Tapping the crowd for creative input can provide a double-sided benefit for businesses: first, it unleashes a huge resource of ideas, often at little or no cost. Second, it’s a powerful marketing tool, providing information about who potential customers are, and about what they like. Here are five recently spotted enterprises that make use of content from the crowd:
For those who want to learn a new language—or even brush up on a current one—there’s already Popling for instruction one small bite at a time. Now a new alternative from Berlitz takes a similar approach but adds a social element with multimedia instruction and Twitter-like capabilities. With support for 15 different languages, Vocabu offers a social way to build vocabulary.
What do corporate websites have in common with other people’s children? Three things: they have their charm, like finger-paintings on the refrigerator; they can be useful, if infrequently; they are usually admired only by the people who created them.