The focus of this year’s Blog Action Day is climate change. And because we are at a critical juncture in the narrative of national and international climate policy, the timing couldn’t be better. Blog Action Day, a movement to get bloggers from across disciplines and around the world to focus on a single topic for a day has, in just two years, swelled to well over 8,000 bloggers writing for an estimated 11 million readers worldwide.

Even if it doesn’t feel like there is the same intensity in momentum right now for action on climate change (at least in the U.S.) that there was 12-24 months ago, there is a tremendous amount of political activity surrounding the climate change issue right now. From the recent climate summit at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly to the meeting of the G-20 in Pittsburgh, the international policy community is gearing up for the upcoming Copenhagen climate change summit beginning in December.

Projects like the TckTckTck campaign and the 350 campaign are mobilizing support for action on climate change from grass roots organizations, trade unions, faith groups and businesses in advance of the Copenhagen climate meetings in December.

But what about the government of the United States? Most observers will tell you that for any meaningful agreement to be reached in Copenhagen, the U.S. must take a leadership role, a role that would be far easier to assume having passed a climate bill of their own through Congress. But because the health care debate has taken so much time, many thought the chances of passing climate legislation before Copenhagen was unlikely—but that was before the game-changing op-ed by Sen. John Kerry, a Democrat, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican, in Saturday’s New York Times.

Sen. Graham’s support for the Kerry-Boxer climate and energy bill has breathed new life into those hoping for a pre-Copenhagen climate bill from U.S. lawmakers. And with the ink drying on the Senate climate bill and on the docket to begin committee debate at the end of the month, the timing of Blog Day of Action 2009 is absolutely impeccable.

This post was republished courtesy of ecopolitology

What the ad rates of the most valuable blogs in the U.S. tell us about balancing advertising and content strategies.

The business and investing site 24/7 Wall St. today released its latest installment of the 25 most valuable blogs in the United States. Needless to say, the editors here at SpammyBlogger weren’t terribly surprised to learn that we had missed the cut (maybe if it was a top 26!), but we were surprised to learn that many of the highest valued blogs had surprisingly low advertising (CPM) rates.

When popular and highly valued sites like The Drudge Report, Talking Points Memo and Perez Hilton have CPM rates in the relatively low $5 to $6 dollar range, you might wonder how they are able to make any money at all. Well, the answer is twofold:

1. Sites with low effective CPMs and high revenues usually get crazy traffic volume. Not only that, their visitors stick around, visiting as many as 7 pages per visit.
2. Sites with low advertising rates but high revenues usually have other revenue streams. Those revenue streams (if ad-based) can sometimes really spam-up a site with all kinds of text link ads and referral banners and widgets. There is a fine line to walk between properly monetizing a site and

Unless you’re getting boatloads of traffic, however, low CPM rates are tough to build value upon. And while some sites have figured out seemingly workable models with this strategy, most of the highest-valued blogs on the list–Gawker Media, Techcrunch–have much higher CPM rates, upwards of $20 CPMs on a page.

The difference between the two categories can largely be explained by differences in quality of content and experience. Better writing, reporting and aesthetics allow publishers to command higher CPM rates.

But those things all take time and resources and some bloggers/publishers might want to rush into things and get as many ads as possible on their site. The problem with chosing that strategy is that once you go that route, it is hard to rebound and ever establish as a blog leader in a niche that commands higher CPMs.

Darren Rowse of ProBlogger considers his morning blogging routine akin to performing triage:

“I liken most of what I do in the mornings to a Triage in the emergency room of a hospital. It’s about assessing what happened over night, identifying urgent things that need immediate attention and less urgent but important things that I need to prioritize and then mapping out how I’ll use my day.”

Getting bogged down in the morning is easy, and that is why it’s a great idea to set priorities and even have a checklist or schedule. Whatever system works best for you, check out the way ProBlogger gets going in the A.M., and perhaps you too can create some structure on those coffee-soaked, bleary-eyed mornings.

Image via Jeff Kubina

The worst of the spamming botnets, Donbot, generates 18.2 percent of all spam, according to Symantec.

“Some of the larger ISPs are seeing a lot of non-bot-driven spam,” said Adam O’Donnell, a researcher with antispam vendor Cloudmark. With these campaigns, spammers rent legitimate network services, often in Eastern European countries, and then blast a large amount of spam at a particular ISP’s network. The idea is to push as many messages as possible onto the network before any kind of filtering software detects the incident. According to O’Donnell, spammers are sending hundreds of thousands of messages per day using this technique.

The news from Symantec comes on the heals of a similar report from McAfee found that spammers wasted 33 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2008.

Sure, we can recycle all that junk mail, but that process creates an additional layer of energy inputs from collection, sorting, processing and repurposing, to say nothing of the energy and resources needed to make the mail in the first place. Fortunately—in the United States at least—there are several new services that allow people to take back their mailboxes by blocking catalogs and other junk mail from being delivered.

But when it comes to junk mail in your email inbox, even the best “spam” filters will let a few slip by on occasion. But not everyone uses a spam filter and the environmental impact of all that virtual junk mail is now rivaling that of its papery cousin, according to a new study by McAfee (pdf).

The study, commissioned by anti-virus software maker, McAfee, and produced by the consulting firm ICF International, found that spam emails worldwide wasted 33 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2008, an amount equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million American homes.

At the individual level, a single spam email emits only 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but with an estimated 62 trillion spam emails sent worldwide in 2008, the cumulative emissions of spam are approximately 17 million metric tons of CO2 — a number equivalent to the emissions from approximately 1.5 million American homes.

The report attributes the vast majority of spam’s greenhouse gas emissions to energy used in the process of viewing and deleting spam or searching for legitimate email erroneously trapped in spam filters.

Obviously McAfee has a horse in this race and it would behoove them to emphasize the energy wasted by spam emails; the company’s SpamKiller software has long been a core part of their suite of security software. As such, the McAfee report finds that effective spam filtering saves 135 terawatt-hours of electricity per year.

While the McAfee report concedes that spam filters themselves account for about 16 percent of the total energy required by PCs to deal with spam, it concludes that, “compared to the energy users consume searching for false positives and viewing and deleting spam messages, the energy expenditure of spam filtering seems like a small price to pay.”

Image: hegarty_david

Editor’s note: This is a first guest post from Max Gladwell and was part of a one-day experiment in content distribution. The post was published at nearly 100 sites and pushed/shared via various social media networks, including digg, twitter and StumbleUpon.

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.

For most of us, social media has changed our lives in some meaningful way. Collectively it is changing the world for good. Given the pace of innovation and adoption, change has become a constant. Every so often we find the need to stop and reflect on its most recent and noteworthy developments, hence the following list.

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 Kostner, 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.