Says Maser to the community, "The success of this system depends on your participation and feedback, as it will help advertisers to create the best possible experience for the Digg community. Our goal with Digg Ads is to encourage advertisers to create content as compelling as organic Digg stories, and to give you more control over which ads you see on Digg.

It will be interesting to see which advertisers attempt to game the system by digging their own ads, and how fast these ads will be buried. The official June announcement of the Digg ad program received more than 400 comments within the community, and surprisingly many of them are very positive. While critics argue that the ads will simply be buried and advertisers will stop paying for placement, others called this "marketing democracy." A few commenters pointed to the fact that they already use Adblock - a Firefox extension that allows users to filter out advertising content. Nevertheless, others chastise Adblock users for not supporting the community they enjoy. In a community as opinionated as Digg's, it will be interesting to see how the first users react to this new play for revenue.

Earlier, Borders Australia and Random House held a contest to find twenty-eight writers who would be able to write the bulk of the book. The chapters they produce will need to be less than 750 words so, obviously, this book will be a little lighter than Patterson's other novels.

Once complete, Airborne will be released electronically, one chapter at a time, starting on March 20th. Later, a print edition will be published, but only as a prize of sorts for the participants in the competition - it will not be mass produced.

Collaborative Writing is So Very Web 2.0

The roots of the collaborative writing movement can be found in many web startups, including those like Novlet, Potrayl, Ficlets, Unblokt, Protagonize, and others we profiled here. A popular activity for creative writers, these communities offer various takes on how a co-written story should be developed, some focused more on "choose your own adventure"-style stories while others focus more on linear narratives.

Although the James Patterson novel is more of a marketing campaign than anything else - and, in this case, the "crowd" is actually a hand-picked selection of aspiring writers - it's still interesting to see such a widely-read writer embracing the co-writing trend. While those passionate about the subject may say this particular effort doesn't qualify since it isn't truly written by "the crowd," it's events like this that take the general idea behind the trend and cross it over to where it can make a mark on the minds of the mainstream.

What remains to be seen at this point is whether a crowdsourced, co-written novel can actually be any good.

Those interested in following the progress of AirBorne can do so on Facebook, Twitter, and via RSS.

Use of hosted software as a service (SaaS) is growing like crazy, and most products are constantly evolving. What is the best strategy for a tech startup: share its product road map (i.e. its development plans) with the outside world, or keep its cards close to the chest?

Mike McDerment from FreshBooks argues very convincingly for keeping it to yourself:

1. Commitments weigh you down (if you promise something and change your mind later)
2. Keep your competition guessing
3. Purchasing decisions get delayed (as people wait for the next great version)
4. Don't set expectations too high
5. You can bank on surprise and delight

I feel strongly that sharing your product road map to gain (and actually use) feedback from your clients is the best product strategy for any rapidly evolving software company.

We have always been fans of the "Agile" development methodology, and when we embarked on developing Wild Apricot back in early 2006, there was no doubt in our mind how to go about it. Instead of trying to design and develop a "perfect" product (which would probably take a year or more), we created a list of "user stories" (product features) and prioritized them according to what we could do in 3 months.

Wild Apricot aims to simplify life for people in associations and non-profits. It replaces five separate pieces of software with one, saving thousands of dollars and countless hours of data re-entry and reconciliation. It automates trivial administration tasks and lets people focus on their cause and passion.

Our first beta release was launched on June 30th, 2006. Feedback started to trickle in right away, and as we started to count accounts in the dozens and then hundreds and then thousands, it really poured in (and keeps pouring!).

Our initial road map was around 80 entries. Our current list is over 400 items, and the cycle never ends:

• Release an update
• Review accumulated feedback from clients, and add or change items in the work queue
• Reprioritize the new list, and pick top items we can fit into our next update
• Several weeks of intensive development, then testing
• Rinse and repeat

(We currently issue product updates every 6 to 7 weeks on average.)

One curious fact is that half of the items on our original list have not been completed, while we have released a couple of hundred other items that our clients requested from us.

This is the ultimate reason behind this strategy: our own team is smart, but the accumulated wisdom of our clients makes our product development much smarter than it would be if we did it on our own.

Let me circle back to Mike McDerment's points:

Yes, that's why you have to be very careful about what commitments you make, and about sticking to them. We made our share of mistakes: promising that "This feature would be released in a few months," and having clients ridicule us for still not having released it after 18 months.

