For some reason (maybe just fatigue?) I found this series of tweets today to be amusing. At the same time that a new study shows that much on twitter is “pointless babble,” along comes one of those exhanges that shows just how useful Twitter can be in crunch.
For crowdsourcing to work, you need to start with a crowd. With over 25,000 followers on Twitter, Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) of ABC has a crowd before his tweets are even forwarded. Today, that enabled him to crowdsource a problem he was having with Microsoft Word 2007.
He began just by venting frustration ( always a great use of Twitter, I think – you scream into the “void” and often get an answer!):
An hour later, he got down to specifics, begging for help on a formatting issue:
A quick Twitter search of the answer – “Shift + F3″ – shows that answers streamed in rapidly from about 20 users, saving Tapper the time needed to find the answer himself.
Twitter is still evolving, but what sets it apart from other aspects of the internet is the sheer immediacy of it. Not all of us are likely to be able to crowdsource our tech issues like Tapper did – without having to find the right tech or users forum - but a year ago we wouldn’t have thought anyone could do this.
I am constantly amazed out how close Google brings us to that Star Trek world of “Computer, tell me ….” (which for some reason I always hear in engineer Scotty’s voice), joking recently with a colleague that we just need Majel Barrett’s voice reading off the Google hits to make it seem we’re almost there.
Twitter, on the other hand, seems more like activating your communicator and addressing the whole ship, “Can anyone tell me …..”
Live long and prosper!
