Last month, we launched a new Facebook application for BC Hydro, called Green Gifts. It's a virtual gift-giving app with a twist of sustainability: a conservation tip that accompanies each virtual gift and friend-to-friend message.

So far, it's been a lot of fun. The launch was accompanied by a daily prize, awarded randomly to a Green Gifts user; our client gave away everything from hand-cranked lanterns to iPod Nanos with solar chargers.

Today, though, things took an interesting turn. With the end of the daily contest, we've announced a new prize... and a new Green Gift to accompany it.

It's the XO laptop:

In 2002, MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte experienced first-hand how connected laptops transformed the lives of children and their families in a remote Cambodian village. A seed was planted: If every child in the world had access to a computer, what potential could be unlocked? What problems could be solved? These questions eventually led to the foundation of One Laptop per Child, and the creation of the XO laptop.

You may remember it as the hundred-dollar-laptop initiative. That figure turned out to be too low to deliver the level of connectivity and computing power the foundation wanted to put into kids' hands... but they were able to pull it off for twice the amount.

It has a Linux-based operating system with a specially-designed interface geared to kids. The keyboard is built for a child's hands. There's no hard drive and no optical drive; it uses WiFi to ferry data to and from the outside world. Spill-proof, drop-proof and as child-proof as a laptop can reasonably be made, the XO won't win any awards as a performance whiz... but it has the potential to make a big difference for a lot of kids.

Here's where folks in the developed world come in: until November 26th, we can buy an XO laptop for the kids in our lives. You pay $399, which pays for both the laptop you'll receive and a laptop for a child in the developing world. (You'll also receive a $200 tax receipt.)

So the idea at Green Gifts is that, between now and the 26th, you can send a virtual XO laptop to your Facebook friends... along with a tip that tells them about the XO (which is a sustainability marvel; you can charge its battery with a pull cord or a solar charger, and its power draw is meager) along with a link to buy one (or, more accurately, two).

Which is why BC Hydro is buying an XO, too, to be awarded to a lucky Green Gifts user after Nov. 26th. And while the folks at One Laptop Per Child will probably be happy to get BC Hydro's cheque, that's not the point of the exercise.

The real point is awareness, and giving people an opportunity to contribute to a worldwide effort to make a real difference for kids.

As we build online communities and program in the latest bells and whistles, it's easy to forget that, for many people, the killer feature is the opportunity to change the world for the better – even if it's just in some small way.

When you're a company looking to make your first foray into the thickets of social media, building your own online community from scratch – and taking on everything from usability issues to platform selection to how you get that critical mass of people to sign up in the first place – can seem pretty daunting, and with good reason.

British Columbia's public power utility, BC Hydro, is taking a different tack: a toe in the water that could well signal a bigger splash to come. Instead of building their own stand-alone entry in the Web 2.0 sweepstakes and trying to lure users from other sites, they've headed to where people are already participating in droves: Facebook.

We've worked with BC Hydro to create Green Gifts, a brand new Facebook Platform application. Green Gifts lets you send a free virtual gift to your friends, including an icon-sized environmentally-themed image, a personal message from you, and a practical Power Smart tip for conserving energy and reducing your environmental footprint.

And it's that tip that's the key to the whole thing. Virtual gift-giving is huge on Facebook (as your notification inbox attests soon after you join it). We want to capture just a little of that activity... and give people a chance to devote it to energy conservation.

Which is emblematic of the approach we're recommending to many of our clients who are new to the social web (and more than a few who are old hands). You don't have to create the next Facebook, YouTube or Flickr to successfully engage your public; especially if you're starting out, join them wherever they're already participating:

• Chances are good your potential users are already voting with their feet - or, more to the point, their browsers. For instance, judging by the figures for the Vancouver and Kelowna networks alone, there are well over half a million British Columbians registered on Facebook, and the number keeps growing. The province's goal of becoming energy self-sufficient by 2016 makes it urgent that BC Hydro's message reach as many ears and eyes as possible... and Facebook's an ideal vehicle.
  

