The Ups and Downs of Social Media for Sustainability

现在有一天，我会吸引我的第10,000个追随者推特。Whoever you are, thanks. Not coincidentally, Twitter has become my favorite social-media platform. So this seems like a good moment to reflect on social media, sustainability and journalism.

Like most of you, I imagine, I'm spending more time lately with social media — Twitter,Facebook,LinkedIn,Google+和博客（显然），以及报纸，杂志，电视，广播和书籍的少量。虽然数字媒体和传统媒体之间显然存在重叠，但我发现社交媒体是我收集和吸收信息的越来越有效的方法，这就是我所做的。

This post is not about how social media is transforming corporate sustainability -- although clearly it is. Business has fewer secrets. Corporate communication has become a two-way process. Corporate shaming campaigns are more powerful than ever. Greenpeace targeted Kit Kat and Nestle非常有效last year onFacebook和YouTube, gay activists at全部给贝宝带来了压力to drop its business relationship with hate groups and a petition on change.org helped spark a国家对话about shopping on Thanksgiving. This is powerful stuff.

Today, though, I want to talk about my own experience with social media. These platforms can be immensely valuable but they can also be a time suck. Here's my thinking, as of now:

为什么我喜欢Twitter：I was on a conference call on August 23 when my home office started to shake. My first reaction was that a car or truck had hit the house. Then I checked Twitter, and found a bunch of posts about the earthquake that was making its way up the east coast. (Within a minute, according to Twitter, there were 40,000 earthquake-related Tweets.) Friends in New York read about the quake on Twitter and felt it moments later.

The point is, Twitter is a super-fast way of keeping up with the news. More important, it's the best way I know of to stay abreast of the news that I need to know -- about business, sustainability, energy, climate and corporate social responsibility. That's because I've found people I trust on Twitter who share what they are reading and thinking about. By spending 15 to 30 minutes a day on Twitter (not counting the time reading links), I can stay on top of news and commentary that matters to me.

我关注了近500人 - 太多了，所以我打算修剪我的清单 - 但是十几个对我来说特别有用。他们包括我的同事乔尔·麦克沃尔（Joel Makower）和Hugh Byrne在格林比斯，杰西·詹金斯和船员在Energy Collective,安迪·雷夫金（Andy Revkin）of Dot Earth,Bryan Walshof Time, the brilliant curmudgeonDavid Robertsof Grist,Tom Philpott和Kate Sheppard琼斯母亲David Bielloof Scientific American,达米安·卡灵顿（Damian Carrington）at the Guardian, CSR bloggerToby Webb, and writersChristoper Mims,Paula Crossfield和Sam Fromartz.I also follow groups like the Environmental Defense Fund, NRDC and Sierra Club, publications like Grist and a handful of companies, but I much prefer individual voices and tastes.

我喜欢分享我在Twitter上阅读的内容，并尽我所能帮助良好的工作找到更广泛的读者。而且，当然，我使用Twitter来宣传自己的写作。我们不安全的作家（当然，形容词是多余的），只需阅读。只是获得“转推”或“最爱”，就会提供一小片认可。

There's much more to be said about Twitter -- it can be a terrific way to interact with readers, and to seek out sources and ideas -- but the point is, Twitter is one of the best thing to happen to journalism in years, and I say that even though I once wrote a post titled为什么Twitter对新闻不利。（这是关于“现场”推文的风险。）

My Facebook problem：我现在对Twitter的热情与我第一次出现的Facebook感觉相似。这些天，我发现自己在Facebook上的时间越来越少。我很难在我的个人和专业使用Facebook之间划清界限，因此，我的供稿被有限的更新（“查看此Xmas Light Show。所有人都设置为音乐”），这是我的603所谓的。我几乎不知道的朋友，包括真正的朋友，亲戚，跑步伙伴，商业同事和专业联系人的小组。即使是我从未见过的几个人。不知何故，我已经弄乱了。

The result is, I'm reluctant to update my "status" on Facebook because I don't want to bother my true friends and relatives with a stream of news about sustainability and business, and I can't imagine that business colleagues want to hear about my Sunday morning runs or winter vacation.

Still, I don't want to leave Facebook. So I'm planning radical surgery. I now haveFacebook页面which is exclusively for business use, along with mypersonal profilewhich is a mishmash of work and play. Sometime around the New Year, I'm going to "unfriend" most of those people who are not really friends and thereby cut them off from my personal posts. l hope some will find their way to my page.

Unfortunately, I'll lose a lot of connections, as well as information, that comes from professional colleagues on Facebook, but I can't see a better way out.

找出LinkedIn和Google+: I recently signed up for LinkedIn, and early on I opened a Google+ account, but so far I haven't spend much time with either.

我与LinkedIn上的197个人有联系，但老实说，我不知道为什么。如果有一段时间我需要寻找工作，也许会很有用。LinkedIn有一个新闻提要，可作为（粗糙）个性化的电线服务，但我更喜欢在Twitter上获得的覆盖范围和个人建议的广度。

Google+可能是我Facebook Mishmash的解决方案，但至少目前，感觉比价值更多的麻烦。除此之外，我已经是Google Services的沉重用户 - 搜索，电子邮件，日历，共享文档和跟踪我的博客流量 - 我对任何一家公司都过于依赖。

I'm curious: What's been your experience with social media, particularly as they pertain to journalism and sustainability? How much time do you spend on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+? Thoughts? Advice?