Brody Bond

Another Twitter Phenomenon: Crowdsourcing a Petition to a Corporation

Posted on 24. Jun, 2009 by brody in blog, ideas, social media

Microsoft is making a foolish decision to let Microsoft Word render HTML emails in the soon-to-be-released Microsoft Outlook 2010. The short version is that this screws with email standards, and anyone who wants to send out consistent-looking, well-designed email campaigns will be hindered by these restrictions.

But that’s not the point of this post.

The point is what’s happening in response to this: http://www.fixoutlook.org.

This site simply explains the Outlook problem, and then provides a link so that Twitter users can tweet: “Help tell @msofficeus that using Word to render HTML emails in Outlook is a dumb idea. See http://fixoutlook.org and RT”

Within 24 hours of starting the campaign, there have already been over 17,000 folks who have tweeted this message. And because “@msofficeus” is part of the message, Microsoft’s Twitter admin will see all of them.

This is the first best crowdsourced petition – and it’s prone to change the way a behemoth company makes decisions. You think Microsoft isn’t listening to this? I bet they are – and if they’re not, then they certainly should be.

But there’s another interesting thing. When you go to fixoutlook.org, it shows the avatar icons of the Twitter users who have sent that specific tweet. You’ll notice that a lot of them are shaded green. What’s up with that? It’s a simple idea that started here: http://helpiranelection.com/. It caught on like wildfire.

Folks, word-of-mouth, mutual influence, the sharing of ideas – these are winning. If you don’t have a voice in the ever-expanding conversation, you’re missing out.

Don’t pay for great media space. Pay for great ideas. Pay to figure out how to get ideas out to the people that matter.

The “people that matter” these days? Everyone.

UPDATE: if you can find the Brody Bond or the Wordswell avatar in the mosaic at fixoutlook.org, please send me a screenshot, and you’ll win a prize (prize = any drink you want at Starbucks)!

UPDATE (6/24/09 5:07 pm): Microsoft has already offered a reply in direct response from the fixoutlook.org campaign. As of now, they aren’t budging. But, good for them for the reply! Moreover – wow! – Microsoft just responded to a day-old, viral, grassroots campaign that happened through Twitter.

Tags: conversation, crowdsourcing, email, email standards, fixoutlook.org, ideas, influence, microsoft, microsoft outlook, microsoft word, social media, twitter, voice, WOM, word of mouth