Creating a better future
Change2 - a proprietary site or a community site?
A few weeks ago as part of some research into sustainability websites I first encountered Change2.
I was initially excited and - to a certain extent I still am - that there is a social network for people interested in sustainability.
In Change2's own words on this site: "The Change2 network is a free central resource on sustainability that brings together individuals, business, government and NGOs."
However Change2 is also a business that sells consultancy services to the sustainability community. See their identically branded business site. Indeed the call-to-action to become involved with their business is to join this site.
I was confused and so raised this founder Leon Young (see my Jan 27 comment on his profile). Whilst I acknowledge Leon’s response (on my profile), the critical question remains for me: how successfully can Change2 function as a social site for its community stakeholders while it is so closely aligned to a single vendor in the industry?
The answer, I argue, is "not very successfully".
Commercial goals and social goals don't mix happily and there are two stakeholder groups in a gnarly position:
* Clients (current and potential) of Change2
* Competitors of Change2 (and its partners)
Clients
Sustainability managers, particularly at large listed corporates, face the following questions:
* What are the conflict of interest issues for a member of the Change2 social site in considering a competitive tender from Change2 the business?
* Am I endorsing Change2 if I join? Am I breaching my organisation’s corporate governance policies if I join?
* I want to be involved in a community, but I don't want to join a vendor site!
* It's just not obvious what's on offer. While the brand of the business and the social site remain identical there will be confusion about what’s on offer and how Change2 is engaged as a business.
* The Corporate Environmental Managers Group (CEMG) is a independent membership group for environmental managers. This is a group that doesn’t allow vendors to be members. Yet CEMG itself has now joined Change2's site. Are CEMG endorsing Change2?
Competitors
Competing sustainability consultants would encounter some of the following complexities when considering activity in the site.
* Change2 is an uneven playing field.
How can I compete with Change2 in their own site? They win every time when the role of selecting which posts, videos and forums are featured are determined by Change2 editors.
* My client just joined Change2’s site!
What does that mean for our relationship?
* The client I'm pitching is a member of Change2.
In a pitch against Change2 some competitors would perceive client members of the site to have a vendor bias, possibly a conflict of interest.
* Is this a way for Change2 to acquire new business leads? I can't access the database - not fair!
* What is the relationship between other parties in the site? Is the Eco Investor business independent of Change2?
Problems as a social site
Taken together the above issues will discourage some industry stakeholders from any involvement at all, and I’d suggest result in a degree of circumspection amongst some others that do join. Therefore the site is not delivering its aims.
For those joining there are some further problems around the implementation of the social site.
* The brand position is weird.
Imagine for a moment a company called Telstra created a social site called “Telstra” as a "free central resource on telecommunications that brings together individuals, business, government and NGOs." There would undoubtedly be legitimate questions about Telstra's motivation, the credibility of the site, and endorsement of Telstra that membership entails.
* Change2 writers lead the blogs
The vendors have so far had a strong voice in the site. The diversity is growing, but the collective voice of the community, the crowd, is comparatively quiet.
* Social discussion - forums and site activity, as opposed to blogs - in Change2 is demoted on the homepage below the fold, below blog posts (mostly from Change2) and other items selected by Change2, or videos made by Change2. The implication being that your voice is less important than our voice.
Whilst it's possible there are good answers to some of these questions, the fact they can be asked at all reveals a troubling ambiguity about the position of site, one which will see its social aims off to an under-achieving start.
Compare Change2 to the eminently more democratic, independent and vendor neutral sydneycyclist.com or the cancer support site i2yaustralia.ning.com. Both are built on the same free platform (Ning) as Change2 and are full of vibrant exchanges between engaged members. Notice there are no bike shops or cancer charities running these sites (although these organisations may be members).
How can this be fixed?
If others agree with my case, then Change2 can be easily modified to address the problems (because Ning is an easy platform to customise).
Here's what I'd recommend:
1. This post gets a good discussion in the site.
2. The change2 social site is rebranded with a new name and brand to make the break with change2 the business.
3. The administration of the site is opened up to members of the community unaffiliated with Change2 the business.
4. Named blogs are removed. There is simply the open blog of the site (like that of sydneycyclist.com).
5. Forums become the main site channel, and administrator effort is devoted to encouraging discussion.
I remain excited about the site, and its potential, and I’m looking forward to responses from the community of Change2.
This article is also cross-posted to my own site.
