Interview with Gay Browne, Founder of Greenopia.com?

We deal with fair and direct trade, but we do come across some environmental justice issues from time to time.
How do you define and activate localization strategies?

This doesn't really apply to us.

Who is your competition and how are you differentiating your offerings?

Our competition is basically every green business or product directory in the marketplace.

We differentiate ourselves by being much more thorough in our analysis (as opposed to a 'raise your hand if you are green approach' which many guides use) and utilizing life cycle principles in our methodology.

We also are one of the few directories who will visit businesses with a brick and mortar storefront to make sure they are actually green before we fully rate them. In our opinion, most green directories, and some certifications, simply set the bar way too low. We pride ourselves on being an exclusive label rather than an inclusive one.

What traffic / members have you charted from Face Book and Twitter to date?

We have over 2000 facebook friends on the Greenopia account and about 3500 followers on twitter. Approximately 15% of our traffic comes from facebook or twitter.

How many members do you have?

Greenopia currently has 17,000 businesses and services in our U.S. database. We will have 20,000 by the end of this year and 100,000 by the end of 2010. We have a new partner that will be coming on board in January, which will help us expand more rapidly.

How do we evaluate potential advertisers?

All advertisers have to be eco-friendly or we don't accept them. The ad services that we use are supposed to follow these guidelines and for the most part do a good job, occasionally, we get a non-eco ad, which we pull down immediately.

How do we monetize the green movement at Greenopia?

Greenopia has a traditional media company. Our content is offered on three platforms-books, web and mobile. Revenue comes from selling books, advertising and sponsorship on the web. Coupons will be a part of our mobile application sometime early next year.

What on-line community model did we reference to build Share