Ok. I’ll admit as many of us probably would, I’ve contributed my fair share of ignorant tweets. Fortunately, I’m still plankton on the twitter food chain and mine go unnoticed. But, what about when someone is tweeting on behalf of their company? And what if these tweets are aggressive, pushy sales pitches that are full of ignorance and stupidity? Should we simply ignore these 122 characters of crap that was flung at us without warning or do we sling it right back in hopes that it will never return? My answer? I hope you have your goggles on @sashabaksht and @greenscroll!
It went down like this:
@eyecatchaz (Me):
Gonna move my sites and clients sites over to window and sun powered hosting next month.http://bit.ly/7ygWu8
(What the heck is “window powered”… please excuse my lame typo. Yah, I can’t even proofread 140 characters)
@SashaBaksht
@eyecatchaz Why look for "cheap quality" green hosting? Stay with your trusted hosting and green your website @greenscroll
Ok. “@SashaBaksht, do you I know you”, I asked myself? “Well, no. I wonder why you felt inclined to tell me not too look for ‘cheap quality’ hosting. I want make sure my site is green. You say ‘green your website with @greenscroll’. What does that mean?”
After I was finished talking to myself, I went on over to greenscroll.org and quickly learned that greenscroll has an interest in promoting green technology, but how is greenscroll going to ‘green my site’. Here’s how. I give greenscroll money and then greenscroll invests that money in green technology. But greenscrool is NOT a green hosting provider or a hosting provider by any means.
@eyecatchaz:
@SashaBaksht Baah. That logic's lame. The move for green hosting is huge. I'd rather do my part than pay you to do my part.
@sashabaksht:
@eyecatchaz Not sure if I got it.
After that I had another response saying that less code, controlling file size, and good cache control are going to green my site more than @greenscroll. So, the question is? How does @greenscroll “green your site”?
@Greenscroll has a little pledge suggestion page where you enter in your domain name and then a few seconds later you are given a suggestion monthly pledge amount. You can even put a “greenscroll certified” image on your site.
Really? That’s how you are going to green my site?
Serious @greenscroll. Hire a marketing professional to help you craft quality headlines. I’d let this go if this was one instance. But @sashabaksht, @greenscroll, @Suleymani and @nikolaib (all Greenscroll employees) have said this 10 times since January 12 (create a tweetdeck column or use online twitter phrase trackers to find this out). And Google shows that you were saying this as far back as Nov 2009. So, you obviously believe what you are saying. And that’s why I am going to try and kindly tell you why this wins the ignorant tweet of the week.
1. “Why look for ‘cheap quality’ green hosting?”
What the heck is that supposed to mean? You are a non-profit with the goal to PROMOTE green technology! And why do you assume that some of these hosts are “cheap quality”? What makes a host “cheap quality”? I’ll take cheap quality pure solar/wind power hosting over the expensive coal burning kind.
The energy consumed by data center servers and related infrastructure equipment in the United States and worldwide doubled between 2000 and 2005, according to a new study. Did you know that the electricity consumed by data centers (where servers are stored) globally is equivalent to the production of 14 coal fired 1,000-megawatt power plants? (source. To give you some idea of how much electricity that is; a 1000-megawatt power plant can service the needs of a city the size of Boston or Seattle! When you take into account that traditional coal fired electricity generation spews around 1,970 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per megawatt-hour, you can get some idea of just how much an impact the hosting industry must have on global warming. Aside from the carbon dioxide, the main offender when it comes to global warming, coal power also generates other poisonous emissions such as mercury and sulfur dioxide.
Large companies like Google and Microsoft are spending a fortune on implementing green data centers. So, it is a big deal. check it out.
I did some digging on your site and you have a “soft” encouragement to host green. Your host, Slicehost is definitely a top-notch host when it comes to reliability (IP Address: 174.143.245.156, a Slicehost IP address). But they are not green. I wouldn’t expect you to leave your host for a “cheap quality” green one though. I will ask you to edit your article on http://www.greenscroll.org/solution.html that references your “support” for green hosting.
And the tweet that you recently sent me, I’m confused there too. You are virtually powered by green energy? Except that the web host for your site is not green.
@eyecatchaz We do teach consumers to get used "green web" NOW. Greenscrolled site is virtually powered by green energy.
2. “Stay with your trusted hosting and green your website @greenscroll”
Again what the heck does that even mean? If I’m looking for green hosting, that assumes that my current hosting isn’t green. My criteria for switching from “host non-green” to “host green” is because I WANT TO GO GREEN. Until @greenscroll is a green hosting provider, you are irrelevant to why I leave or not leave my non-green host.
Here is the real humor. You are investing money in green technology. Dude! Wind and solar power are both green technology and it are already being used by large data centers. I can either use this technology now or pay you to go invest? Sounds like technology is beating you to the punch. What you do give me is a “Greenscroll Certified” button, because I pay you $5 a month? I believe this is deceitful to consumers who care about green and often give business to a company when that company has some evidence of being green. You are offering companies the “look” of green without any evidence thereof. They have to do NOTHING to do to be green except pay you.
Even my young daughter knows that you are responsible for your own choices. You can’t let someone else be responsible for you.
Conclusion: I know that my small, miniscule band-width of data-transfer on my site and that of existing and future clients is not extremely huge. But if thousands of small sites like mine decided to move to green hosting, that’s not a bad thing is it?
I will also note that I use an Apple Macbook for my machine and my storage back-up is using the Fantom Green-drive. There are other saving areas I have in place that I won’t mention here… that’s not the point. I do hope you choose a new tactic to drive and fund your cause; one that doesn’t shoot it in the foot or reek with ignorance.
