Despite a general consumer slump, the eco marketplace is sizzling as stylish shoppers continue seeking earth friendly products. In fact, when it comes to green, demand is up.

That’s why stylish home eco retailer, VivaTerra, has announced a fresh new website design, complete with the latest social-media friendly tools and helpful shopping features. The new site design is bigger for easy reading and selecting, and better, with more ways to view and share products via the most accessible and popular social-media channels. Click to view an attractive, user-friendly flash interface updated frequently with new products and specials.

A noticeable enhancement is also in the ways you can browse and shop: by category, product, style (modern, zen, colorful, rustic) or materials (stone, silk, reclaimed wood, bamboo). Also in the shop for section: the newest items, seasonal featured products and great specials.

The re-design also gives us shoppers access to VivaTerra’s Facebook and Twitter pages, as well as links to email and bookmarks – making it easier than ever to share favorites or wishlists. It’s a clever and creative update that only enhances VivaTerra’s continued focus on eco living with style. Check it out!

Note: VivaTerra is a corporate sponsor.

For so long you’ve had your favorite fashion magazines delivered to your mailbox.

Freshly sealed in their virgin plastic covering, the perfumed pages not yet opened to release their synthetic lotus blossom scent, when it occurs to you something’s wrong, and it’s not just that lotus blossoms totally don’t smell like alcohol.

And on this particular day you think to yourself that driving a hybrid, eating less red meat and drinking from your reusable bottle isn’t enough, that maybe getting a monthly subscription, though indulgent and fun, isn’t very, well – to overuse the term – eco.

You’re not alone, lady friend. And by the looks of magazine sales, you’re getting more options to turn to the computer and flip.

Anna Griffin founded high-brow eco-magazine Coco Eco in September 2008; the website says “this is the modern girl’s style guide on the road to being gorgeous, glamorous and green, and your new source of everything eco-chic, that’s good for our planet, and good for you too.”

I agree.

Though original in her initial approach, other publications like Lucky and Women’s Wear Daily have invaded the once tacky idea of making high fashion internet-friendly.

According to an article in Econsultancy, September 2007 had fashion behemoth Vogue at its height of ad pages. Weighing in at almost five pounds, the magazine had 840 pages. 727 of those were ads. But ad pages have been in decline ever since. This month, the magazine came in at 429 pages, with a 36% decline in ad revenue from last year.

No surprise to any of us that the magazines are failing for lack of advertising and a paucity of creative innovation. Didn’t they see this coming?

Look for more publications from Conde and Hearst to jump on the bandwagon incorporating video and social media from fashion shows, design weeks and yes, I’m guessing advertisers.

Or just follow us – why would you want to follow anyone else?

Anthropologist Margaret Mead once said: “A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

If you’ve ever doubted this, look no further than Cadbury chocolate.

Last month we reported that Cadbury decided to add palm oil to its chocolate in Australia and New Zealand. The company insisted it was doing so not to save money but to “improve” its chocolate as the palm oil produced a “softer” product than chocolate made with real cocoa butter.

The reaction of the Australian and Kiwi public to such obvious spin was scathing. Furious chocolate lovers organised anti-Cadbury campaigns on Facebook and Twitter and the issue hit the national news on both sides of the Tasman Sea.

Every foodie knows that palm oil is a cheap and inferior substitute for cocoa butter, but the real concern for environmentalists was the fact that palm oil production is linked to deforestation and habitat destruction in South-East Asia and Africa. Cadbury insisted it would buy only sustainably-produced palm oil but this claim was dubious at best, something our original post explains in far more detail.

Thankfully, Cadbury has bowed to public pressure and the Australian press is reporting that the company has decided to remove palm oil from the chocolate recipe. A victory for people power!

What does Cadbury have to say about this? Both the main Cadbury Australia and New Zealand sites are curiously silent but have deleted the sections on why palm oil is so wonderful from the frequently asked questions.

However, Cadbury has responded to the criticism on its Choclovers.com website – not to be confused with the Choclovers.org protest site. The Choclovers.com site carries a press release quoting Cadbury New Zealand managing director Matthew Oldham, said the decision to go back to using only cocoa butter in Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate was in direct response to consumer feedback.

“At the time, we genuinely believed we were making the right decision, for the right reasons. But we got it wrong. Now we’re putting things right as soon as we possibly can, and hope Kiwis will forgive us. Cadbury Dairy Milk’s quality is what’s made it one of New Zealand’s most trusted brands for many years. Changing the recipe put that trust at risk and I am really sorry.”

Cadbury cited “passionate comments via social media environments” and confirmed the decision covered Australia as well. There is no sign that Cadbury intends to reverse its decision to downsize from 250g to 200g – but the company maintains that it has decreased its wholesale price accordingly.

It is probably no coincidence that the company has also joined Twitter since the furor broke – tweeting as @cadbury_aunz since August 13. Via the Twitter account, the company has acknowledged it was “wrong” and had gone back to its original recipe after strong feedback from consumers. The company also mentioned the UK business was Fair Trade-certified and other businesses would follow.

Social media gives consumers more power than ever, making it easier for that “small group of thoughtful people” to change the world. Cadbury has learned this the hard way – but good on them for doing the right thing in the end.

Image: Vlad the Impala

Chris Brogan, President of  New Marketing Labs

Social media’s newest darling (Twitter) has become a very important platform for eco-designers and boutiques to connect with the public and each other.

Women’s Wear Daily recently featured an in-depth look at fashion brands and how social media – Twitter included – is radically changing the way fashion brands engage with their customers online, forming “relationships with a community of customers, particularly consumers for whom the Web is as important as a limb.” (WWD boasts that its own Twitter page has grown to more than 688,000 followers from a measly 200 since its launch in February.)

Chris Brogan, a nationwide social media guru and President of Boston based New Marketing Labs, a media marketing agency, works with large and mid-sized companies to improve online business communications as well as helping individuals to use social media.

Brogan says a service like Twitter isn’t just a new marketing channel, it’s an opportunity to cut through the clutter and the worst of the traditional approaches and return to basic human interactions.

“Social media provides the ultimate in listening tools, so boutiques and designers can listen. Further, there are several free or cheap distribution and media making options available, so maybe you can invite in designers and those interested in fashion to have conversations,” says Brogan. “Imagine designing with a live cam running so that people could check in on progress, give opinions on changes, shape the projects in real time?”

As we become more invested in our clothing and see how much it can work for us, being implicated in its design isn’t just forward thinking, it’s smart.

“Imagine prototyping live on video without having to ship the product around for reaction,” says Brogan. “Imagine having private showings online where people could get an early opinion on whether or not they would be willing to buy a certain product before shipping.” He adds that other ways designers could involve the public is by having people commission certain designs in a crowd-sourced manner, using a tool like Chipin.

“The possibilities are endless,” says Brogan. From personal experience, I agree.

Some of my favorite eco-designers on Twitter whom I follow religiously include Doucette Duvall, cmarchuska, Lara Miller, Bahar Shahpar and Feral Childe. Eco-boutiques include Nimli, Greenloop, Pivot and Equita. These are designers and boutiques who will respond right away to you. How wonderful is that when you’re just starting to understand the worth of eco-fashion or, better yet, to get discounts and heads up on sales and events?

Got a question for me? I’ll be your switchboard operator to them when you find me @amytropolis. And be sure to follow @ecosalon for links, tips and ideas you don’t see on the blog.

Citizen journalism, open government, status updates, community building, information sharing, crowdsourcing, and the election of a President.

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 Koster, 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.