As environmental publishers, we know that part of good stewardship is sharing information, but even the most intelligent among us can not make change without doing something.

So this site and Lighter Footstep, along with The Good Human, Twilight Earth, Grass Stain Guru, My Green Side, The Smart Mama, A Little Greener Every Day, Fake Plastic Fish Allie’s Answers, and Natural Papa have teamed up to carry our message with one strong and united voice.

The message is that there are great organizations out there which are suffering in this economic downturn through decreased donations … and they need our help! So we have decided to give you, our readers, a voice and a choice. We have decided to take on a very simple fundraising mission, and we are asking you to donate just $1.00.

 A single dollar — that’s all.

 Who cannot afford a buck even in these times? We know you can spare a dollar to help out our fellow humans!

 But how do we all decide which charities to give 100% of all monies raised to? We’re going to put it to a vote and let you make that choice. The participating websites have picked five charities for all donors to vote for, and we are asking you to choose which two of them will receive the all monies donated.

 Our purpose in doing this is three-fold:

• It gives YOU a voice. As loyal readers and stewards of our environment, we want to offer you the opportunity to make a difference without breaking the bank.
• It gives the two charities with the most votes some much appreciated funds to continue their mission
• It allows all of us an opportunity to connect as a community of like-minded people working for the common good of ourselves, our families and our planet.

If the community of folks who care about our planet cannot come together to rise up to a challenge, who will? That is why we are asking you for a $1 donation. While $1 may seem insignificant all by itself, by pooling our resources together we really can make a difference in these tough economic times. $1 is less than the price of a candy bar and can usually be found under the seat cushions of your couch. Won’t you help 2 of these charities with your $1 donation? (Now, if you want to give more, please feel free. We won’t stop you! And by all means, send this to everyone you know so we can raise even more!)



Over at Lighter Footstep, you’ll find a poll and a Paypal donation link asking you to choose from the five suggested charities. We ask that you please donate a dollar to the donation pool if you are going to vote, and know that even if your absolute favorite does not finish first or second, all the money donated will be going to worthwhile causes. If everyone we know who reads our sites, our Twitter feeds, our Facebook sites, etc. donates just $1, imagine the impact we can have as a group. And please, spread the word!

Please take a moment to vote for your favorite and to donate just a single dollar to these charities. Times are tough, but our collective might can really help them out. The results will be tallied two weeks from today, and we will write another article detailing the amounts and the two charities who garnered the most votes and will be receiving the money collected. It’s only $1, so please donate!

It’s difficult for those of us in the United States to fully understand what’s going on in Iran. Just over a year ago, we had a major presidential candidate singing “bomb Iran” to the delight of his chuckling partisans, as if the death of Iranian civilians would actually make things better in the Middle East.

There has been almost three decades of bad blood between the U.S. and Iran. During this time, our respective governments have used each other as convenient boogie men, leading up to our current (and very dangerous) confrontation over Iran’s nuclear aspirations. Though almost half a million Iranians now live in the United States, our people don’t know each other very well.

Which makes the events of the past week all that much more surprising to Americans. We’ve been shocked and humbled at the sight of hundreds of thousands of young, disciplined, courageous Iranians marching through the streets of Tehran in protest of an obviously farcical election. Despite widespread press censorship, we’ve heard their voices and recognized our own faces in theirs.

While the present demonstrations are limited in their scope — the presidential elections were, after all, a contest of relatve conservatives — something is changing in Iran, and it’s being changed by the Iranians themselves. That’s a hopeful sign for the future, as is this campaign video. It was produced on behalf of Mehdi Karroubi, founder of the reformist Etemad-e Melli Party. He nearly defeated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 election, and has attended this week’s opposition rallies alongside Mir-Hossein Moussavi.

Good luck, Iranians: It’s your fight and your nation. But it’s our joint future.

This is the first of what I expect will become a continuing feature: Ecolinks, a quick-read collection of environmental and green living articles. The idea will be to hit some of the more interesting and current material out there in a format that won’t tie you down for more than about five minutes, assuming you chase and scan a few of the links.

Most of the articles will be coming from the sites I subscribe and browse on a daily basis. But I’d like to invite your contributions, particularly if you happen to be a green publisher or writer. Just connect with me and send along your links, along with a  brief note on why you think they’re important. The more material I receive, the more often I’ll publish. You can also see the latest information I’m sharing through Google Reader in the sidebar feature What I’m Reading, which is updated more-or-less continuously.