Here is the process we follow:

We maintain a special discussion forum (a wish list): any client can register and post their ideas, or comment and vote on ideas provided by others. Our support team encourages and directs all clients to join the conversation there.

Our product management team constantly monitors this forum and participates and guides the discussion. After each product release, we conduct a thorough review of the wish list. One frequently voiced criticism of using client feedback to guide your research and development is that all of those ideas are too tactical and are not innovative; the fax machine would never have been invented in this fashion, by just collecting feedback for the good old postal service. My answer is that this is where our team adds the most value. Our job is not simply to take one suggestion after another, but instead to look for patterns and commonality and then generate innovative ideas and features that address the feedback, even though it may be in a totally different way than envisioned by the original client.

As an outcome of that, we regularly update the road map discussion forum, which contains the top 60 items that we consider to be pretty well defined and ready to be queued for detailed analysis and development. We do not allow clients to create new entries in this forum, but they can freely comment and rank threads that we have created.

This list of items forms the core of our work queue, which is reviewed and prioritized for each release. Again, the priority assigned to each item is based mainly on its ranking and comments by clients; but here we also have to weigh those rankings and comments against architectural considerations and the long-term vision for the system.

And of course we have to work a number of "unsexy" items into each release to maintain system and data security, ensure reliability, improve system speed, and deal with bugs.

Finally, the feedback loop closes with our weekly product update posts on our blog.

To address the other points Mike brought up:

For us, the competitive edge is in the execution, not the initial ideas, which are a dime a dozen. Plus, of course, customer service, however lame it might sound: this old-fashioned concept still goes a long way towards winning (and losing) clients.

Because we have this regular rhythm of new releases, people sign up at a steady pace, and the next update is always around the corner anyway. And if somebody needs a particular feature we do not have yet, I would rather have them wait and get more experience down the road than waste too much time shouting "SIGN UP NOW! SPECIAL OFFER ENDS TODAY!"

I say, set them high and deliver on your promises.

But you lose out on anticipation (also see Andy's point #2 below).

Let me close by quoting Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing (a must-read book, by the way, for any technology marketer: lots of practical advice). He also thinks that product road maps should be shared and makes these points:

1. Users will be thrilled to know how the product is going to improve.
2. You turn frustration into anticipation.
3. Your fans have something to talk about (more word of mouth!).

To close, I do not think there is a single strategy that works for every company and every team. Freshbooks is a very successful company, and we are looking to them in many respects. Our crowd-sourcing strategy works well for us and is a good fit for our team and product. The journey continues. Check out our release history.

What is your experience with crowdsourcing? Any thoughts on product road maps for software companies?

If you're a non-profit organization wanting to use the Web more effectively, try out the Wild Apricot suite of products and support a RWW sponsor.

But was it just a means to an end? Or is this personal engagement - embracing social media as a new way of communicating with the masses - something we should expect Obama to use throughout his presidency?

Given the rich history of politicians using a variety of means to attain office and - upon election - rapidly changing their respective tunes, the end of the campaign and the beginning of presidency held with it a certain amount of trepidation. Would the people's candidate - one who had been engaged and engaging - suddenly revert to the guise and personality of the classic politician?

Despite the overwhelming prevalence of "hope," an air of political cynicism - one formed by decades, if not centuries of experience - still festered below the surface. But that cynicism may have been dealt another blow. And the Obama campaign may have found another way to continue the conversation that they started.

With the launch of change.gov, Obama appears to be staying the course. He's not avoiding the conversation; he's embracing it. And while there's not much to the change.gov site currently, it's the fragments that tell the story. And it's a story of a continued commitment to interact with the people on a very personal basis:

"The story of the campaign and this historic moment has been your story. It is about the great things we can do when we come together around a common purpose. The story of bringing this country together as a healed and united nation will be led by President-Elect Obama, but written by you. The millions of you who built this campaign from the ground up, and echoed your call for the change you wanted to see implemented by the Obama Administration - this process of setting up that new government is about you."

As part of continuing that story, the Obama organization is asking the people of the US to share their stories and to share their goals.

In short, Obama has begun crowdsourcing the political agenda. And when it comes right down to it, isn't that what democracy is supposed to be about anyway? A government of the people, by the people, for the people?

A few weeks ago when Gartner hypothesized that "social networks will complement, and may replace, some government functions," it seemed almost laughable. But today, in the wake of what has occurred this week, it seems all the more accurate and attainable.

