100 Million Users Access Facebook via Mobile
Posted on 15. Feb, 2010 by admin.
A recent entry on Facebook’s official blog states that more than 100 million people are “actively using Facebook from their mobile devices every month.” This figure is growing fast, and it’s not just limited to those entering via a Facebook app on the iPhone and AT&T. From the blog post: “This usage happens on almost every carrier in the world and comes less than six months after we announced 65 million people on Facebook Mobile.”
Contributing to the uptick in mobile users are the Facebook mobile apps available across a variety of carriers and mobile devices, enhanced Facebook mobile-ready Web pages (m.facebook.com, for example) and the ability for users to post to Facebook via SMS (including Facebook’s new link-shrinking capability with FB.ME). Should Facebook start providing analytics to users with their URL-shortening service, you might see even more mobile activity.
For businesses, this news puts even greater importance on marketing within the world’s largest social network. Mobile is a tricky proposition. But if you can merge mobile with social - and with Facebook, you can - you have a win-win situation. You gain access to the social sphere, as well as mobile users. Consider this when updating Facebook Pages for your business.
To target the Facebook mobile user, keep updates relatively brief and include mobile-friendly calls-to-action, such as brief blog posts, links to maps, and links to specific, mobile-friendly Web pages. Want users to call your business? Link to an offer on a landing page with a highly visible phone number. Many devices will automatically enable click-to-call. Brick and mortar businesses have a great opportunity here to drive foot traffic by providing instant coupons through Facebook updates, for example.
Source: Web Site Magazine
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Kraft Sheds 150 Million Pounds From Products
Posted on 09. Feb, 2010 by admin.
Northfield, IL — Kraft Foods has met its goal to reduce its packaging by 150 million pounds two years ahead of schedule with a variety of lightweighting and material replacement efforts.In 2005, Kraft set its packaging goal, hoping to achieve it by 2011 along with other goals.
The company developed a tool, the Packaging Eco-Calculator, to help develop efficient and optimized packaging, and by 2008 Kraft had cut its packaging by 116 million pounds. A number of packaging redesigns in the last year helped put it over its goal.
Some of the packaging changes include: covering energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, waste creation and water use.
- Oscar Mayer Deli Creations packaging in the U.S. was redesigned with 30 percent less paperboard, making it smaller and taking up less shelf space. The change is expected to cut out 1.2 million pounds of paperboard a year.
- The packaging for Oreo Cakesters was reduced by 12 percent and now uses 100 percent recycled paperboard.
- Packaging layers were removed from Milka chocolate bars in Europe (a change that will also be used in Latin America), cutting the product’s weight by 60 percent less weight and eliminating 5.7 million pounds of packaging a year.
- A redesign of Kraft salad dressing bottles in Australia is expected to reduce their packaging by 100,000 pounds of plastic a year.
- A redesign to the zipper on Kraft Natural Cheese bags has eliminated more than 1 million pounds of material a year.
In addition to reducing materials, Kraft has chosen different material for some products. In North America, the steel coffee cans for Maxwell House, Yuban and Nabob have been replaced with composite paperboard, which weights 30 percent less, contains 50 percent recycled content and reduces packaging needs by 8.5 million pounds a year. Kenco coffee in the U.K. is now being sold in refill bags, which use 97 percent less packaging by weight than previous glass jars.
Images courtesy Kraft Foods
Source: Greener Design
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Has the Economy Helped or Hurt the Growth of Green?
Posted on 07. Feb, 2010 by admin.
OAKLAND, CA — The Great Recession and the fledgling recovery from it have been the big stories in the business world for the last year, but a new report from GreenBiz.com shines a light on how the economy has shaped the environmental impact of business operations.
The third annual State of Green Business report, published today, explores in-depth the data behind the growth of green business, to find out whether and how companies are moving the needle toward sustainability.
“The good news is that green business didn’t go away during this recession,” GreenBiz.com executive editor Joel Makower said during a press conference this morning. “What makes this recession notable over recessions from the last 20 years, other than the scale of it, is that the green business professionals were not the first ones to be thrown overboard.”
This trend shows that business leaders are taking the environmental performance of their firms as seriously as the economic performance. In a survey of more than 2,700 members of the GreenBiz Intelligence Panel, about 80 percent of the respondents said that their companies would spend the same or more money on environment, health and safety as they did in the last year.
The report, launched today as a precursor to two State of Green Business Forums — one happening in San Francisco on Thursday, Feb. 4, and one happening in Chicago on Tuesday, Feb. 9 — shows that environmental improvements and innovations became a means of surviving lean times, and being more competitive once things rebound.
Read the entire article at GreenBiz.com