• How will General Motors’ impending bankruptcy effect the company’s green auto plans? GM stock dropped to junk pricing today on the expectation that the auto giant will file for protection Monday. But the GM-Volt blog says the company’s greatly anticipated electric hybrid program shouldn’t be interrupted. The rumored plan is said to transfer GM’s best assets to a new — and debt free — company with 90 days. Production within these cherry picked programs should continue through the bankruptcy process.
• Virgin is the best of the worst when it comes to airline environmental impact. Greenopia released another one of its product ranking features today: a list of what they consider the ten greenest airlines. Let’s face it: There’s just nothing green about burning tons of jet fuel and blowing carbon dioxide through the stratosphere. But Greenopia gives both Virgin and Continental props based on things like fleet age, carbon offset purchases, and how green the airlines are on the ground. One caveat — the supporting article volunteers very little detail on how these factors were actually weighted. So take it with a grain of salt, and see the raw list here.
• To earn your Master’s degree in green communications, you must literally change the world. How is this for a final exam? Treehugger reports that the University of Texas, El Paso, is setting up a Master’s level green communications program at four international locations. To graduate, you must demonstrate how you have changed the world. Measurable social change is your final thesis. Until the program’s directors are satisfied you’re actually making a difference, it’s no diploma for you. Check our their eight-page brochure here (650KB PDF download).

This is a guest post from Max Gladwell.

Our children will inherit a world profoundly changed by the combination of technology and humanity that is social media. They’ll take for granted that their voices can be heard and that a social movement can be launched from their laptop. They’ll take for granted that they are connected and interconnected with hundreds of millions of people at any given moment. And they’ll take for granted that a black man is or was President of the United States.

What’s most profound is that these represent parts of a greater whole. They represent a shift in power from centralized institutions and organizations to the People they represent. It is the evolution of democracy by way of technology, and we are all better for it.

Please note this is not a top-10 list, nor are these listed in any particular order. It’s also incomplete. So we ask that you add to this conversation in the comments. If you’d like to Retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

1. Take Social Actions: The nonprofit organization Social Actions aggregates “opportunities to make a difference from over 50 online platforms” through its unique API. It recently held the Change the Web Challenge contest in order to inspire the most innovative applications for that API. The Social Actions Interactive Map won the $5,000 first prize. The result is a virtual tour of the world through the lens of social action. “People are volunteering, donating, signing petitions, making loans and doing other social actions as we speak — all over the world. To capture the context of the where, this project uses sophisticated techniques to extract location information from full text paragraphs.” You can also join the Social Actions Community, which is powered by Ning…which now boasts more than one million individual social networks.

2. Twitter with a Purpose: This list could be exclusive to Twitter. The micro-blogging sensation was featured on our first two lists (a three-tweet), and it’s certain to be a fixture. From Tweetsgiving, the virtual Thanksgiving feast, to the Twestival, which organized 202 off-line events around the world to benefit charity: water, it’s become the de facto tool for organizing and taking action. Tweet Congress won the SXSW activism award, and celebrity Tweeps Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Rose Tweeted their two million followers about ending malaria. Max Gladwell recently initiated the #EcoMonday follow meme as a way to connect and organize the Green Twittersphere.

3. Visit White House 2.0: Inside of its first 100 days, the Obama administration has managed to set the historic benchmark for government transparency and accountability. The President’s virtual town hall meeting used WhiteHouse.gov to crowdsource questions from his 300 million constituents, complete with voting to determine the ones he’d have to answer. All told, 97,937 people submitted 103,978 questions and cast 1,782,650 votes. The White House continues to raise the bar with its official Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter channels. In so doing President Obama is not just setting the standard for state and local government in the U.S. He’s establishing the world standard. The Obama administration is spreading democracy not by force but through example. Because you don’t have to be an American citizen to be a friend or follower of White House 2.0.

4. Claim your Zumbox: What happens when all mail can be sent and delivered online to any street address in a paperless form? That’s the big question for Zumbox, which has created an online mail system with a digital mailbox for every U.S. street address. And while the answer to that question remains to be seen, it promises to be as liberating as it is disruptive. A key quality for Zumbox is that it’s closed system much like that of Facebook, only instead of true identity it’s true address. This will enable people to better connect with their communities including their neighbors, local businesses, and the mayor’s office. The primary agent of change, though, might not be that this uses street addresses but that it enables direct and potentially viral feedback, which is a virtue that e-mail and the USPS do not offer. The first methods are to request exclusive paperless delivery and to block a sender, but others are certain to evolve such as real-time commenting and ways to share mail with friends, family, and colleagues. Welcome to Mail 2.0. (Disclosure: Zumbox is a client of Rob Reed, the founder of Max Gladwell.)

