As time goes on, one of the more interesting trends that continues to happen with surprising regularity is how frequently new business models and ways of doing business are emerging through social media and online tools. In many cases, these trends are helping to reinvent how businesses sell and consumers buy all kinds of products. For that reason alone, new sites are worth paying attention to no matter what industry your business happens to be in.  The benefit of that for your small business is that watching these new models may also spark a new idea or method of selling that you can consider for your own business:

1. Woot – This online retailer takes the unique approach of only selling a single product each day. Around each daily product is a dedicated conversation stream, live commentary and a detailed description. By focusing on a single product, not only do they add a layer of conversation and description to the product, but they also give their users the perception that each daily deal is special and only available for a limited time. This focus allows them to add urgency to their site and convert browsers to buyers quickly. While you may not be able to convert your entire business to just selling one product at a time, this model may be the next evolution of the long-standing “deal of the day” model that many businesses have used at one time or another in the past.

1. Groupon – How much would you lower your standard prices if I could guarantee you 100 customers? Or how about 1,000? The premise behind Groupon is to offer customers “collective buying power” – which essentially means that you can offer a great deal and it will only kick in if a set number of consumers take you up on it. Go on the site and you will see deals sorted by region and many of them have been redeemed by thousands of people. What Groupon shows you is that sometimes you CAN actually count on volume to compensate for lowering your prices. The nicest thing about the site is that instead of trying to recreate this model on your own site, you can add a special offer for your business to Groupon.

1. Hotwire – By now most people are familiar with the new auction based pricing model that Priceline introduced into the travel industry. Letting consumers set the price for what they are willing to pay was a revolution in the travel industry at the time when Priceline was introduced. Hotwire used the slightly adapted model of offering exact prices, but not letting you know the details of what you booked until after you pay. If you have your own eretail site, this model can be a good way to get rid of excess inventory in a different and more fun way.

1. Blippy – If you don’t live your life in social media, the idea behind Blippy will likely confuse you. It is a social site that lets people automatically share the latest things they have purchased (and how much they paid for them) by linking the site to a single credit card. This level of transparency and sharing may seem crazy to many people, but the site represents a social experiment that points to an interesting opportunity for businesses whose customers may be used to sharing every small detail of their lives. It may be an outlier in this list of business models as they admittedly don’t have a revenue model for the site as yet – but the shift in what people are willing to share online is the real trend worth watching.

1. Dubli- This site offers some of the most creative pricing models you can find online – and models that have not yet been duplicated across many others sites. The first is what they call a “reverse auction” where products have a starting price and you use credits that you purchase on the site to reveal the current price. Each time a member of the site uses a credit to reveal the price, the price goes lower until someone decides to make the purchase. The second model is based on a “unique price auction” which means you need to have the lowest bid that no one else chooses to have in order to win

Barack Obama stepped into the chaotic final hours of the Copenhagen summit today saying he was convinced the world could act “boldly and decisively” on climate change.

But his speech offered no indication America was ready to embrace bold measures, after world leaders had been working desperately against the clock to try to paper over an agreement to prevent two years of wasted effort — and a 10-day meeting — from ending in total collapse.

Obama, who had been skittish about coming to Copenhagen at all unless it could be cast as a foreign policy success, looked visibly frustrated as he appeared before world leaders.

He offered no further commitments on reducing emissions or on finance to poor countries beyond Hillary Clinton’s announcement yesterday that America would support a $100bn global fund to help developing nations adapt to climate change.

He did not even press the Senate to move ahead on climate change legislation, which environmental organisations have been urging for months.

The president did say America would follow through on his administration’s clean energy agenda, and that it would live up to its pledges to the international community.

“We have charted our course, we have made our commitments, and we will do what we say,” Obama said.

But in the absence of any evidence of that commitment the words rang hollow and there was a palpable sense of disappointment in the audience.

Instead, he warned African states and low island nations who have been resisting what they see as a weak agreement that the later alternative — no agreement — was far worse.

“We know the fault lines because we’ve been imprisoned by them for years. But here is the bottom line: we can embrace this accord, take a substantial step forward, and continue to refine it and build upon its foundation,” he said.

“Or we can again choose delay, falling back into the same divisions that have stood in the way of action for years. And we will be back having the same stale arguments month after month, year after year – all while the danger of climate change grows until it is irreversible.”

He also took a dig at China, drawing attention to its status as the world’s biggest emitter and reinforcing America’s hardline on the issue of accountability for greenhouse gas emissions.

The lacklustre speech proved a huge frustration to a summit that had been looking to Obama to use his stature on the world stage – and his special following among African leaders – to try to come to an ambitious deal.

The president was drawn into the chaos within minutes of his arrival at Copenhagen, ditching his schedule to take part in a meeting of major industrialised and rapidly emerging economies.