The Obama organization continues to turn the political machine on its ear and continues to shake the conventional wisdom of "political strategy." If change.gov is any indication, the use of social media appears to have been much more than a gimmick for Obama. It appears to have truly been a means of embracing change.

Whatever happens next, it will be incredibly interesting to see how this next act plays out. And what acts - or actions - follow.

(Photo credit Joe Crimmings Photography. Used under Creative Commons.)

In case you're unfamiliar, Amazon's Mechanical Turk is a crowdsourced marketplace for tasks. A person needing work done can set up a HIT (human intelligence task) - the small job they need done. Others come along to perform the HITs, earning micro payments along the way. In this way, businesses, developers, and other individuals have access to an affordable, scalable workforce

Unfortunately, it appears that the convenience of the Turk marketplace has some appeal to social media spammers, who are now using the site to earn Diggs, bookmarks, and other social recommendations they do not deserve. Here's an example:

Anyone who uses Amazon's Mechanical Turk has no doubt come across similar HITs posted by spammers. For example, this guy is requesting someone create 29 social bookmark accounts from 29 sites:

A search for "bookmark" on MT today displays 48 results (at the time of writing) where spammers are requesting social bookmarking of their web site. Search for "digg" and you'll find people paying for Diggs.

Of course, whenever there is a system in place (like social media) that can help drive traffic to a web site, there will be those people who use it to generate traffic for their spam sites. But why are they able to use Amazon Mechanical Turk to do so? Shouldn't Amazon police the Turk to shut down these spam accounts?

Mechanical Turk Still Has Promise, Despite Spammers

However, this doesn't mean that Mechanical Turk doesn't hold any value - it's still an innovative and useful tool for many. In fact, members of the HCI community (Human Computer Interaction) have begun to use Turk for user research studies with great success. This work has inspired others like open source advocate, Chris Messina, to do the same. He plans to use Turk for usability studies on OpenID and OAuth. Since the HITs are spread out among many, the cost of performing these studies is greatly reduced. Being able to crowdsource research is a great way that MT can be used today, and one that will have a big impact on the future, too.

Thanks to Brynn Evans, a graduate student in the Department of Cognitive Science at University of California, San Diego for discovering this and thanks to open source advocate Chris Messina for sending it along to us.

Digg is partnering with CNN's iReport on this. Diggers will be able to either submit their questions in writing through the Dialogg page or they can upload a video to iReport. According to Digg, they will ask the top rated questions, but given the often rowdy nature of Digg, it will be interesting to see if the questions will be censored in any way and how the Digg users would react if that happened.

As Digg's CEO Jay Adelson announced last week, Digg will have a substantial presence at the Democratic and the Republican conventions. Giving Digg's users at least some influence over the reporting from there falls right in place with Digg's overall style.

Not New - But Still a Good Thing

Overall, there is, of course, little that is new about this style of doing interviews, which is quite similar to the YouTube debates. Even Slashdot, Digg's virtual grandfather, often uses it to decide on interview question. At the same time though, anything to get young people interested in politics is a good thing in our opinion and Digg definitely has the ability to reach a lot of folks who would otherwise not be interested in the political process. Also, given that Digg, at its core, is still a technology site, its users are likely to ask a lot of tech oriented questions that a lot of the politicians probably never thought about much.

Looking at the top rated questions so far, net neutrality is ranking high above legalizing marijuana and repealing the Patriot Act.

In addition to rating quotes on credibility and relevance to the reader (because relevance is so subjective, that makes it the less useful of the two metrics), users can also post challenging or supporting statements. In that respect, Ameritocracy is something like a crowdsourced version of Annenberg's FactCheck.org. Users can also add context to quotes and discuss and debate quotes via a comment system.

According to the About page on the site, its goal is to "help people cut through the noise and gain quick access to the whole picture." When we asked Kennedy if taking quotes out of context really helped reveal the full picture or just presented an even more limited view, he told us that "whole picture" was probably not the best term to use to describe what the site does. "Our intent is that the short quotes, short user responses (Supporting, Challenging, and Adding Context), and the ratings make it far more efficient for people to get a broader view," he said. "The quote should be enough in-context that it captures the speaker's intent. If not, the community can flag the quote as being Out of Context, and the contributing user will take a reputation hit."

Ameritocracy is attempting to create a non-partisan community that keeps the focus on fact checking and credibility and not on political ideology. We like the idea of Ameritocracy. Giving people a way to rate the credibility of political information or statements and challenge facts publicly helps to level the playing field and keep politicians, organizations, and the media honest.