5. Host a Social Media Event: This is the year of the social media event. No meaningful gathering of people is complete without an interactive online audience, especially when it’s so easy and cost effective to pull off. Essential tools include a broadband connection, laptop, video camera, projector, and screen. Add people and a purpose, such as entrepreneurship. Promote it through social media channels, and you have a social media event. A recent example in the green world is the Evolution of Green, which was hosted by Creative Citizen, a green wiki community. It celebrated the launch of a new Web property, EcoMatters, while also establishing a new Twitter tag. By posing the question, “How can we go from green hype to green habit?” and including the #GreenQ hashtag, it sparked a conversation between attendees and the Twittersphere in real time. Thus was born a new mechanism for getting answers to green questions via Twitter.

6. Travel the World: More than anyone else, Tim O’Reilly knows the potential for social media to change the world. In his opening keynote at this year’s Web 2.0 Expo, he called for a new ethic in which we do more with less and create more value than we capture. This provided the context for SalaamGarage founder Amanda Koster, whose presentation followed O’Reilly’s. The idea is that social media has enabled each of us to have an audience. Whether through Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, or a personal blog, each of us can have influence and reach. What’s more, it can be used for good. SalaamGarage coordinates trips for citizen journalists (that means you) to places like India and Vietnam in conjunction with non-government organizations like Seattle-based Peace Trees. The destination is the story, as these humanitarian journalists report on the people they meet and discoveries they make. Their words, images, and video are posted to the social web to gain exposure and because these stories just need to be told.

7. Build It on Drupal: You may not have noticed, but the open-source Drupal content management system (CMS) has quickly become the dominant player on the social web. While we still prefer WordPress as a strict blogging application, Drupal has emerged as the go-to platform for building scalable, community-driven Web sites. It powers Recovery.gov, a key part of President Obama’s commitment to transparency and accountability. PopRule uses it as a social news platform for politics. And Drupal will soon become the platform for Causecast, a site where “media, philanthropy, social networking, entertainment and education converge to serve a greater purpose.” This is especially significant because Causecast CEO Ryan Scott is transitioning the site off of Ruby on Rails because Drupal has proved more efficient, user friendly, and cost effective. (Disclosure: Max Gladwell founder Rob Reed is co-founder of PopRule.)

8. Green Your iPhone: Looking for an organic diner within biking distance that has a three-star green rating? There’s a app for that. It’s called 3rd Whale, and you can download it for free. (Except that the star rating is actually a whale rating.) Complete with Facebook Connect, this iPhone app locates green products and businesses in 30 major North American cities. It uses the iPhone’s dial function to select a category (food), sub-category (restaurants), and distance (walking, biking, or driving). In Santa Monica, this might give you Swingers diner for its selection of veggie and vegan fare. You could then get directions from your current location using the iPhone’s built-in Google map, rate your experience on the three-whale scale, and write up a quick review. 3rd Whale recently released a new feature that integrates green-living tips, which can show how much energy or waste you’ll save by taking a given action.

9. Unite the World Through Video: Matt’s dancing around the world video inspired many to tears. Today, more than 20 million people have viewed his YouTube masterpiece, where he performs a kooky dance with the citizens of planet earth. The most recent example of this approach is Playing for Change, which connects the world through song. The project started in Santa Monica with a street performance of the classic Stand By Me and expanded to New Orleans, New Mexico, France, Brazil, Italy, Venezuela, South Africa, Spain, and The Netherlands. The project was superbly executed via social media, complete with a YouTube channel, MySpace, Facebook, and Blog. It’s received tremendous mainstream media exposure and also benefits a foundation of the same name.

10. Rate a Company: The conversation about corporate social responsibility (CSR) takes place across the social web on blogs, Twitter, and YouTube, but a central hub for this information and opinion is still to be determined. SocialYell seeks to address this by building an online community around the CSR conversation, where users can submit reviews of companies together with nonprofit organizations and even public figures like Michelle Obama. The major topics are the Environment, Health, Social Equity, Consumer Advocacy, and Charity. The reviews are voted and commented on by the community in a Reddit-like fashion with both up (Yell) and down (shhh) voting. The site is relatively new and still gaining traction, but there’s no question that a resource like this is needed to shine a bright light on CSR and and other related issues.