Responding to Obama’s speech, a British official said: “Gordon Brown is committed to doing all he can and will stay until the very last minute to secure a deal… but others also need to show the same level of commitment. The prospects of a deal are not great.”

Tim Jones, a spokesman for the World Development Movement, said: “The president said he came to act, but showed little evidence of doing so. He showed no awareness of the inequality and injustice of climate change. If America has really made its choice, it is a choice that condemns hundreds of millions of people to climate change disaster.”

Friends of the Earth said in a statement, “Obama has deeply disappointed not only those listening to his speech at the UN talks, he has disappointed the whole world.”

The World Wildlife Fund said Obama had let down the international community by failing to commit to pushing for action in Congress: “The only way the world can be sure the US is standing behind its commitments is for the president to clearly state that climate change will be his next top legislative priority.”

The extent of crisis in the talks has taken leaders by surprise. The Brazilian leader, Lula da Silva, told the conference that the all-night negotiating sessions took him back to his days as a trade union leader negotiating with his bosses.

Suzanne Goldenberg and Allegra Stratton in Copenhagen

guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 December 2009 12.53 GMT

By DAVID A. FAHRENTHOLD and JULIET EILPERIN
The Washington Post
Friday, December 18, 2009

What the heck is all this?

This is a United Nations-run conference that was — originally — supposed to produce a new global agreement to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions because what happens after 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol is uncertain. There is a legal agreement in place, but it has no specifics in it, and countries would have to agree to a new round of targets. But the idea of a new global agreement was scotched before the conference even started. Now, countries say they’re trying to produce a “political agreement.” In U.N.-speak, that means a deal that settles some key issues, like climate targets for major greenhouse gas emitters and the amount of money that rich nations will pay to poor ones to adapt to climate change, and establishes a framework for inking a formal treaty next year.

Key issues remain unsettled, so the talks’ final outcome are uncertain.

What’s with those demonstrators?

Many of them feel the Copenhagen conference doesn’t take the problem of climate change seriously enough. For days, demonstrators outside the Bella Center in Copenhagen — the site of the talks — have battled with Danish police wielding tear gas and truncheons. Others have held nonviolent demonstrations in the city (and in Washington, where Thursday morning Greenpeace used fake police tape to cordon off the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, labeling it a “Climate Crime Scene” because they believe the chamber is trying to slow progress toward emissions cuts). The goal of most of them is to push the delegates toward more stringent, ambitious cuts in emissions. But there are also skeptical groups, who believe that climate change is not happening in the way that mainstream science believes, or that tackling it would impose vast costs on the world’s economy.

What’s the deal with “two degrees”?

It’s a statement about the world’s thermostat. This summer, world leaders gathered in Italy pledged to prevent the earth’s average temperature from warming more than two degrees Celsius, which is about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, from pre-industrial levels. This conference was supposed to work out the stickier question of how to accomplish that goal. Many vulnerable countries have called for the world to aim for curtailing global temperature rise even more, by establishing an upper threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

For now, the world seems to be on pace to miss the goal. A consortium of U.S.-based scientists recently found that, even if all the world’s countries fulfill the emissions-cutting pledges they’ve made so far, temperatures will rise about 3.6 degrees Celsius (6.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

What progress has been made so far?

Some, but there’s a real question of whether it’s enough. The most encouraging news has come on the subject of the funds that rich countries will pay to poor ones, both to help them adapt to climate change and to reduce the greenhouse gases they emit. On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the United States would help mobilize $100 billion in annual financing by 2020 (although Clinton did not say, specifically, how much the U.S. would contribute). And, on Wednesday, there was a key signal from the other side, as Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said poorer countries would accept a smaller amount of short-term funding in exchange for a bigger long-term package. Zenawi said his side had agreed to take $10 billion a year in the next three years, if that amount rose to $100 billion by 2020.

Also, before the conference began, both the United States and China made pledges to tackle their greenhouse-gas emissions. In the U.S. case, President Obama offered to reduce them “in the range of” 17 percent, as measured against 2005 levels, by 2020. China pledged they would reduce their carbon output relative to the size of their economy by between 40 and 45 percent compared to what it otherwise would have been over the same period. Many experts said this is less ambitious than it seems, since China’s economy is bound to get more energy efficient in the coming decade as it develops and relies on cleaner technologies. Some say that China’s existing policies will lead to carbon output reductions in the 40 to 45 percent range and that they need to be more ambitious than that. Many countries have criticized the U.S. target as well, saying that it represents just a 3 percent cut below 1990 levels, the benchmark used under Kyoto.

What role is the United States playing?