If you're interested in participating at Ameritocracy, you can sign up with the invite code "readwrite" -- there are 100 invites available on a first come, first serve basis.

Graphic Design

One of the most well-developed areas of crowdsourcing services on the Internet is graphic design. Generally, these sites exist in the form of graphic design contest web sites where clients put up a call for submissions for a piece of graphic design work, and designers compete for a cash prize by submitting designs.

crowdSPRING is the latest entry into the increasingly crowded crowdsourced graphic design service market. The service officially launches today, after a $5000 design competition it held over the winter to design the crowdSPRING site itself -- a wise move because it shows that the founders are willing to "eat their own dogfood" and also attracted an initial set of designers to the site.

crowdSPRING is well set up, offering legal protections for both buyers and sellers and a guarantee that all projects posted on the site will get at least 25 entries. crowdSPRING charges a 15% commission on all posted projects.

99designs is very likely the largest graphic design contest site on the web. From its humble beginnings as an area on the web development discussion forums at SitePoint, to being spun off from the SitePoint Marketplace a few months ago, 99designs has experienced astonishing growth to become a leader in its market. The site now has 18,000 registered users -- 11,000 are designers -- with 150 being added each day. $10,000 worth of prize money is put up for grabs on the site daily and it serves 5 million page views per month.

SitePoint co-founder Mark Harbottle tells me that many designers use the site for lead generation, and that often, winning designers find that contest holders will turn into long term clients who forgo the crowdsourcing option on future projects to work directly with a designer whose work they know they like.

GFXContests is a forum-based design contest site founded two years ago that seems to attract mostly logo design jobs. Full disclosure: I was one of the co-founders of GFXContests, and sold the site earlier this year. I am no longer involved with it. An interesting note: the site's logo was designed via a design contest held on the SitePoint Contests service (now 99designs).

DesignOutpost is one of the oldest design contest services, sometimes credited with originating the idea -- though that's up for debate. The site is forum-based and relies on a "design team" (pre-approved designers) to fill out its crowd.

Designcontest.net is another large, forum-based design contest site that also relies on the pre-approved "design team" concept.

Pixish (our coverage) is a design and photography contest marketplace launched in February by well-known designer Derek Powazek. Unlike many of the design contest services in this round up, prizes on Pixish aren't always cash.

Others

A number of large web development discussion communities host contest areas, including NamePros, v7 Network, and Webmaster Talk. Meanwhile, Grapic Competitions is a directory of individual graphic design competitions (not affiliated with the above sites), many that offer cash prizes.

Programming

Top Coder uses a competition approach to leverage is distributed network of over 50,000 developers to create software for its enterprise clients.

The software development community -- especially the open source community -- has long used "bounties" to help lure developers to certain tasks. microPledge (our coverage) is an escrow service that allows people to do three things: set up, contribute to and pay out software bounties, accept donations for projects, or set up a fund/bounty for an in house project (as a developer). In essence, that means people can give the crowd an incentive to work on a software development project.

Like microPledge, Cofundos.org (our coverage) is a web service for offering and managing software bounties. Cofundos.org is focused specifically on open source software, but the team behind it has indicated that they plan to adapt the concept to other areas, including beyond software development. Expanding beyond software development (to say, event funding) is something that microPledge has also hinted at pursuing.

Customer Support

Fixya is a question and answer community, in which people ask and answer technical support queries. Think of it as Yahoo! Answers for tech support. Uniquely, though, Fixya has partnered with some companies to provide an official channel for crowdsourced tech support. Most recently, the site launched a co-branded version of their service for Best Buy.

The goal of Get Satisfaction (recent coverage) isn't really to crowdsource customer service, so much as to make it easier for people to get access to companies they have an issue with. However, people do provide one another with help on the site -- similar to at Fixya -- and companies can use it to monitor customer support issues to more quickly tell if an issue isn't just an isolated incident.

Research & Development

IdeaScale (our coverage) does for research and development what Get Satisfaction does for customer service by providing Digg-style feature request boards. Companies are able to tap the "wisdom of the crowds" to learn what their customers want from their product or service.

featurelist.org is very similar to IdeaScale, but more public, not branded, and focused on software.

FeVote is another suggestion board web application that lets companies crowdsource their research and development. Like Get Satisfaction, FeVote aims to put the control in the hands of the users by encouraging them to make suggestion boards for their favorite companies.