11. Publish a collective, simultaneous blog post on a universal topic: As Nigel Tufnel might say, this list goes to eleven. Let the #10Ways conversation begin…

Final note: This is Max Gladwell’s third list of “10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media.” The first was posted a year ago today on Sustainablog.org, and the sequel followed five months later. If a single headline can capture the Max Gladwell raison d’etre, this is it.

When I was a kid, my parents would sometimes take us to a campground called Paradise Park. It was a little camp in the California foothills: a woodsy reserve dotted with old oak trees sloping down to a well-shaded river.

Most of the time, it wasn’t much more than a stream. But its bed was thick with well-worn river stones, testimony to uncountable seasons of floods and the persuasive nature of water. Over the centuries, the river had slowly carried away mountainsides, tumbling and cracking rock, reducing boulders into a rainbow of smooth, flat stones the size of a child’s hand. We’d spend hours picking through the best of them, finding the perfect rock to skip across the river. Invariably, we’d build little stacks of stones along the bank.

There’s something deeply satisfying about stacking stones. It’s a common motif in Zen gardens, which seek to create order out of nature’s seeming chaos. In doing so, they highlight the harmony and balance of our place in the world.

It’s not difficult to find a lesson in the stones for those of us trying to simplify our sprawling lives. We’ve chosen seven from the riverbed for you today — ideas that can help you live a lighter, healthier, more sustainable life. Stack them as you will.

Reduce your consumption

Anyone who thinks they can shop their way to greener living has been watching too much television. Sure, responsible consumerism matters. Every purchase is a choice. But the key to simpler, greener living is pretty straightforward: consume less. A simple way to cut back on unnecessary purchases is the One Week rule. Unless you have a real show-stopper, write down the things you need and sit on them for seven days. Stores are designed to encourage impulse spending, so staying away as much as possible is good news for your bank account. After a week, round up the items you still need and group them together with an eye toward combining as many trips as possible. Then stick to your list. While this all sounds very simple, you’ll quickly realize how chaotic our spending habits can be — and how much money you can save through better planning.

Reduce your waste stream

We call it garbage; other nations might call it wealth. There’s no end to things we send to the landfill. Recycling helps, but the sheer volume of waste generated by the average household is overwhelming. From obsolete electronics to that mason jar you casually tossed in the trash last night, we’re flooding our landfills while robbing ourselves of things which might be put to another use. Start by thinking twice when you purchase something: Is whatever you’re buying too heavily packaged? Do you need it all? Think again before putting anything in a trash or recycling bin. Nobody expects you to become a packrat, but that jar could easily be repurposed as a water bottle or something to pack a snack. Food scraps belong in the compost heap. Maybe that cardboard, too. For some idea starters on keeping things out of the bin, check out this helpful list from No Impact Man.

Trim your energy use

Energy prices have relaxed over the past few months as a direct result of the worldwide economic slowdown. But electricity, gasoline, natural gas, and heating oil still represent a hefty portion of the average family budget. Unless you’re fortunate enough to live in an area already invested in renewable energy, every unattended TV or flick of the light switch means you’re burning fossil fuels. That means you’re directly responsible for the air pollution and all the related consumables it took to bring that power to your wall socket. You’ll find hundreds of energy saving tips here on Lighter Footstep, and we’re posting more every week. Learn to weatherize; replace or retire inefficient appliances; consider more energy efficient lighting; and rearrange your living spaces so they take better advantage of natural heat, lighting, and cooling. Switch things off and pocket the change. You’ll probably enjoy the peace and quiet.

Prepare and grow your own food

If there’s one lost art in the past decade or two, it’s cooking real food. By “cooking,” we don’t mean warming up packaged food from the grocery store. We’re talking about preparing meals from fresh ingredients. That’s how our parents and grandparents did it. Admittedly, society has changed: With dual-income households and ever-expanding work schedules, it’s easy to fall back on processed meals and fast foods. And that’s a shame. Making a meal — whether it’s just for yourself or a whole family — is the one of the little rituals which forces us to slow down and be mindful of what we eat. It’s also healthier, and an enormous money saver. Not too handy in the kitchen? Take a class, or spend time cooking with someone you love. Real food needn’t be complicated. And consider growing some of what you consume. Even if you’re not blessed with the space to plant a garden, you can grow a satisfying crop of herbs and vegetables in modest containers.

