In what could be an interesting sign of things to come industry wide, Dell today launched a customer relations site called IdeaStorm.  Users can submit product and feature requests, policy changes or whatever else they care to share with the Dell community.  Those submissions are then voted on Digg style.  Dell’s move follows just one day after Yahoo! unveiled a similar site.
The company also unveiled StudioDell, a video sharing site focused on Dell issues that contains both company video and submissions from users.  Comments are allowed on IdeaStorm but not on StudioDell.
The company fully acknowledges its intellectual debt to Digg, calling IdeaStorm “a combination of message board and Digg.com.”
Jeremiah Owyang calls this a nod to the idea that “intranets are anachronisms,” though the second most popular submission as I write this is a call for a separate, internal IdeaStorm site for Dell employees.  That makes me question how enthusiastic Dell’s employees will be about IdeaStorm.  The leading suggestion is the make Dell more ecologically responsible.
I think it’s more a testimony to the usefulness of paradigms made popular by Digg and YouTube.  Like the Yahoo! Suggestion site that was launched just yesterday – Dell’s IdeaStorm looks a lot like Digg.  Many people were very critical of Yahoo’s move but both Michael Arrington in yesterday’s coverage and yours truly in this post support what these companies are doing. Â
These types of sites are just plain smart.  If web lovers are critical of big companies trying to patent processes that are logical and widespread (like social networking or mash ups), isn’t it unfair to turn around and criticise them later for humbly following the lead of trailblazing startups?
You don’t see outrage about Meneame or Hugg trouncing on the ways of Digg.  Countless companies now allow user upload of videos and only the most unimaginative people say they are all trying to rip-off YouTube.  I think Dell’s new sites are a brave move that many more companies will follow.  Hopefully they’ll push this trend of online two-way communication to the limit and listen to what their users have to say.
Hmm, got rid of the comments about the incorrect link. Usually when there is a correction, it is acknowledged and the not erased.
The new comment is …
Does anyone know how this is tied into salesforce’s appexchange ? There is a powered by appexchange logo on the site, and I am wondering if some third party created a salesforce digglike app that is in anyway generic.
Ben,
http://www.crispyideas.com
Salesforce uses crispyideas for the exact same thing:
http://ideas.salesforce.com/
Both seem wildly successful. I’m pretty sure crispyideas started off as crispynews.com, a build-your-own hosted digg clone kind of like Yahoo groups for digg. The product was very well done but apparently not as successful as applying the digg concept to customer service, and then selling that software to the enterprise.
Apparently the digg fury is even catching on with Microsoft too.
http://news.com..._3-6159767.html
I’m confused, are you with Techcrunch again?
wow…very crispy indeed
very very slick
Now, I just wish all the “but you copied digg” doofballs would just calm down.
After all, digg did’nt invent voting.
Is Digg really the most outright innovative thing to come out of the Valley in the past couple of years?
No, honestly, ask yourself: Is a link dump whereby you can up-vote really the greatest thing since sliced bread? The implementation of “digg.com” has been outright spectacular, clean interface, simple methods, good link selection, blah blah. That’s all great, but the concept/idea of “Digging” is certainly not unique only to Digg but everyone gets in a huff, especially the Diggtards, over the concept being used elsewhere.
Jesus. Christ. Get a life. Is obsessively and compulsively refreshing a webpage that just sends you to other webpages really the most functional and outwardly serving thing to do?
i smell a valuation lowering…
Great article, I agree what these companies are doing is good.
Just quickly wanted to point out your link to meneame.net has no ‘http://’ prefix, which makes it go to techcrunch.com/meaneame.net.
it’s all about the community that uses it right? it’s also about the content on the site, and the dell site obviously has a different focus than digg.
one could argue that digg ripped off hotornot.com lol.
Web typo == wypo
Oops, my last post was “wyped” out due to unusual formatting.