No longer the villain, but not quite the hero, either. The Obama administration has been praised in Copenhagen for pledging to make emissions cuts, which was a break from the Bush administration’s approach. And, over the last couple of days, U.S. officials have proposed funding for poor countries, a breakthrough credited with keeping hope of a deal alive. But U.S. negotiators were criticized by some developing countries for taking so long to act and for demanding that major developing countries subject their emission cuts to international scrutiny. The U.S. delegation is likely to be cautious in any emissions-reductions it promises — mindful that climate legislation is stalled in the U.S. Senate, and that an angry Senate refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol under President Bill Clinton.

Obama will arrive in Copenhagen on Friday. What he says, and whether he’s able to bring bickering blocs of countries together, will likely be the best-remembered story of the U.S. involvement there.

Wait, didn’t “Climate-gate” show that climate change isn’t happening after all?

No. The “Climate-gate” scandal involved a trove of electronic files stolen from a climate-change research center at a British university. The e-mails showed climate scientists fretting over problems in their data, and scheming to keep researchers who disagreed with them out of scientific journals. They certainly raised questions about whether the leading experts on the subject tried to make their field appear less messy, and the science of climate change more unanimous, that it really was.

But there was nothing in them that showed that the basic conclusions of climate science — that earth’s temperatures are warming, and that man-made pollutants appear to be trapping unusual amounts of heat in the atmosphere — are wrong.

Where do the delegates still disagree?

On a few key points. Countries have made little progress on how an agreement would capture the climate targets they’ve put on the table. They also disagree over how — or whether — third- party countries can check to see if countries are meeting their promises to reduce emissions.

Also, it was only Thursday that countries formally agreed on just what they were negotiating over here. Poorer countries want the next deal to be considered a formal sequel to the Kyoto accords, since they held industrialized countries to strong emissions cuts. A group of developed countries wanted to start with a clean slate, but on Thursday they gave up that bid.

How is this all going to end?

At the last possible moment. Though international negotiators have had two weeks to work out their differences in Copenhagen, it’s likely they will follow custom and pull off a deal on the conference’s last day. The arrival of heads of state, including Obama, may speed that along, since they have authority to make deals that lower-level negotiators do not. For now, however, it seems like the hardest issues of dealing with climate change — how deeply to cut emissions, how to make sure other countries are keeping their promises — will be left unresolved, to be handled at another conference (with many of the same players) next year.

Getting the words out that your business is “green” is proven to be a smart business move – Is it only a marketing ploy or a real environmental-changing business campaign?

Go green issues has been hot in small business and entrepreneurship, especially in the last couple of years. In every business sector, there is highly probable a niche that is green-related: green real estates, green cars, green web hosting providers, green printing, green jobs, green business cards, green offices, etc.

To learn more, as usual, I use Google Insights to get a bigger picture on a topic from the Internet.

Just type in “green business” in Google Insights’ search box and you’ll see what I mean:

Green business trend

Going green drives plenty of interests. According to Google Insights, the top interest on “green business” is the United States, followed by the United Kingdom. It’s probably safe to assume that the US and the UK are two of the countries whose people are having a strong awareness on environmentally-friendly practices in business.

Given the prospects and trends, a question arises: Is going green in business only a marketing gimmick?

The answer is cliche: yes and no.

To some, green business is just a marketing gimmick

With the green energy certificates and renewable energy credits available for businesses to instantly green their business operations, I’m not sure buying those will instantly make the business green. Carbon neutral – yes; green – no.

RECs (renewable energy credits) can aid a business to go green by nullifying its carbon emission, but they will not make a business more effective and energy efficient in its business operations.

In my opinion, going green in business is more about business practices than simply neturalising the carbon emission released in any business activities.

Going paperless, use daylight lighting system, optimising the use of air conditioners and using energy-efficient light bulbs are some of the activities that make a business greener, despite not necessarily carbon neutral.

So, yes – To some business claiming that their business is green but is not practicing green business operations, despite the plausible business action, going green is probably more a hyped marketing move rather than an environmentally-changing move.

To some others, green business is real life-changing business

To some other, going green takes the business beyond their operational comfort zone.

Some examples: A green business plants a tree for every joining customer; A business allows (even insists) the employees to telecommute to reduce carbon emissions created by traveling to and from the office; Another business even build its own wind turbines to power its business operation with 100% renewable energy.

Some green business mix-and-match green business practices with the purchase of RECs (and other green certificates), virtually making them green and carbon neutral.

Nevertheless, every green-related activity counts

A marketing gimmick or not, green businesses are, indeed, the front-runners in creating a more environmentally-conscious society, worldwide.

Their decision in going green is highly appreciated. And as long as what they do in their going green efforts is positive, enjoying residual financial and branding benefits from the “go green” business campaign is entirely fine with me.

How about you? Please let us know your opinion by commenting on this article.

Ivan Widjaya
Green business rocks
Image by greenforall.org.