Reduce your reliance on automobiles

We love our cars. And why not? Virtually everything about modern living — particularly in the United States — assumes automobile transportation. Think how much blacktop and concrete there is within a hundred yards of you right now. Our cities sprawl across what used to be countryside. Stores and businesses which make provision for bicycles and mass transit are the exception, and we feel inconvenienced if there’s not plenty of parking within a few paces of wherever we travel. Dust off that bicycle or grab a backpack and get walking. Perhaps you could start by taking our Ten Mile Pledge. The more you park your car, the more money you’ll save and the healthier you’ll feel. Start small, establish new habits, and you’ll be surprised how much you can get done without burning a drop of gasoline.

Reduce your personal stress

It’s not an accident that virtually every one of our “simplicity stones” has a meditative component. You have to make time to prepare food, choose walking over a car trip, or even make a proper shopping list. This is a good thing, because it forces you to unburden yourself of something else. We are hopelessly overstimulated. Living a greener life is less about learning new things than letting go of the old. Think about all the tasks you do in a week that take longer than thirty minutes. Look most carefully at social obligations, hobbies — even the time you spend online. Have any of these become a chore? What could be jettisoned? It could be something as simple as dropping a social network, or a repetitive task which could be delegated to others. You could probably find a few extra hours a week in this manner. Don’t be in a hurry to fill them. Pick up a book, talk a walk, or putter in the garden. Light physical activity is a great way to trade stress for a little extra serotonin. If you’re doing a good job saving money, you might be able to afford that once-a-week massage. Now, at least, you’ll have time to fit it in.

Learn to give back

You’ve reduced your consumption. There are a few extra dollars in the bank. Your environmental footstep gets a little smaller from month to month, and you’ve managed reclaim some time from the chaos of your week. Now you’re ready to give back. It’s an encouraging sign that the very same people being pushed aside by a faltering economy are sparking a new surge in volunteerism. Perhaps it’s the old adage that adversity brings out the best in people. Or maybe something new is happening: a return to the ideals of community and service. How you join in is a personal decision. Teach your new-found skills to others, help people find jobs, or assist a faith or social group. As you learn to slow down and simplify, chances are that opportunities to serve will find you.

Seven stones — but, of course, there are more. What are some of the things that have worked as you seek to simplify your life? Share them with others by leaving a comment below.

Now and then, it’s a good idea to just hit the reboot button.

Spring seems a good time for this. While the calendar insists winter has a few more days to loiter before heading south for a well-deserved vacation, springtime came early to this part of Florida. With the azaleas and dogwoods in bloom, it’s the season to take our old stuff to the recycling bin, and make room for the new.

I’ll be doing that here. To be honest, I’ve never really known what to do with this site — and it shows. I spend most of my time curating Lighter Footstep, which certainly has a clear sense of direction. Not so much on my eponymous site, which has served as a dumping ground for everything from social media rants to photos of my son and I enjoying a bike ride.

This weekend, I re-themed and began a fairly thorough overhaul of this blog. The changes will be more than skin deep, so I thought I’d think out loud and briefly share where the site is going.

Personal or professional?

It’s been said that blogs are the ultimate online business card. The problem I’ve had is that my personal and business interests are hopelessly intertwined. While I began Lighter Footstep before the close of my radio career, it arose from a my feeling that our lives have become too complicated and would be enhanced by thoughtful downsizing. After finding myself unemployed at midlife, downsizing became as much necessity as conviction. And now we’re all struggling to find our way through a recession.

Most of what you read on Lighter Footstep bubbles up in some way from my own experience. It’s time I quit fighting that here. So this — my “business” site — is going to become a lot more personal. Let the chips fall where they may.

A new direction

In a sense, Chris Baskind dot com will serve as a commentary on Lighter Footstep and my other professional projects. You’ll still see things about social media and related topics, but they will primarily be in the context of web publishing. I’ll also be writing about some of the things in my life, from bicycle commuting to the little challenges we all face as we try to green up and slim down in a tough economy.

I’m a green web publisher. I write about environmental issues. That’s what I’m about, and so is my blog.

Let the spring cleaning begin. As always, thanks for reading.