I was trying to point out the following “web typo”:
http://www.tech...com/meneame.net
should just be:
http://www.meneame.net
of course. (I was simultaneously trying to coin two “web neologisms”: wypo for ‘web typo’; and weblogism, for ‘new web neologism.’
I hope this miniscule effort is successful!
Julian, Thanks for the comment. Your comment will be promptly deleted because TechCrunch has the power to do so. Can’t let little mistakes be noticed mind you.
It may not be obvious why I posted this, but basically I made a comment with a correction for the dell url, which was promptly corrected and deleted. This will probably get deleted too.
It was a matter of time before Digg had competitors and imitators, but there’s still only one Digg. I don’t see their demographic migrating easily to Yahoo, and certainly not to Dell. Digg is branded for what it does. Yahoo and Dell are the newbies
s/Digg/Drupal/g;
Wait until Kevin Rose’ patience with the stupid 14 year olds that make up the Digg crowd give up because they won’t click on those ads. Wait until he decides to shoot for the mainstream crowds and diversify the site. Wait till then. Cause guess what? Netscape’s already there.
Never doubt the economic power of 14-year olds. They ARE the future. Always were, always will be.
digg is just another voting site itself – not the first one
Yahoo! also started one too, doesn’t it?
Companies can always learn from their customers. Why not make it easy for customers to make suggestions and vote on them- customers will feel valued and businesses will have valuable data.
curious as to why you mentioned hugg but didn’t mention the software that made it possible, Pligg?
Funny since pligg distanced itself from being just a digg clone into a full blown content management system, now everyone is trying to clone Pligg
I totally agree with alska, there are way too many stupid diggers out there that think their site is the only earth in the galaxy. Get a farking life!
This is pretty exciting stuff. Dell continues to leverage crowd sourcing in interesting ways. They launched with Ratings and Reviews late last year. Here is a post in their Direct2Dell Blog: http://direct2d...12/17/4260.aspx
Also here is a perspective from Bazaarvoice the provider of the solution for Dell – http://www.baza...d-have-reviews/
It’s great to see more and more companies understanding the power within the collective wisdom of their communities. I had suggested a similar sort of system as an enterprise product at BloggerCon in the fall – though I still think the cooler form of the idea is to embed an audio annotation tool within software/web services for users to describe their problem and/or suggestion for improvement – which can then be voted up or down by other members of the software’s user group…
ideastorm.com reportedly just went for 25K.
“http://www.ideastorm.com/blog/
“Published February 16th, 2007 in Personal and Projects. 0 Comments
I’d had numerous offers in the past.. this one was simply too good to pass up.
I had the most exciting and unexpected call yesterday. A business owner in Long Island, NY called me wanting to buy the rights to my domain ‘ideastorm.com’. I’d made up the word and registered it back in 1998 for about $25. Fast forward 9 years and add three 0’s, and you’ll understand why it is i’m selling
“
I think this is a great idea. A great way for individuals to give feedback and for companies to gauge interest in a given idea.
So why is Digg not licensing its technology?
Seems like a good way to make some money. We all know that Rose is all about the algorithm.
Devaluation indeed. Could Digg become the next web forum/discussion board toolkit for wannabe webmasters?
Looks like dell is back on track. A bold first step for michael dells return. The crucial question is can dell act on the feedback and really use this technology to remake itself.
It’ll be interesting to see how this shakes things up for corporate social networking in general. This seems to be the right model. Not ‘myspace for walmart’. This has a purpose and ppl are gathering for a solid, specific reason that only that company can provide. Far more effective than trying to get ppl to invite their friends to be their walmart buddy. Or whatever lame term it would be called
Where is the yahoo critic now? look’s like they all have been quite. …
bit late “me too”
This new initiative by Dell is excellent…for Dell.
But; based on their “what was once yours is now ours–for free…and thank you very much” terms of service; anyone with an idea/s which can be protected by a patent (or otherwise sold/licensed to them), it’s terrible.