CollabAndRate is "organic collaboration" software that enables companies to poll their customers, employees, or partners for new ideas. Essentially, this is the same idea as the three sites mentioned above, but with a slightly different pitch.

Whatever You Can Imagine

Amazon's Mecahnical Turk service (recent coverage) is what the company refers to as an "on-demand workforce." In reality, Mechanical Turk is a 100,000 strong member crowd that people can call on to complete a wide variety of tasks. See the 10,000 Cents art project as example of how one can leverage Amazon's crowdsourcing service.

When adding a decision to SocialThumbs, authors are asked to input a question (like, "Should I wear red to the prom?"), a motivation (like, "I want to look hot at the prom")," and some background information (like, "My favorite color is red," "My date is color blind," "I have brown hair and green eyes," etc.). The decider then lists pros and cons and offers a score of -5 to +5 for each. Once the decision is public, other users are invited to add additional pro and con reasons, vote on any of the pro/con statements, and leave comments. Based on the overall scoring data, SocialThumbs comes up with a yes or no suggestion.

It strikes us that this site might do well as an application on social networks like Facebook or MySpace where users could call on their friends to help them make decisions.

SocialThumbs is an interesting idea, and while it's not truly a wisdom of the crowds app (we use that term loosely around here), it makes sense to lean on the wisdom of others to help clarify the decision making process. Ultimately, people need to make decisions for themselves, but using SocialThumbs might shed light on aspects of an issue that users hadn't thought of, or offer alternative views that are helpful in their decision making. To paraphrase the Beatles, we get by with a little help from our friends.

The idea behind the CallerComplaints web site is simple. If you receive an annoying call from a telemarketer, you can search the database to see if the number has already been entered and, if so, you can add your complaint to the file. If the number does not show up in the search results, you can enter in a new complaint.

For a complaint to be entered, you must fill in the phone number, the caller type (telemarketer, political caller, debt collector, prank caller, or unknown), the complaint details, and you must complete the CAPTCHA before clicking "File." You don't have to provide your name - that field is optional - and, if you know who is calling you, there is a box for that as well.

Filing a Complaint

There is also a section on the site called "spoofed numbers," which categorizes the more unethical telemarketers who trick Caller IDs to display an incorrect phone number, something that is done so you can't report them. On CallerComplaints, however, you can still file complaints against these spoofed numbers.

Users on the site can mark each other's feedback at useful or report feedback as spam, but doing so doesn't appear to actually have any impact on whether or not the feedback is displayed or how it is ranked.

How Filing a Complaint Helps

Instead of relying on the government to resolve the telemarketer problem, CallerComplaints wants to publicly shame companies instead. The web site's content is designed to be easily indexed by search engines, so the next time someone searches for a number using one of the major search engines, they'll find the complaints submitted about that number at the top of their search results, hopefully displaying the company's name, as well.

Unfortunately, since many shady telemarketers have their calls masked so as to display as "unknown number" on Caller ID, neither this site nor the government's Do Not Call's complaint filing service can help resolve that problem.

In theory, the data collected by the site could be used to file joint-action complaints with government agencies, but CallerComplaints does not actually have plans to get involved to this extent to provide a service like this, leaving legal action in the hands of the government.

However, as an online database to research those mystery numbers, the site does a good job of making it easy to find numbers, file complaints, and leave feedback, which, at the very least, makes for a very cathartic experience.

The company can go in and mark off which ideas are being implemented or considered, and leave status updates for users curious to see how an idea is progressing from brainstorm to finished product.

IdeaScale is currently in public beta and is a free service right now. Eventually, the company plans to offer both free and paid versions utilizing the "freemium" model that they already use for their Question Pro app. IdeaScale has their own copy of the softare running at http://questionpro.ideascale.com/.

A more public implementation of the same idea is featurelist, which takes the same Digg-style community feedback concept and makes it more public -- similar to GetSatisfaction's approach to customer service. ]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ideascale_launch.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ideascale_launch.php Products Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:35:01 -0800 Josh Catone "Ten Thousand Cents" is a crowdsourced art project that led 10,000 artists, each paid one penny for their contribution, to recreate a US $100 bill one tiny section at a time. The brainchild of San Francisco artists Aaron Koblin and Takashi Kawashima, "Ten Thousand Cents" utilized Amazon's Mechanical Turk service and a bit of custom Flash software to lead 10,000 web workers in a coordinated, crowdsourced art project. The result is a rather impressive rendering of a US one hundred dollar bill drawn by an army of contributors.

