If you get any of your products from the supposedly green and idealistic company known as Gaiam, I call upon you to stop doing so.
Why? Because it is no longer living up to its image and the only way to punish it for its hypocrisy is in the pocketbook.
A few years ago, a small social networking site dedicated to spirituality called Zaadz.com was created. The original creator and owner of it, Brian Johnson, then sold it to Gaiam, and it was changed into Gaia.com. But it appears that it never made a profit for Gaiam and finally last month, the director of Gaia Community, Siona van Dijk, made this announcement:
Dear Gaians.
Until that happens, you’ll be able to continue to log in, so as to copy your blogs and save your posts or messages, and to exchange information with any community members with whom you’d like to stay in touch. (We’ll post information on the Team blog for the easiest way to export your content.) You can also visit our Gaia Community Vision Group to post, should you wish, any recommendations for a new community home.
If you’re a Group moderator yourself, you may want to consider moving your group to Ning. WordPress and Tumblr are great for those of you who’d like to continue blogging, and you can sign up to receive the Q&Rs here.
– Dr. Seuss –
I’d also invite you to connect at the Gaia facebook group, and to continue to participate in the Gaia Minute. And do please stay in touch… I know you’ll each and every one of you be on to amazing, extraordinary next chapters, and I’ll be honored to continue encouraging you.
Last but not least, thank you all, so very, very, very much, for having been a part of this wonderful journey. I’m grateful to each and every one of you for your contributions to the connection and heart and the spirit of the community, to the Team for their committed behind-the-scenes efforts, and of course to everyone at Gaiam for their tremendous investment and generous support of this community over the past few years, especially in the face of the current recession. It’s been, again, an incredible adventure.
Love always and always,
Soon after this, Siona made a new community in Ning titled Gaia Community and then members of Gaia.com flooded into there. http://anewgaia.ning.com/
I myself was the first to join after it was created and I was also the first to create a group within it, Universal Science Forum, which was a clone of the one in the original Gaia.
http://anewgaia.ning.com/profile/DaleHusband
http://anewgaia.ning.com/group/universal_science_forum
Now, when you attempt to access Gaia.com, you get this instead:
http://www.gaia.com/moved.html
Update: Gaia Community closed its doors on March 31st, 2010
It’s been a wonderful journey and an honor to serve the members of the site over the past few years, and we’re greatful for the connections and relationships that came about as a result of these pages. The ripples and kindness you’ve created and contributed to continue to influence the world in immeasurable ways. Thank you deeply, for being a part of it.
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Former members who wish to reconnect are welcome to make use of the Gaia Community fan page on facebook, and we welcome newcomers to explore our blog and other offerings at Gaiam Life.
No, an HONEST and fair advertisement would have led to this and nowhere else: http://anewgaia.ning.com/ The fan page of Facebook is of Gaiam company itself.
Spread the word about how Gaiam stabbed that entire web community in the back to increase its profit margins! And if you really beleive in what Gaiam was supposed to stand for, boycott that company to cut even more into its profits than it would have lost by keeping Gaia.com operating! And swear to NEVER buy from it again unless and until it restores Gaia.com to full operating status!
Dale Husband's Intellectual Rants 
I understand the frustration and outrage being expressed here. I do think Gaiam failed in its responsibilities. Zaadz wasn’t just a spiritual community, but also a community dedicated to social change. Gaiam bought because they presented themselves as having the similar values.
It’s understandable that if they were having economic problems that they might be forced to close down the community. However, shouldn’t they have realized that the community was never about making money and wouldn’t make them any money. Ignoring that aspect, Gaiam also failed in that they didn’t discuss any of it with the community. As I understand it, Zaadz always operated through community discussion and shared responsibility, but there were some discussions when Gaiam owned it about problems with the management not being open enough to community input.
When they decided to close it down, they barely gave any warning at all. I hadn’t been to the site much in recent months. If someone hadn’t told me about it closing down, I might have lost all my blogs, some of which I put a lot of effort into.
I don’t have any particular opinion about Gaiam. I’m not all that familiar with it as a corporation. However, closing gaia.com down in the manner they did is doesn’t help to support their claim of practicing conscious capitalism. It appears that they’re just another corporation just like any other looking out for profits.
Thank you, Benjamin. If you have not already linked to me in the new Gaia Community of Ning, please do so!
A capitalist economy is only good if most of the people working within it are so virtuous that, ironically, they are not so greedy for money and the power that comes with it. Clearly, that is not the case. And attempts to overthrow capitalism with Communism only concentrated power in the government, which was even worse. But a democratic socialist society, which allows great social and economic flexibility to restrain private enterprize and allow individuals their freedom, is clearly the best system. The demonization of socialism in the corporate dominated American media is exactly what we must denounce as fraudulant and self-serving!
I’m with you. The choice between uncontrolled capitalism and absolute communism isn’t much choice at all. There is a big difference between markets that serve everyone and corporations that serve the rich. There is a big difference between socialism that empowers everyone and communism that empowers the political elite.
As for Ning, I’ll look for you there. You go by the same username? Never mind. I just found you and sent you a friend request.
(Dale Husband: You can find me anywhere on the internet by looking up my name and Circle H logo. I’m also in Facebook, MySpace, and Care2.)
By the way, how long were you a member of the Gaia community? Do you remember when it was Zaadz? I vaguely knew about Zaadz because I came across it in doing websearches, but I didn’t join until later when it was bought by Gaiam. So, who do you know from Gaia? I don’t recognize your name. I was most familiar with people such as Nicole and OM, but I also was involved in many integral discussions in the blogs. I noticed OM responded to a discussion you started about boycotting Gaiam.
(Dale Husband: I joined Zaadz about four years ago, but had little involvement in it until soon after it became Gaia.com. Then I became quite active in it. Nicole is also a friend of mine. I was also linked directly to several members of the Gaia Team, namely Siona, Jessica, Matthew, and Jodi. All wonderful people!)
A boycott, to be effective, must be organized, explicit, public and total. Those of you who have blogs of your own, be sure to make your own blog entries stating your agreement with my call and link it to mine. Then send an letter with a printed copy of your blog entry (and mine) to this address:
Gaiam, Inc.
833 W South Boulder Rd.
PO Box 3095
Boulder, CO 80307-3095
To make sure they get the message, call this number too:
1-877-989-6321
You are a doll for preserving this truth and it is a blast from the past to see this. Since the link of Gaia Minute goes back to them I wanted to let you know that we bought it a website and the movement is still alive thanks to Meenakshi and her team. http://gaiaminute.com/