Our weekly update, where we share what’s inspiring us:

Save As WWF

The World Wildlife Fund has taken paper conservation to a new level with its free WWF software. The software allows you to save a document without printing capabilities, promoting responsible paper use by avoiding the unnecessary printing of digital documents. The idea is compelling – a brilliant example of how a simple call to action can translate a cause into a movement.

Aaron Koblin on the Digital Renaissance

Creative technologist Aaron Koblin has already shown us how crowd sourcing can be translated into the creative arts through his Sheep Market, Bicycle Build For 2,000 and the Johnny Cash Project. Now working on yet another crowd-sourced project – Google’s Life in a Day – Koblin fields questions on the future of creative crowd sourcing and how it will continue to infiltrate the arts.

Why Some Twitter Posts Catch On, and Some Don’t

A new study of Twitter hashtags offers some insight as to why certain topics trend and others fall flat. Idioms tend to be successful only in the short term (stay away from hashtags like “dontyouhate” and “cantlivewithout”) and political topics take a long time to catch on. But the biggest overarching finding was that it’s the structure of social networks that can have more influence than the group size. This often leads to bloggers having more long term influence on stories than mainstream publications.

Planning for Participation

Is there a science to proper participation? According to planner Patricia McDonald, maybe not – but it’s high time someone did their best to come as close to it as possible. In this piece, Patricia outlines key tools and questions that marketers can used to achieve relevant, richer participation. Suspiciously similar to a traditional strategic outline, her concept isn’t really innovative – but in terms of breaking down those benchmarks for participation in the social landscape, it’s a bit surprising that no one has brought this up before.