Crowdsourcing and Twitter: Online Magnets

       It is a given fact in today's day and age that the world of journalism is changing. Gone are the days of the radio and papers being delivered to your door. People use their smartphones and laptops to check in on current events, and applications such as Twitter can be exploited for news updates in real time. The news is more of a constant, and now people themselves can become involved and invested to new extremes.

     

       Chapter 9 of Li and Bernoff's groundswell discusses how embracing the groundswell, or "making customers an integral part of the way you innovate, with both products and process improvements" is the best way to open up new distribution channels and to speed up the improvement process. Customers who are invested in your product won't take long to tell you what they want and because of this, you can iterate. Feedback reaches you immediately so you can process it and move on to the next improvement. The process is more direct and clearer than it ever has been. By having this direct access to consumers and dedicated users, companies can collect their feedback and quickly turn it over into making the company the best it can be for its customers. 

        The groundswell has opened up this avenue of crowdsourcing, or asking the groundswell to provide you with ideas. Organizations can delegate advertising tasks to consumers or creating new products. For example, Lay's Chips has used crowdsourcing in their Do Us A Flavor campaigns. They get fans to create their own flavor of chips and through a series of votes, the top four are chosen and released into stores. Customers can then buy these fan-invented flavors and vote on social media or through text messages for which flavor should be permanently sold in stores. The final product would not only be made by a customer, but it would be the overall public's favorite determined by the votes. Its a win-win for Lay's as they not only delegated work to others, but they will know that the public wants the new flavor that they introduce.

       Chapter 10 demonstrates how this phenomenon correlates so well with how Twitter is organized. Because the application is so simple to use and "free and open, it connects people and gives them power." There are obvious implications of this in terms of crowdsourcing for producers and companies, but what about other industries? What about the news and investigative journalism?

       Above is a TED talk by journalist Paul Lewis in which he discusses how he was able to help uncover and solve two murder cases with the crowdsourcing power of social media, in particular Twitter. Because of the scope of this platform, you can reach almost anyone. 

       Lewis was reporting on a difficult case involving a man's murder via police brutality. The situation in which it occurred - a rowdy, crowded London street - caused confusion over how the murder happened. Looking for answers, Lewis turned to the internet to find witnesses. He discusses how news and tragedy are like online magnets that draw people in because they have the power to help. News travels like the wind, spreading over vast pockets of people. Lewis found not only witnesses, but photographs and videos from them that clarified the crime and provided the journalist with the missing information that he could never have uncovered without the power of the groundswell that he embraced. 

       

       There is an extreme level of accountability that comes with Twitter and social media. Witnesses of crimes have the ability to unveil what they saw, to reach out to journalists like Lewis and provide the missing piece, the alternate point of view. Li and Bernoff see how Twitter is such a valuable affiliate. The separation between the common public and the organizations (or journalists) is now paper thin. The example with Lewis demonstrates its power as well: by listening to the consumers (in this case, his readers) and tapping the groundswell with Twitter he strengthened his final product - a solid result in the case and a true recount of the event. Twitter not only ups the accountability for companies, but for people in general.