Pensacola Max, North Florida’s famous weather forecasting Rottweiler, emerged for his morning constitutional today and failed to see his shadow. Popular lore supposes this indicates and early spring.

Conditions were cool and overcast as Max lifted a leg for his annual prediction. It’s the second year Max has performed the feat. In 2008, the 110 pound Rottie also failed to see his shadow — correctly forecasting a mild end to winter and early growing season. With a 100 percent track record of accuracy, gardeners in the Southeast can begin setting their plant beds with the assurance of warmer temperatures just ahead.

The canine prognosticator’s forecast is at odds with the less reliable Punxsutawney Phil, who saw his shadow this morning at the annual Pennsylvania observance. Of course, it’s well known that groundhogs are so stupid they must be poked with a stick and physically hauled from their dens by strangely dressed old men to perform their duties. Such coercion likely explains the worthlessness of their seasonal opinions.

Pensacola Max prognosticating

In contrast, Pensacola Max enthusiastically raced out the back door for a lusty pee before running through the bushes and rolling in his favorite sandy hole. After ten minutes of weather observation and chasing squirrels, he retired indoors for a sloppy bowl of water and a doggie biscuit.

Once upon a time, FeedBurner was a scrappy little web company with a big idea: Make it easier for publishers to manage their RSS feeds, and for people to use them.

That was back in 2004, and FeedBurner caught on like wildfire. Bloggers loved being able to have some measure of how many people were using their otherwise unmetered feeds. It was very simple to set up, and FeedBurner was a good citizen when it came to support. Perhaps most importantly, FeedBurner’s SmartFeed and BrowserFriendly features ensured that pretty much every RSS reader of the day could make sense of a burned feed.

The Google cometh

By the time FeedBurner had rolled up a million or so feeds and its distinctive orange chicklets had become ubiquitous across the blogosphere, they had attracted big league attention. In February, 2007, FeedBurner was acquired by Google.

And then what happened was — well, not much. FeedBurner’s blog went stale, and its community languished. To their credit, Google made the service’s premium features free of charge, but no new features — free or otherwise — were added. Perhaps that’s not surprising: Google isn’t famous for quick assimilation of its purchases, and it’s not reasonable to expect a big rollout of new functionality before Google gets everything on their own servers and platform.

FeedBurner is now Google AdSense for Feeds, and users are slowly being converted to the new identity. But all is not well. Users have been impatient and frustrated with Google’s lack of urgency in handling what used to be a mobile, customer-focused service.

A rocky transition

Inquisitr’s Duncan Riley publicly mused that the newly minted AdSense for Feeds seemed destined to be about advertising, not feed management. Google changed FeedBurner’s ping address without much fanfare, falling deaf to the various sites and services screaming for attention at the old one. And there remain concerns about FeedBurner’s current performance.

As a publisher, I’ve been using FeedBurner for years. The traditional advantages of FeedBurner are so familiar they really don’t need to be repeated here. But if you’re looking for a refresher, check our Marshall Kirkpatrick’s excellent primer on How and Why to Use FeedBurner.

Why FeedBurner is not longer hot

At the same time, FeedBurner is showing its age. While Google has ignored its new baby, technology has been steaming ahead. Many of the key advantages offered by FeedBurner are no longer as pressing as they used to be. How long has it been, for instance, since you ran into a problem subscribing a feed – whether via FeedBurner or not? Format compatibility isn’t an issue these days, and most RSS clients and feed aggregators will handle everything you throw at them. And some of FeedBurner’s other features seem less attractive than in the past:

• Feed flares: Most of these are useless junk. The Digg, Delicious, and StumbleUpon buttons aren’t as useful as the browser and client tools available to those most likely to use them. In any case, if you are using FeedBurner’s advanced metrics, you’re simply encouraging users to bookmark the Google or FeedBurner redirect addresses of your articles. This makes no sense at all (and is the reason I don’t use this feature on my sites).
• RSS subscriber metrics: For some sites, this information is very useful. But with the Google/FeedBurner redirected URLs, you’re paying a high price for this service. There are other ways to measure your RSS reach.
• Site statistics: I expect Google to integrate feed metrics and Google Analytics. As it stands now, though, FeedBurner’s site metrics are pretty crude when compared with other solutions.
• Subscriber count chicklets: Nobody believes them. Nobody cares. They’re cluttering your sidebar.
• Feed ad insertions: There are many ways to do this without AdSense for Feeds.
• Link Splicer and Photo Splicer: Once cool features, the ability to dump bookmarks and images from 3rd party services into your RSS feed has now been made obsolete by the emergence of lifestreaming. If you’re sending stuff like this to your blog stream and something like FriendFeed, you’re actually creating annoying duplicates of your links.
• Email subscriptions: I have personally made extensive use of FeedBurner’s email options, which are free and fairly reliable in terms of delivery success. Over half my FeedBurner subscribers on Lighter Footstep are actually reading the feed in their inbox, and this is huge. But if you’re willing to pay a little something, there are commercial services which do a much better job. Chris Garrett was ahead of the curve on this one, and I think it makes sense for some bloggers to explore mailing list development  using professional grade management tools.

