do the right thing.com - Ranking Companies By Social Consciousness

From mutual funds to co-ops, there is a large audience for information relating to how socially conscious companies are, and that audience is the target for start-up do the right thing.com, a news aggregator that relates specifically to how well companies do in the area of public perception. Founded in 2006 by Ryan Mickle and Rod Ebrahmi, do the right thing.com allows users to submit articles and then vote on the impact of the news in the article on the company's public perception of social consciousness.

Companies submitted to do the right thing.com are evaluated over a period of 30 days and assigned a ranking at the end of the evaluation period based on the articles submitted during that time and the ultimate impact those articles are voted to have on the company's image. An article about Universal's participation in the RIAA, which has been accused of bullying tactics, currently has a -4.1 impact rating on Universal, while Google giving bicycles to employees who'd rather commute to work by pedal power has a +2.8 impact rating for Google.

According to an article in The Technology Chronicles, CEO Ryan Mickle moved the company to San Francisco to be better positioned in the hub of “socially conscious folks.” Mickle envisions the company as a provider of information directly to investors, consumers, and corporate executives who want more knowledge of a company's soul in addition to its bottom line. Hoping that this vision will incorporate user-created content to view companies through an unfiltered eye, Mickle says, “I think this will benefit society in ways no one has anticipated.”

The biggest issue that I see with do the right thing.com is that the rankings are assigned after an evaluation period of 30 days, rather than having a dynamic ranking. It's unclear from information on the site what happens if a company like Whole Foods, currently enjoying top-of-the-heap rating of 124, would slip up and do something so heinous as to fire a percentage of its workers in favor of lower-paid help as Circuit City is currently doing (and receiving a -3.6 impact for). The site also allows for transparency of corporate employees, and encourages companies to have a liaison on the site to help facilitate the company's communications with the masses. The audience is certainly there for gathering this type of information about companies in one location; here's hoping that the execution works for the audience.