Sustainability pioneer Interface Inc. has announced the launch of MissionZero, a social network designed to help companies, non-profits and individuals operate more sustainably. When the site goes fully live, it will enable people to participate in groups, post and learn about events, blog, commit to specific sustainability-related missions, and access news from about 300 feeds. The initiative represents a continuation of Interface's trailblazing commitment to eliminate any negative impact the company has on the environment by the year 2020.

Interface is not alone in hoping to catch the social-networking wave. Waste Management Inc. has launched Greenopolis, a social network that Joe Laur, vice-president for content, calls "Facebook on green steroids." Greenopolis includes a reward system that enables people to earn credits for participating on the site that they can then exchange for discounts on products and services.

Meanwhile Sun Microsystems has launched OpenEco, a more focused social network. Targeted primarily at organizations, it provides, in the words of the website, "free, easy-to-use tools to help participants assess, track, and compare energy performance, share proven best practices to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and encourage sustainable innovation." More broadly, OpenEco, which was developed in conjunction with consultancy Natural Logic, "is about using technology to increase the frequency, breadth, and quality of collaboration among organizations working to solve common problems." Version 2.0 will include a dashboard for tracking all GHG sources for an organization or individual.

Marrying social networks and sustainability is an idea whose time has come—or, rather, these are two ideas whose times have come, and it's only natural for them to have hooked up this way.

Creating a green social network is also an innovative way for corporations to build their green brand, in a manner that's substantial enough to protect against charges of greenwashing.

If there's a challenge here, it's around competition, not the concept. Social networking is dominated by a handful of players, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Green niches are sprouting up inside these virtual social ecosystems. The short history of the Internet tells us that power (and visitors) tend to concentrate in a few big winners—think Amazon, Google, and eBay. Is there room for stand-alone corporate-sponsored green social networks? Interface and Waste Management are betting that the answer is yes (Sun's OpenEco has a fundamentally different concept and competitive environment).

Natural resources are a limited commodity, as every environmentally aware person knows. There's another scarce commodity, though—time. Will people find the time to eco-network on Facebook and LinkedIn—and MissionZero or Greenopolis, too? Or—less likely—will they jettison their core social networks for these green alternatives? The answers to these questions will go a long way toward determining how Interface and Waste Management fare with their forays into green social networking.