It’s quite possible that Google will modernize AdSense for Feeds later this year. As it stands now, however, the bloom is off the rose. FeedBurner’s flame just isn’t burning all that brightly anymore.

But wait — that’s not all

There are two other important considerations. Dave Winer has expressed one of them pretty clearly: We may not be serving ourselves well by allowing a third party – especially one the size of Google — such influence over an essential component of our publishing. I don’t think a tinfoil hat is a good look for me, but Google is a powerful entity, and investing them with an essential portion of our readership raises questions about how information concerning our sites is used, and the future nature and availability of feed services.

And there’s what is being called the Real-Time Web. The definition of this concept is still a bit slippery, but it boils down to the fact that the web is beginning to move faster than our Old School blogging technologies. New standards, such as SUP and XMPP, are making instantaneous publishing practical. Publish a post — boom — it shows up immediately on a SUP-aware service like FriendFeed. No waiting for Google’s spiders to poll your feed.

Fast rules

This capability doesn’t really matter on my sites, none of which currently deal in breaking news. But if you’re a tech or social media blogger, you’re living in a ferociously competitive landscape. Twenty minutes can easily be the difference between first on a story (and first to Digg’s front page) and explaining to an editor why you just got skunked.

Beyond the blogosphere, the possibilities for instant publishing seem obvious: Stockbrokers pushing real-time quotes to clients; continuously updated news or product pricing; perhaps even delivery of emergency information. None of this is currently possible within the framework of FeedBurner/Adsense for Feeds.

So perhaps it’s time to let FeedBurner burn, and reconsider self-hosted feeds. This decision may not be easy or even possible for sites which are already heavily invested in FeedBurner. But for those who are willing to give up something to get something back — or for new projects — there are potential rewards for going it alone.

Want a preview of how Mainstream Media will look in the coming years? Go stand in front of the mirror. The next Mainstream Media is you.

By you, I mean anyone who thinks, has the desire to be expressive, and has the ability to publish. Today, that can apply to just about everyone on the face of the planet.

A lot has been written over the past year about the decline of the Fourth Estate: the Press, the Mainstream Media. And things are certainly in a state of rapid change. Newspapers are putting their brightest writers on the streets as readership and advertising revenues collapse. With the exception of organs such as NPR, radio Journalism has been dead for years. Even television — the dominant news media of the last few decades — is thinning their newsrooms as they struggle to maintain profitability.

Where does this end, and where will we look for reliable news and information as traditional media spins down and begins to wobble?

Mainstream Media and advertising

The rise of what we now call the Mainstream Media was not so much a development of Journalism as a response to an advertising model. Newsrooms, with their large staffs of producers, editors, and reporters, are expensive to run. But they were sustainable as long as mass media remained attractive as a primary advertising vehicle.

Mass media requires a great concentration of eyeballs. This is why a baby food company could afford to advertise on a national soap opera, or why any product which is targeted to a market segment could be presented to a mass audience: there was always the assurance that a sufficient number of qualified prospects would be available to receive the intended message.

With the coming of the Web and multiple content delivery channels, mass media is doomed. And with it, centralized Journalism.

This is an uncomfortable prospect. We have long regarded newspapers and television newscasts as our proxies in this world, accurately reporting its events and standing as a watchdog when necessary. It is an illusion we share. In fact, Mainstream Media has always been a creature of the governments which have used it for propaganda purposes, and of the commercial interests which underwrite it.

Newspapers were Blogs 1.0

A hundred years from now, monolithic news media will be seen as an aberration in the history of Journalism. A century or two ago, such consolidation of information would have been inconceivable. Newspapers were once a lot like blogs are today: sometimes eccentric; sometimes biased; the mouthpieces of whoever could afford a press and the means to distribute. It similarly took decades for commercial radio and television to acquire its modern respectability.

