweets tweeted Scott P. Brown : Stand with Mass. and pass the climate bill #Brown2Green
In addition to a letter campaign, the NRDC Action Fund has launched the act.ly petition urging Scott Brown to stand up for clean energy legislation currently pending in the Senate.
Fact is, when he was in the Massachusetts legislature, Brown was a part of Republicans for Environmental Protection, and he voted for Massachusetts to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a pact among Northeastern states requiring power plants to reduce emissions or to buy credits from cleaner industries.
At the time, he said:
"Reducing carbon dioxide emissions in Massachusetts has long been a priority of mine. Passing this legislation is an important step...towards improving our environment."
However - his recent comments are cause for some concern:
"It's interesting. I think the globe is always heating and cooling, It's a natural way of ebb and flow. The thing that concerns me lately is some of the information I've heard about potential tampering with some of the information.""I just want to make sure if in fact ... the Earth is heating up, that we have accurate information, and it's unbiased by scientists with no agenda. . . Once that's done, then I think we can really move forward with a good plan."
So is Brown green? At the time of writing, scores of his constituents and several large national environmental advocacy organzations await his response on Act.ly. If you haven't yet, join in posting on the Senator's facebook wall, and pile onto the Act.ly petition.
CRUSH: Rick and Roll
CRUSH is a fast and fun weekly round-up of social media news - Join us on Facebook to keep up with all the latest. What was this week's theme among your favorite social networking sites? Change. Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are all rolling out a handful of new features. Including Twitter's addition of "most popular tweets" to its search capability, a new interactive layout for YouTube, and the introduction of language alterations and community pages from Facebook.
Facebook was especially busy, as it also acquired "Divvyshot", a program that will allow users to tag photos by event. You can expect to see this application in the upcoming months. Music artist John Forte has already gotten a head start on how this might work, pausing mid-set during his latest tour stop in Boston to snap a photo for his morning Twitter feed.
More politicians are beginning to find audiences via social media. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is reaching out to his constituents on Facebook. He follows New Hampshire Governor John Lynch, who did a live stream chat courtesy of the Live Free of Die Alliance a few months ago.
But beware, the power of social media is a double-edged sword. Just ask the RNC, as the release of controversial financial records and activities have been blasted to the public by an army of bloggers, as well as a video mashup of RNC Chairman Michael Steele's speeches to Fat Joe's music video "Make It Rain".
On a lighter note, April Fool's Day did not go by unnoticed. Here's a list of Mashable's favorite pranks from this year.
And of course, we couldn't resist pulling a prank of our own, which brings us to our CRUSH of the Week. Haven't heard of a Rick Roll? Let us introduce you...
Last Call to Help End Relationship Violence
If ending relationship violence were as easy as downloading a song, would you do it? For the last two months, Macy's and Alfani have been giving away free downlaods of Ne-Yo's exclusive song "Heroes". Every time someone downloaded it, Macy's and Alfani gave $1 to the RESPECT! Campaign to end relationship violence. So far, more then $35,000 have been raised to fund projects to help parents to teach their kids non-violence.
Tomorrow is the last day of the program, so I'm blogging to invite you - yes you - to download this song now and send this link to your friends and ask them to do the same.
Right now, an argument in a relationship is turning violent.
Right now, lives are being shattered because people see each other as objects.
Right now, children are learning by example.
Get as many people to download the song as possible - Right now. Download. Post to Facebook. Post to Twitter.
CRUSH: Facebook in the Time of Syphilis
CRUSH is a fast and fun weekly round-up of social media news Can you get Syphilis from Facebook? According to a public health report in Britain, you can blame social media networks for the recent rise in disease cases by making it easier for individuals to meet up for casual sex.
While it's far-fetched to believe Facebook is responsible for STDs, it could be aiding insomniacs. If you've started counting tweets instead of sheep when you're having trouble sleeping, a new study reveals you're not alone. An increasing number of Facebook and Twitter users are checking their accounts when they wake up during the night.
The big news on Capitol Hill this week - the health care bill was passed. But, as expected, along with it came strong reactions from both the left and right. The tweeter who threatened to assassinate President Obama has been taken into custody, and his Twitter account is gone. ABC News does have screenshots of the profanity-laden tweets here. Can 140 for characters still land you 15-20? We'll find out soon. From the left corner, we have the first (of possibly many?) mash-up remix of House Minority Leader John Boehner's "No You Can't" rant with Will.i.am's "Yes, We Can" video from the '08 election cycle.
Google's newest project, which promises to install high speed fiber-optic Internet cables in at least one lucky city, has got mayors across the country going to extreme measures. It started in Kansas, where the mayor of Topeka temporarily changed the city's name to Google, Kansas. And the stunts have only gotten more adventurous, as Mayor of Duluth, Minnesota took a dip in frigid Lake Superior, while the Mayor of Sarasota Florida jumped into a tank filled with sharks.
But someone not happy to be catching the attention of Google? The British Special Air Service. It seems Google camera cars have "outed" a secret base of the SAS by marking the location on Google's maps street view, and the British military and parliament aren't happy about their cover being blown.
That brings us to our CRUSH of the Week, where we would like to take a chance to applaud Google for standing up to China.
CRUSH: Sonic the Hedgehog
Mid-March means many things: The death of Caesar, spring break, and the conclusion of SXSW. CRUSH takes the best of what happened in social media, and serves it up hot, in about 3 minutes. Among other things, we found Sonic the Hedgehog this week. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b65N9NXLrbk
What was the coolest thing to come out of South by Southwest Interactive? While Twitter's "@Anywhere" shows some promise, our money is on Aardvark, the social networking tool that lets you pose a question to your networks, and finds the best person to give you an answer.
Not featured at SXSW this year, but sure to make a splash when it is: The new app from the Iphone that lets you form an instant social network with the people around you wherever you are.
In other news, Facebook ads are getting more expensive since the news came out that Facebook beat Google for the number one spot in Weekly U.S. web traffic last week.
On to politics...Healthcare has passed! And in addition to the massive email traffic that urged everyone to contact congress, Organizing for America scored in our book for being the site meant to personalize reform.
On the other hand (and on the other coast) Carly Fiorina's California senate campaign may be trying to ingratiate itself with some folks in Humboldt County, because we suspect her latest political web ads are - well - chemically induced.
Finally - Sonic the hedgehog lives, and you got to see it to believe it.