Web 2.0 - Best Practices Award

Last year I awarded the first Mike's Corner Web 2.0 "Best Practices" award. Today I'm bestowing the award on a company that's had it's share of issues with regard to customer communication recently, Dell. The folks in Austin have decided to use the power of social networking to find out what people really want in a PC. They call it Dell IdeaStorm. Essentially it's a form of consumer transparency.

"Dell IdeaStorm launched on Friday, February 16. Dell employees are monitoring IdeaStorm to gauge which ideas are most important and most relevant to you. And we'll share those ideas throughout our organization to trigger new thoughts about how we evolve as a company. As your ideas continue to pour in, we will use this page to provide updates on ideas that Dell is considering. We'll also show you how your ideas are being put into action at Dell over time. Please check back to see your ideas in action."

The site uses a "Digg" social news style format to promote good ideas to the top. Idea Storm also features a discussion forum and section to preview and comment on upcoming products. The top voted ideas come as no surprise to me. High on the list is a "Craplet Free" system. Delivering a system with a clean operating system unencumbered by resource hogging trial ware, nag screens more. They are even using the site to determine how the site itself should be structured. The next step is "YouTube" style video upload section. I just wonder if they will allow the exploding laptop videos to make their way to the site?

I could see this same type of environment working for well for brokers. The Tuesday morning meeting is probably all but dead. It's a safe bet that most offices see a lot less of their agent staff these days. Home offices and mobile technology have seen to that. Allowing agents to participate in "digital brainstorming" sessions could provide brokers with a good road map for company initiatives and prevent investments in programs that may not be well adopted. Using this type of tool could be more effective than a digital suggestion box or Intranet due it's social structure and transparency. In a business model such as RE/MAX where decisions are made by committee, this could be an invaluable way for individual groups to post and work with new ideas. From a business planning perspective it would be great to take a historical snapshot of the decision making process from the birth of an idea to it's implementation and beyond.

On larger scales, such as Dell, the biggest obstacle I see to this type of program is manipulation of the system. Anyone with an agenda or just too much time on their hands could potentially "game" the site. An example is a thread that says "Bring Back The Dell Dude" For all we know that guy might be trying charge up the paddles on his 15 minutes of fame in hopes that the Idea Storm site can shock it back to life. Then again maybe there are people out there that actually want to go through the hell of those commercials all over again. I'm sure there are people hard at work on ideas to avoid situations that prevent unscrupulous use of the system. That said, I am of the mind set that there is value in pretty much all of the content, even at the long end of the tail.

Mike Antoniak, a tech writer for Realtor Magazine mentioned to me recently that Michael Dell publicly proclaimed he would be happy to sell a system with Apple's Macintosh OS X operating system on it. Now there's an idea I would love to see it stormed to the top of the list. Because for me personally -- Dude, that's the only way I'm gettin a Dell.