• Look for opportunities that offer plenty of participatory infrastructure. The Facebook Platform is loaded with features, beautifully usable and highly flexible. (Want to program in PHP? Go ahead. Java? Sure. Flash? Knock yourself out.) The documentation is extensive and, at least as far as functionality goes, thorough. (Facebook's admirable determination to prevent spam and abuse, on the other hand, translates into unannounced notification restrictions and usage algorithms that had us climbing the walls once or twice. Eh, we lived.)

• Look for the culture of participation among the users, and work with it. Facebook is a place where people come to keep touch with each other, and often it's a light touch at that. Green Gifts gives users a way to connect, while spreading the word about conservation.

So if we've seemed a little more excitable than usual these past few weeks, now you know why: we've been working on one of the most fun projects we've taken on so far, on a topic that's core to our social mission, on a platform we've been itching to dig into for the better part of a year, with a client that has the (ahem) power to make a real difference in sustainability.

We've had the privilege of working with some first-rate people, too. Agencies that operate in strict regulatory environments often have to find their way carefully in new media, but we were impressed at our client's determination to get their feet wet in the world of social networking.

I hope you'll check Green Gifts out. You can find it right here.

Over at the Jackson Fish Market blog, Hillel Cooperman makes a strong case that "software is an untapped and exponentially powerful medium in which to convey messages and values for brand advertisers." He points to Burger King's videogaming endeavours, but says his argument extends to the web as well.

His examples: Lincoln's My Dream and Vancity's ChangeEverything.ca. And damned if he doesn't get exactly when Vancity (and we) had in mind when we built it:

The Vancity folks understand all that's necessary is an association with the goodwill generated by the site’s existence. In fact, the Vancity folks understand quite a bit - namely that the best way to get continued interest in their site (while accruing value to their brand) is to rely on the community to truly power the site with their content and stories.

We've been referring to that as reflected glory marketing, and it turns the conventional wisdom about sponsoring this kind of initiative on its head.

Supposedly, you maximize your return on your investment in something you're supporting (whether it's a web site, a run for the cure or the new wing of a university library) by slapping your logo everywhere you can, the bigger the better.

But online communities – really interesting ones – are a lot less likely to grow and thrive if you brand a site so heavily that users never feel any ownership over it. Sometimes your best bet is to acknowledge your role and then step out of the way, allowing the success of your community to speak for itself... and reflect well on your brand.

Cooperman (who headed up the user experience crew on Microsoft Windows Vista) compares that approach to the way Lincoln handles My Dream. It's well worth reading... although I have to admit he broke my heart when he revealed that My Dream's gorgeous front page area map is actually statically rendered. (Honestly, it was like finding out the truth about Santa Claus. Deep down, the five-year-old inside me still wants to believe that tag clouds could be this beautiful.)

His key insight is this:

I would bet good money that both Lincoln and VanCity feel that their endeavors were a success. I bet both feel like the exposure they got was relatively cheap compared to other methods they use. But I also claim that if Lincoln saw VanCity’s engagement numbers - average minutes per session, page views per unique visit, repeat visits per user, etc., they would be deeply jealous of what the VanCity folks had accomplished. And I believe this would still be the case despite the fact that MyDream has gotten way more traffic overall (due to Lincoln’s larger ability/effort to drive distribution).

Thanks, Hillel... and thanks, Vancity. We're tremendously proud of this project: both because of what it has achieved, and because of the faith our client has consistently shown in the power of online community.

Our friends at ChangeEverything.ca want to send some lucky Vancouver-area bloggers to see a free Bard on the Beach performance:

Blog about changing your community, and you could find yourself at Bard on the Beach, courtesy of our Blogging for Change contest!

Just add a blog post to ChangeEverything.ca related to our current change theme of Change Your Community, no later than 5:00 PM PT on Wednesday September 13th 2006 for your chance to win a pair of tickets to the Sept. 17th Bard on the Beach presentation of Measure for Measure.

And if you haven't checked out ChangeEverything.ca yet, we hope you do. Not just because we built it for Vancity, and not just because Vancity is such a kickass community leader in these here parts, and not even because we're thrilled with how it's turning out, but because we'd love to know what you think.