The project took 5 months to complete and involved contributions from 51 different countries. Because some turkers participated more than once, there weren't truly 10,000 different artists contributing to the project, but it appears that most countries had unique visitor rates of above 60%. The end result was a reproduction of a $100 bill that cost $100 to create.

"The project explores the circumstances we live in, a new and uncharted combination of digital labor markets, 'crowdsourcing,' 'virtual economies,' and digital reproduction," according Koblin and Kawashima on the project web site.

The completed artwork is being displayed on the "Ten Thousand Cents" web site as an interactive video depicting all 10,000 pieces of the bill being drawn at once. A limited edition signed print (presumably signed by Koblin and Kawashima, not thousands of random turkers), is also available on the site for $100, with all proceeds going to the One Laptop Per Child project.

A video about "Ten Thousand Cents" is below.

Kaufman got the idea after the Bevy, one of Mophie's most popular products, was designed by the crowd at Macworld using sketch pads and a precursor to the system that evolved into Kluster. The keychain/bottler opener/iPod shuffle case was one of Mophie's best selling products, and it was designed in just 72 hours by a crowd, and launched as a product just 2 months later. Kaufman realized he was potentially onto something.

The Kluster system works by breaking down products into manageable chunks. For each chunk (or "phase"), people submit what are called "sparks." Sparks are proposed solutions for that phase. For each spark, other participants can submit "amps" -- which are improvements to that idea. Users also assign "watts" to sparks and amps they like. Watts work kind of like investments. You accrue points based on participation and other factors, and can invest those points (watts) in ideas you like.

Then an algorithm that takes into account "each user's successes, failures, reputation, areas of expertise, and overall history" goes to work to determine which sparks are the best. Companies interested in using the Kluster system, put up cash prizes that are doled out along the way (at the completion of each phase).

The whole concept is similar to the one behind Derek Powazek's new site, Pixish (our coverage). The main difference is that where Pixish is strictly for design related tasks, Kluster is for anything suited to crowd creation. And at Kluster, the crowd is also being relied upon to pick the best result.

During the TED conference, Kluster is hoping to use their system to create a new product in 72 hours. It will be unveiled on the last day of the conference, March 1 at 8am. Unfortunately, the Kluster site has been having a lot of problems, so getting in to participate might be easier said than done. There are $15,000 in phase prizes up for grabs.

Can lightning strike twice? Or was the Bevy a fluke? Kaufman admitted earlier this month that right now most companies see participation in Kluster as a means of viral marketing to connect with their die hard fans. It will take a few hit products to come out of the Kluster process to prove that it is a viable way for companies to conduct their R&D. Do you think it will work? Let us know in the comments below.

It is the distributed nature of Twitter that makes it such a powerful tool for citizen journalism. Not only can Twitter be used by individuals to push news out to people quickly and as it happens, but it can also be used to crowdsource the process of gathering information. One of the best examples of this in action is Commuter Feed.

Commuter Feed, which launched last week, is a Twitter mashup that plays off the distributed nature of the app to aggregate traffic reports. It works by asking users to tweet traffic updates at a Twitter robot along with an IATA airport code (used to designate the city where the post is originating) and then parses those traffic updates to the correct city. For example, "@commuter PDX Trailer overturned at exit 10 on I-84" would parse to Portland, Oregon. Each metro then gets its own page and its own RSS feed.

Commuter Feed works by tapping into the wisdom of the crowd and the more people that use it, the more accurate and up-to-date the information can be. "Commuter Feed's dependence on the community changes the commuting landscape for an instant, personal account of what to expect on the way to and from home," said the company in a press release.

As Webware's Josh Lowensohn notes, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! all have real-time traffic overlays on their mapping products. But my guess is that if you have enough penetration in your metro, Commuter Feed might end up being more timely and on top of current conditions. We saw with the California wildfires last fall that often times it was citizen journalists reporting on the scene that scooped the mainstream press. There can only be so many traffic helicopters and government officials reporting traffic conditions, but there is an almost unlimited number of commuters on the roads and armed with cell phones. Of course, I hope they're not tweeting while driving!

How else would you like to see Commuter Feed's localized information gathering and distribution model applied? What other types of information and news do you think could benefit from this sort of set up? Let us know in the comments.