Moral Metric

A few weeks ago Dell sent an invitation asking Moral Metric to participate in a contest. They were asking small businesses: “What do you believe in?”

We promptly turned the application over to our summer interns in the ad department. Sarah and Lauren went to work and came up with what turned out to be a winning strategy.

These jelly bean dispensers are appearing around our offices. You know how they usually work: Put in your coin and out come multi-colored jelly beans. It’s luck of the draw — you get the color and flavor the machine decides to give you. Ours are different. No coin is required and we have preloaded our dispenser with only four flavors of jelly beans.

We have green, yellow, red and black. Just like the movies, Green means good; yellow is caution; red is likely a stop for most; and black is “outta bounds.” Don’t take chances. We predict the moral zone each movie falls into. Our reviews are balanced by yours. Fair, balanced and free. Coming soon to a Web browser near you.

OK that’s it. I am posting something to this new Blog. Google the “Do Good” company just bought YouTube for a remarkable $1.6 billion. That means that 65 employees produced $24 million each. Not bad considering 19 months ago YouTube was started in a garage before moving to the second floor digs over the pizza place.

So all of this gives me hope because Moral Metric was started in a garage and now has moved to an office. A real authentic start up office in a re-appropriated strip mall. Our cubes are formed from old retail display cases; the cafe is next door and the vet next to them. Fine digs but no pizza.

So we started in a garage and moved to abandoned retail space and we have a motto that says “Measure For Good”. These are humble beginnings but part of the tradition of a great startup. Look for great things.

I’m so excited that I get to be the one to introduce Moral Metric, a new web community that will help people make sense many of the media choices available. There is so much information on the internet, through email and text messaging, in video games, music and more. With such a huge amount of information available, people need help finding the good and avoiding the bad and that’s where community comes in. Let’s all work together to search out the best.

We’ve been hard at work for a while now, and Moral Metric has just gone into beta testing. We’re ready to start inviting just a few people to take a look around Moral Metric and start helping us create content. If you’d like to get involved, just go to www.moralmetric.org and enter your email address. We’ll keep you updated on what’s happening with us, and you’ll be one of the first people to know when Moral Metric is unveiled.

Keep your eyes on this blog also, since we’ll be posting updates, clues, and interesting articles that relate to our goal, which is helping you make informed moral decisions.

Ryan Heneise
Developer