I was initially excited and - to a certain extent I still am - that there is a social network for people interested in sustainability.
In Change2's own words on this site: "The Change2 network is a free central resource on sustainability that brings together individuals, business, government and NGOs."
However Change2 is also a business that sells consultancy services to the sustainability community. See their identically branded business site. Indeed the call-to-action to become involved with their business is to join this site.
I was confused and so raised this founder Leon Young (see my Jan 27 comment on his profile). Whilst I acknowledge Leon’s response (on my profile), the critical question remains for me: how successfully can Change2 function as a social site for its community stakeholders while it is so closely aligned to a single vendor in the industry?
The answer, I argue, is "not very successfully".
Commercial goals and social goals don't mix happily and there are two stakeholder groups in a gnarly position:
* Clients (current and potential) of Change2
* Competitors of Change2 (and its partners)
Clients
Sustainability managers, particularly at large listed corporates, face the following questions:
* What are the conflict of interest issues for a member of the Change2 social site in considering a competitive tender from Change2 the business?
* Am I endorsing Change2 if I join? Am I breaching my organisation’s corporate governance policies if I join?
* I want to be involved in a community, but I don't want to join a vendor site!
* It's just not obvious what's on offer. While the brand of the business and the social site remain identical there will be confusion about what’s on offer and how Change2 is engaged as a business.
* The Corporate Environmental Managers Group (CEMG) is a independent membership group for environmental managers. This is a group that doesn’t allow vendors to be members. Yet CEMG itself has now joined Change2's site. Are CEMG endorsing Change2?
Competitors
Competing sustainability consultants would encounter some of the following complexities when considering activity in the site.
* Change2 is an uneven playing field.
How can I compete with Change2 in their own site? They win every time when the role of selecting which posts, videos and forums are featured are determined by Change2 editors.
* My client just joined Change2’s site!
What does that mean for our relationship?
* The client I'm pitching is a member of Change2.
In a pitch against Change2 some competitors would perceive client members of the site to have a vendor bias, possibly a conflict of interest.
* Is this a way for Change2 to acquire new business leads? I can't access the database - not fair!
* What is the relationship between other parties in the site? Is the Eco Investor business independent of Change2?
Problems as a social site
Taken together the above issues will discourage some industry stakeholders from any involvement at all, and I’d suggest result in a degree of circumspection amongst some others that do join. Therefore the site is not delivering its aims.
For those joining there are some further problems around the implementation of the social site.
* The brand position is weird.
Imagine for a moment a company called Telstra created a social site called “Telstra” as a "free central resource on telecommunications that brings together individuals, business, government and NGOs." There would undoubtedly be legitimate questions about Telstra's motivation, the credibility of the site, and endorsement of Telstra that membership entails.
* Change2 writers lead the blogs
The vendors have so far had a strong voice in the site. The diversity is growing, but the collective voice of the community, the crowd, is comparatively quiet.
* Social discussion - forums and site activity, as opposed to blogs - in Change2 is demoted on the homepage below the fold, below blog posts (mostly from Change2) and other items selected by Change2, or videos made by Change2. The implication being that your voice is less important than our voice.
Whilst it's possible there are good answers to some of these questions, the fact they can be asked at all reveals a troubling ambiguity about the position of site, one which will see its social aims off to an under-achieving start.
Compare Change2 to the eminently more democratic, independent and vendor neutral sydneycyclist.com or the cancer support site i2yaustralia.ning.com. Both are built on the same free platform (Ning) as Change2 and are full of vibrant exchanges between engaged members. Notice there are no bike shops or cancer charities running these sites (although these organisations may be members).
How can this be fixed?
If others agree with my case, then Change2 can be easily modified to address the problems (because Ning is an easy platform to customise).
Here's what I'd recommend:
1. This post gets a good discussion in the site.
2. The change2 social site is rebranded with a new name and brand to make the break with change2 the business.
3. The administration of the site is opened up to members of the community unaffiliated with Change2 the business.
4. Named blogs are removed. There is simply the open blog of the site (like that of sydneycyclist.com).
5. Forums become the main site channel, and administrator effort is devoted to encouraging discussion.
I remain excited about the site, and its potential, and I’m looking forward to responses from the community of Change2.
This article is also cross-posted to my own site.
