The gort cloud is "a vast, largely invisible and growing (environmentally-aware) '

community A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, t ...

' that sieves, measures and exchanges information on environmental (green) products and services." "The community includes NGOs, government agencies, certifying groups, academics, eco-tech specialists, business alliances, green media including green business news, sustainable designers, foundations, other social networks, conferences, trade shows, events, competitions, green blogs, special interest groups, and trendspotters—to name just a few." The book,
The Gort Cloud
, examines the marketing and brand-building experiences of sustainable businesses in America and discusses the gort cloud concept. It was critically reviewed by TreeHugger in December 2008. The gort cloud is analogous to a

social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods fo ...

: "A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade." In this case, the shared values of the gort cloud are a concern for the environment and the desire for more

sustainable Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livi ...

products and services. The gort cloud can thus be thought of as a particular type of social network with inherent social value. According to Robert Putnam, "social networks have value. Just as a screwdriver (physical capital) or a college education (human capital) can increase productivity (both individual and collective), so too social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups". In this case, the group goal is the increased production of

and

socially responsible Social responsibility is an ethical framework in which an individual is obligated to work and cooperate with other individuals and organizations for the benefit of the community that will inherit the world that individual leaves behind. Social ...

goods and services, and the decreased use of unsustainable or socially irresponsible goods and services. The gort cloud is not limited to social networks; it contains green social networks.

Function

Unlike

social network services A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, act ...

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

or MySpace that "focus on building online communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others", nobody created the gort cloud, and no person or organization controls it. "The gort cloud is simply an interconnected group of people with a common cause: the health and preservation of our planet. But unlike consciously created social networks, no one dreamed up the gort cloud or organized it for a specific purpose. In fact, it's not organized. It just exists as a fluid community." An example of the use of the gort cloud can be seen in the marketing of the book '' The Green Collar Economy'' written by Van Jones. Jones used outreach to the green community (gort cloud) and to other special interest communities to push his book up and onto ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list. "Using a Web-based,

viral marketing Viral marketing is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product mainly on various social media platforms. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people, much in the same way tha ...

strategy, Jones and Green For All, an environmental organization he recently founded, worked to get the word out about his book far and wide. The result was a place—number 12 to be exact—on ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list in the book's first week."

How the gort cloud vets individual products and services

The gort cloud vets green products and services in a process similar to academic

peer review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...

. Once a new green product is introduced, the 'community' will analyze it and judge it. Both experts and non-experts may investigate claims and check facts. "All this is made possible, of course, by the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

— although the gort cloud is not simply a collection of

websites A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wiki ...

. It is not an aspect of the Internet at all. It uses

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...

and the Internet as well as book publishers, magazines, radio, television, trade shows and green events to communicate. The gort cloud is ultimately people and their organizations."Seireeni, Richard, "The Gort Cloud", Chelsea Green, 2008

Etymology

According to the book,
The Gort Cloud
, the author created the name:

The inspiration for that moniker lies in the
Oort cloud The Oort cloud (), sometimes called the Öpik–Oort cloud, first described in 1950 by the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, is a theoretical concept of a cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals proposed to surround the Sun at distances ranging from ...
, named after the astronomer Jan Hendrik Oort. The Oort cloud is a vast field of stellar debris that orbits the
Solar System The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...
. We can only detect it electronically and view its effects, mostly in the form of the occasional
comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...
it tosses back into our neighborhood. This seems to perfectly describe the gort cloud, a vast green network made up of untidy bits that is most easily detected through electronic means and that has a huge effect on the evolution of green business.

Images

Image:GortChart.jpg, The Gort Cloud

References

{{reflist Environmental movements