Another case of the headline givith…and the fine print taketh away…
…and why am I not surprised to hear that my “ol’ domain buddy” Sal Shepherd (comment #24) was able to make some nice $$$ off of this…
…congrats, Shep.
As a recent former employee of Dell, I am not the least bit shocked that a popular suggestion is to have an internal forum for employees. There is a very wife gulf between the people guiding the company and those doing the trenchwork (sales, marketing). The sooner the environment changes there not only to listen to customers but also to listen to employees, the sooner the company can move forward. Hopefully this will be a solid start to that.
“So why is Digg not licensing its technology?”
I think a few people would buy a license just to reverse engineer the algorithms to better understand how to game Digg.
The success of Digg is the audience/traffic levels it can bring to a site — not the technology. There’s nothing that special about the technology.
It’s like saying there’s something special about how TechCrunch is set up. It’s just running Wordpress. It’s the content / community / audience that make it stand out.
As a UE consultant, I have talked to a lot of companies about having a public space for their customers to propose suggestions. Most shudder at the thought of having to spend customer service resources moderating open forums for two reasons. First, they are going to have a lot of angry people flaming the company on the company’s site. Second, what are the product managers going to do with the good, non-revenue producing suggestions generated by the customers? What happens to the loyal customers who voted for top rated suggestions that are passed over for better business opportunities?
hi everyone..
i’m the (current) owner of the domain ideastorm.com.. Sal Shepherd is the guy who brought Dell’s ‘idea’ to my attention. Of course, nothing was out there to indicate this prior to my signing the agreement to sell.. but what do you do? I mean, i could bitch that i shouldn’t have sold my AAPL stock 2 years ago too.. woulda shoulda coulda.
hey, i’m quite happy that i’ll be completely out of debt next week, for nothing other than conjuring up a catchy word 9 years ago. Hurt me some more.
This sort of customer suggestion site works great. We have been running our own using Pligg for several months now, and our customers love it… http://ideas.webmail.us/
I’m glad to see a large company like Dell doing this as well.
I believe these guys were actually the first to apply the digg model to ideas… http://www.brightidea.com …have a generic version for companies to add to their website.
so, should we bitch at AppExchange for ganking it from them?
Mike,
We need to convince the people @ GMAIL to do the same…
There are many new ideas and urgent needs (I have a couple regarding the SPAM FOLDER) that needs the attention. Unfortunately the discussion groups are targeted to how-tos and support issues.
As one of the GMAIL ambassadors your help will be appreciated.
Zohar
http://www.dreamhost.com has used a quite clever suggestion system for almost 3 years.
All customers can suggest new implementations, upgrades, features, etc. DreamHost then assign a “cost” from 1 to 5 credits, based on how difficult they feel it will be to implement the suggestion.
Each customer gets 40 credits they can use to vote either for or against a suggestion. They can change or remove their votes at any time. If a suggestion is implemented they’ll get their credits back.
Votes (strongly) influence what gets implemented, but do not 100% determine it!
Currently there are close to 800 suggestions from “Remove whitespace from email receipt so printed out it fits on one page” (1 point) to “Add an integrated challenge/response anti-spam system” (5 points).
I’m very happy to see that companies like DELL are addressing the first stage of the crowdsourcing world. This is an other good proof of our business model –> http://www.Crow....org..hopefully for us, they are very far from what we are proposing to the community
oups…the hyperlink is http://www.crowdspirit.org …. sorry
ok, so what is it they owe Digg? I “dig” Digg, but they hardly innovated the concepted of user participation based voting. I like what Dell has done, and Yahoo, and even our own stuff (I work at Microsoft) at http://connect.microsoft.com.
I blogged about these yesterday at http://www.comm...rouptherapy.com if folks are interested in another take.
sean
How long before all manufacturers start implementing something like this? It seems pretty simple, ask the consumer what he/she wants and give it to them, rather than having to rely on old market research.
digg readers are retards.