For better or for worse, all this must now pass. A few of the great brands will survive as they embrace the Mainstream Media of the future, which will be infinitely more granular, more agile, and able to funnel itself into whatever technological conduits and formats await. It will at first change, then become indistinguishable from what we now regard as blogging and social media.

The rise of the superblog

The first incarnation of this process will be the emergence of superblogs. The Huffington Post is an early example: high-profile writers banded together in a high traffic setting under a common theme. This will provide sufficient mass for a galaxy of viable “mini” mass media sites.

Superblogs will provide homes for professional bloggers and journalists displaced from other media. But this is also a transitional state, since it relies on what is essentially a scaled-down version of today’s advertising paradigm.

Embracing the social graph

The real change will come as users acquire better tools to control the information they consume, and as the increasingly trivial differences between blogging and social media break down. The explosion of mobile computing will be a major agent of this change.

Content will become far more portable and interactive than it is today. It will go this way as users demand it, and because advertising will also be increasingly predictive — based on a user’s social associations, past content choices, and both self-declared and behavioral preferences.

This is why companies like Google are happy to give away “free” services such as Google Friend Connect. It’s why they bought FeedBurner and Doubleclick, and why Google Analytics is there for the taking. Google understands that the social graph is where content and advertising must necessarily go, and they intend to dominate the mechanics of its delivery.

Mainstream Media of the 20th century took the shape of its monolithic revenue model. Media of the new century will be atomized by the same forces.

The good news — if you’re already a blogger or participating in social media — is that you have a seat at the table. You are the next Mainstream Media, whether you like it or not. That’s both a sobering responsibility and the greatest engine for wealth and social progress since the invention of movable type.

It’s something of a weekend tradition: the Grand Dust-Up, when the Usual Suspects in social media takes sides and argue the issue of the moment. It’s good clean fun — an excuse to avoid interaction with family and exposure to sunlight.

Over the Christmas break, a new Twitter search engine, Twitority, made its debut. As a development project, it’s a fascinating story. Users demanded a better Twitter search engine, and users built one (note to Google: here’s another market to despoil).

What makes Twitority different from Twitter’s native tools is that it claims to be an authority based engine. And here’s where the conversation really started:

What constitutes ”authority” in social media?

Nice try, but …

To Twitority — which I believe its developers would admit is a first generation stab at this sort of thing — authority is the number of one’s followers. The shortcomings of this approach are obvious. There are people in Twitterholic’s Top 100 with many thousands of followers, for instance, who are at best casual users of the service. Popularity isn’t necessarily the same thing as authority.

Techcrunch floated a more interesting idea, It’s Not How Many Followers You Have That Counts, It’s How Many Times You Get Retweeted. But re-tweets remain linked to popularity: the more followers you have, the more likely it is that someone will re-tweet you.

While there’s no doubt that Twitter users are eager for better search tools (how else will we know what perfect strangers had for lunch?), I rather suspect the attempt to quantify the idea of “authority” as a metric will prove slippery. And here’s why:

In social media, there is no authority.

Not authority as it is being discussed. Because in social media, authority doesn’t extend from its participants. Authority is vested in information and its relevance to users.

“But,” I can hear someone saying, “If a Mike Arrington or Jason Calacanis has something to say, I’m certainly going to listen.” And I’m sure that’s true — if they’re talking about building a tech news site or a human powered search engine. These are areas in which they have well-deserved expertise. But you wouldn’t ask them how to run a car company. Their answers would be as uninformed as the next guy’s.

You are the best measure of authority

It’s been said over and over again: social media is social. You build your network. You decide what to share. You decide what interests you at the moment.  Your experience is going to be very different from mine, and that’s terrific. But the ad hoc nature of social media atomizes traditional concepts of authority. We may establish trusted networks, but it’s the relevance of information which really matters.

So attempting to apply a Technorati-style measure of authority to a dynamic network like Twitter is anachronistic. Not that Technorati’s measure of website authority was ever really of much value.

We need better social media search tools. But authority is a relative metric, and we’d probably do better with more objective ways to sift data (such as intelligent agents which remember user behavior). Ignore calls for old school, monolithic ways of measuring information authority. It’s no coincidence that this concept is being championed by those who stand the most to gain by its adoption.