IdeaStorm can help take your idea and turn it into reality.

When IdeaStorm was initially launched it saw a flurry of activity. Ideas received hundreds of thousands of points. Which translates in to thousands of votes. Basically the forum was a hive of activity. Which Dell promptly killed off by refusing to provide proper moderation and discouraging conversation and discussion around ideas. Unsurprisingly the activity on the forum collapsed as the most active members left disgruntaled and dissalusioned with IdeaStorm and Dell.

Another reason IdeaStorm has fallen into the dolldrums is the apparent lack of interest from Dell or slow feedback with regaurd to ideas. This gives the impression to forum members their ideas are not being looked at or considered. This idea is a way of fixing that problem.

The core issue with IdeaStorm as I see it is it's very isulated and isolated from the rest of the web. It doesn't even seem to integrate very well with the "single sign-on" Dell introduced to it's forums a few years ago. So what we need to do is increase exposure to the rest of the web. Bring IdeaStorm out of it's little closet space at Dell.

To achieve this I would recommend leverageing the existing social media platforms like Google+, Twitter, Facebook and also cumminities filled with creative people like Deviant Art. Many of these social media platforms allow companies like Dell to establish their own channels. Dell can use these channels to expose ideas posted on IdeaStorm to the wider on-line cummunity.

To make this idea work I envisage ideas being automatically fed from the IdeaStorm forum through to a Google+ channel or Twitter channel. Which should be achievable. Many of these social media platforms support such actions via APIs.

Dell can then guage the popularity and usefulness of an idea from the level of attention it attracts and the amount of discussion it generates. Which has to be better than the depreciating points system used on IdeaStorm at the moment. And since the feed to Google+ or other platforms will update each time a new idea is posted on IdeaStorm new ideas will naturally bubble to the top of the discussion agenda. Giving them a fair chance to gather support.

Now clearly for this to work, Dell's bloggers, forum administrators, product developers, engineers and evangialists will all have to be involved and will all have to work more closely together than before.

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