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Concerned about your carbon footprint? Spend more time tweeting and less time Googling. Quirky as it may seem, Raffi Krikorian, a developer for Twitter's Platform Team, has crunched some numbers and found that using Twitter is better for the environment than using Google.
According to Krikorian, each tweet sent consumes about 90 joules, or 0.02 grams of CO2. On a larger scale, there are some 50 million tweets sent on any given day, which works out to about a metric ton of CO2.
A single Google search, on the other hand, consumes about 1 kilojoule and emits 0.2 grams of CO2. So what does it all mean? That "we can do better," apparently.
See all of what Krikorian had to say on the matter in this video (NSFW - language) and skip to the 3m15sec mark.
Comments are closed on this article
avenger48
April 20, 2010 at 8:49pm
Either way, just turning on the average MaximumPC-level computer for more than 10 minutes probably uses more energy than an average Google or Twitter user generates just from searching/tweeting in a year.
thegamepro
April 20, 2010 at 2:15pm
I couldn't care less about my co2 footprint. The whole global warming thing is a scam. Just google "Climategate" and you'll find out why.
avenger48
April 20, 2010 at 8:50pm
Congratulations, Gamepro, you get it. I'm so tired of rapidly expanding government, all in the name of "being green"
rseding91
April 20, 2010 at 8:11am
Do you know what this means?!
For every person who switches to tiwtter i've got to perform 1 more google search!
*Googles a bunch of random stuff* There, that should make up for the green freeks.
If this gets to out of hand i'll have to setup an automated googler!
bigglesandginger
April 20, 2010 at 7:17am
My shoelaces are more green that both twitter and google. And when compared to twitter successfully answer as many questions I pose to it.
Vano
April 20, 2010 at 5:34am
Spend more time tweeting and less time Googling.
It's like asking drink water instead of jumping on one leg...two unrelated things this is!
Ridiculous. Oh, and go tweet yourself :P :D
roninnder
April 20, 2010 at 11:12am
Actually, I would say it's more like saying "spend more time playing football in your yard and less time driving to work." One certainly has a bigger environmental impact than the other, but I can get by completely without one and not the other.
Paul_Lilly
April 20, 2010 at 6:03am
Not necessarily. Twitter isn't just about tweeting to the world what you had for lunch, it's also become a source of breaking news and real-time search results. See here:
http://bit.ly/aA8xMY
-Paul Lilly
