Socially Responsible Investing – 1
In my novel, The Accidental Activist, there is a scene when the protagonist upset by the sheer power of the multinational glares at commuters on the train and “silently challenges their portfolios.”
This scene led me to begin researching socially responsible investing. Can those of us with disposable income make a difference through the ways we invest? Are we culpurable for the environmental damage and human rights abuses of companies from whom we enjoy dividends?
Over the next few days I want to examine this idea. Here is a short kick-off, a short introduction from Stephen Whipp, who brings 30 years of experience with him.
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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist (now available on Kindle) and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/
Left Coast Voices 
I doubt if the Blogosphere is in decline as some suggest.
In fact, a recent change in Google’s algorithm that decides search engine rank may change things again as Google attempts to reward individuals who write content worthy to be read and punish “Content Mils” that churn out hundreds and thousands of mostly useless trash everyday just to gain search engine rank so people will drop buy and possibly click on an advertisement, which usually litters these sites.
Prior to this change by Google, which they have been working on for the last few weeks, search engine’s rewarded sites with many postings even if they were copycats or short.
Now the new Google algorithm is supposed to reward longer posts with richer content. The changes Google was doing to the ranking algorithm were flawed at first. I saw my Blog climb from 1.8 million to 2.6 million then this week it dropped to 1.7 million.
A rank of 1.7 million may seem high but when one considered that there are more than 450 million Websites and Blogs that every Website and Blog is compared to when ranked by Alexa [ http://www.alexa.com/ ], a 1.7 million rank means being in the top 1/3 of one percent globally and that results in often landing on the first page of a Google search bringing more readers to a Blog that are interested in the theme or topics that Blog focuses on.
More than one person with highly ranked Blogs has told me that to land on the first page, a Blog should be in the top half of a percent globally and the readers will come.
I just searched Google for “Google algorithm changes and came back with more than 7 million hits. Links to the first three and highest ranked sites talking about the changes follow:
http://www.foliomag.com/2011/google-s-algorithm-changes-will-you-notice
http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/08/technology/google_algorithm_change/index.htm
http://mashable.com/2011/03/02/mahalo-lays-off-10-of-staff/
CNN’s Money said, “Google’s recent change to its search algorithm has dramatically shaken up the businesses of websites that moved up or down its search rankings. Sites whose rankings rose to the top found that their traffic and revenue soared — but the adjustment had an equally devastating effect on those that were dropped.”
iLook China.net, which is my primary Blog for now, has averaged 342 views a day since Sunday. Before the changes started a few weeks ago, that average was 215 a day.
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