Add a Comment
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Comment by Leon Young on March 9, 2009 at 10:56am -
Change2 is and always has been completely transparent about the fact that it is a business. It is the first statement you see at the top left of our site when you visit it. Just to clear up what we do we are not consultants, we are vendors of an off-the-shelf online behaviour change learning program around sustainability for corporates. As I clearly stated in my response to you, the core purpose of the Change2 network is to provide a support platform for our online learning. That is a place for the staff members of organisations that pay to use our online learning to come and access further information and to be further engaged in the sustainability message. It was created to provide those learners with broader resources, news, opinion and secure access to their own organisations sustainability team to ask questions, have discussions, access policies etc. We have integrated the site with our own proprietary learning management system, so that learners access learning content from within the network and are directed to the relevant resources upon completion of modules.
When we started investing heavily in creating this site, it became quickly apparent that much of the content could benefit the broader business sustainability community, and so we decided to make it open and see what happened. The response has been great, much of the Australian sustainability community have embraced it. And I think they are all fully aware that Change2 is a business. We've met many of the members and they are fully aware of the nature and purpose of the site.
Just to clarify a few other relationships:
CEMG
After experiencing the site, members of the CEMG have decided to create a closed group for their members on here. They use it as their online presence and we are happy for them to do this. They could do the same thing on other commercial social networks such as Facebook, but they choose to do it here. We welcome them. CEMG has no commercial relationship to Change2 and in no way endorses Change2.
Content Contributors
Eco Investor and Ethical Investor both provide occasional featured content which is credited to them. We are forming similar relationships with niche publishers and bloggers from around the world. We do this to get more high quality content on the site, they do it to promote their brands. Again, it is all completely transparent.
Net Balance Management
Net Balance Management are partners of Change2. They provide subject matter expertise for our learning modules for which we pay them a fee. They supply blog content to enhance the site and to improve the learning experience for Change2 learners, as well as build their own brand. Several consultant members of the site would be considered competitors to Net Balance, and they post comments and are free to post their own articles, blogs etc.
Paid Contributors
Some of the contributors to the site are Change2 staff members, and contributing to the site is part of their job description for which they receive a salary. Other specialist bloggers are paid a small fee to help cover their time in researching and writing some of the more extensive and technical blogs, which really are more like articles.
Member Contributions
We welcome blogs from all interested parties. Like any operators of such a site, we reserve the right to delete postings as we see fit. To date, we have only deleted one posting which was a spammer promoting an eBay scam. Other examples of posts we may delete would be ones that are defamatory in nature or factually incorrect.
Ning
Ning provide the platform upon which Change is built. Ning is a very successful commercial business, who in their most recent round of venture capital raising were valued at USD500 million. They have 2 business models.
1. You can use their platform and hosting for free, in which case they run advertising over your site from which they collect revenue.
2. You can pay a small fee to use their platform and not run advertising.
We chose option 2, as we didn't want a third-party running advertising across this site.
Ning is not a charity, it is not open source and it is not specifically intended for non-commercial activities. It promotes itself for both commercial and non-commercial use, and there are literally thousands of online communities run by commercial interests on Ning. In fact, simply go to ning.com and search a topic and you'll find many of the most popular ning networks work on a very similar model to Change2. One of my favourites is Chief Learning Officer. http://clonetwork.ning.com/
As a business, Ning reserve the right to ban individual members, delete content or indeed entire sites at their discretion, which I believe is quite reasonable, they have to protect their interests.
Telstra
Telstra run a site called Now We're Talking. It's a bit different from Change2, it is a place where key Telstra people blog about their specialist subjects what is going on in their area of the business, and where they invite customers and the general public to give them feedback. In fact the Green blog is written by a member of this site, Dr Turlough Guerin . http://www.nowwearetalking.com.au/blogs/green-files
In Summary
We hope that removes any ambiguity. We thought having the very first statement on the homepage of the site stating that we were a business and what business we were is was sufficiently unambiguous, however I appreciate the opportunity to provide further clarification of who Change2 is and what we are about.
Change2 will first and foremost be about supporting our learners and provide our learning management platform. For this reason alone it can never be handed over to someone outside of Change2 to administer. Change2 also invests heavily in paying for management and content production for the site. We plan to have more video content in the future. This is expensive to produce and I can't see a community group funding it. The vast majority of Change2 visitors come to read the blogs. Without the commercial arrangements in place we could not guarantee the same quality of content. In any event, this is not an activist site, it is a business-focussed sustainability site run by a business.
However, we thank you for your suggestions.
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