Is your company a seal hugger, or a seal clubber? - Scryve has the answers…
By Matt Rebeiro August 13th, 2007
In Networking · Stories
Last week I discussed the relative merits of charity and environment friendly search engines. This week I’m road-testing a new application called Scryve:
Our website provides a resource for environmentally and socially aware internet browsing. Our browser tool provides a simple way of making quick informed decisions about companies and websites that you would like to use. The tool shows a responsibility rating for each site you visit for which we have a company profile. If you like that rating, then keep using the site. If you don’t like the rating, then click on it, and we’ll show you why it’s rated that way and a list of alternatives with (hopefully) better ratings.
All sounds good on paper, but how do they achieve this? Well, its reasonably simple: you download the browser tool from their site and once installed you simply surf as ever you would, the difference being that in the top right hand corner of every page sits a little yellow Scryve icon. When you happen across a page that has been, ahem, “Scryved” the yellow icon changes colour and gives the website a rating out of 10 (1 being bad, 10 being good). You can then click on this number which redirects you to a Scryve profile for the company saying why the company concerned is, or is not, environmentally and socially responsible. My personal favourite discovery is that Black & Decker score a 1/10 …couldn’t be to do with the fact they make chain saws and they, you know, cut down trees…?
Like with so many new web applications it relies on UGC in the form of a wiki. Users can update existing entries for a company or, if no Scryve profile exists for a company, generate a brand new profile. Its all rather nifty but as to how successful this application will prove - the jury is still out . Sure, Apple have a rating of 4/10 - but will this affect the sales of the iPhone? Will it hell.
1 Rob Falkner // Aug 13, 2007 at 8:49 pm
The wonderful thing about scryve is that I, and you, are the jury- And I just got back in. I am not in the position to ‘ethically invest’ as I’m concentrating on more immediate finances such as rent and Masters bills, cigarettes and monthly Oyster payments, it’s still cool to gauge the ratings of companies in terms of, well, not just those quarterly reports thingies. I also have a special fondness for the fact that I can put in my own two cents about why I think Black And Decker etc should be a 5 instead of a 1, for whatever reason I choose-If I’m not keyed up on their policies in environment or staff then I become curious to know a bit more. I also have an attachment to the founders, two dear old friends, and am proud that I witnessed a key moment in the fruition of scryve: Camden Town, summer of 2006, Tupelo Honey, two brothers discussing an idea.