Are you the kind of person who finds it hard to make a decision? Well hunch.com might just be the thing for you.

Launched a month ago, Hunch is the latest in a long list of consumer generated sites. The difference is this one uses information you provide to establish the answers it gives.

Built on the premise that sometimes it’s hard to make up your mind, Hunch collects the wisdom and opinion of others to provide you with an answer to your most current dilemma. That might be where to have dinner that night or whether to break up with your long-term love.

But before you get any answers, you complete a short survey that collects information about you and assigns you to a certain ‘type’. You are then provided the opinions and advice of other people who have a similar way of thinking as you.

Interested in learning more? The guys at HeartHiTech’s have a pretty good review of its features here:

Hunch may or may not stick, but one thing that won’t change is how the exchange of information is continuing to evolve. Today the opinion of the masses challenges traditional voices of authority.

Thanks to: Hunch.com, HeartHiTech

In last month’s interview with Lachlan Brahe on social media, we learnt about the importance of learning by listening. This month, we show you how Dell computers is doing just this – but it didn’t start out that way.

Back in 2005, influential blogger Jeff Jarvis took issue with Dell’s customer support service and penned his frustrations via his blog BuzzMachine. Almost instantly, his frustrations made their way into mainstream media.

What did Dell do? It confronted the negative sentiment head on.

Today, Dell has a social media team with 40 full-time employees dedicated to transforming customers into advocates and advocates into evangelists.

This cultural change sees a number of web led offerings that embrace the people’s voice. Here are just a few:

Ideastorm – extensive site for customers to share suggestions, feedback and participate on a number of new product ideas.

ReGeneration – environmentally themed blog focusing on sustainability and based heavily on community interaction.

Twitter – 34 accounts which are segmented, localised and cover off everything from CSR to Retail. Dell proved that Twitter can be a legitimate revenue stream by taking in US$1 million in sales during the holiday season.

In my view, Dell is a great example of a company that has fully embraced the spirit of social media by first listening and then involving the customer.

Thanks to: Dell, Nick Bryant-Smith, Paolo Modolo, Twitter

For many brands, a presence on Facebook is seen as integral to their connection strategy with customers. But what happens when your brand has multiple non-official identities on Facebook?

In Coke’s case, 2 passionate fans from LA established a fan page dedicated to the brand. Within 4 weeks, the page had an astounding 750,000 fans. Their motivation for starting the page was based purely on their love of the brand and wanting to connect with other like-minded individuals.

As momentum took the fan base passed 1 million, Facebook amended its policy so that brand pages must either be authorised or associated with the brand. Coke was given the option of taking over the page or shutting it down.

Now, this is where Coke proved it was a smart brand. It decided to pursue a partnership with the creators, while also rewarding them with a trip to visit Coke HQ in Atlanta.

In doing this, Coke legitimised the existence of the page giving it credibility and technical support while maintaining its grass roots appeal.

Here is a smart example of how a global brand embraced the role everyday individuals play in the brand’s reputation, demonstrating its willingness to involve its customers and engage in meaningful dialogue.

For many brands, what is being said about them in either offline or online conversations cannot be controlled. Where an impact can be made is through reaching out to fans, championing collaboration and creating a true sense of ownership.

Thanks to: Coca Cola, Nick Bryant-Smith, Facebook, KoiFish

T-Mobile is fast becoming the brand known for bringing the sunshine into people’s everyday lives, in the most unexpected ways. The concepts are simple, but execution is huge, fun and inclusive.

Following its infamous dance event in Liverpool Street station in January, the company upped the ante with a grand-scale karaoke event, attracting 13,500 people to London’s Trafalgar Square.

But the exposure didn’t stop there.

The brand experience extended to creating hubs on YouTube and Facebook, offering the possibility of receiving an exclusive invite to its next event. By embracing the viral element, it’s now creating a growing community of followers.

A brilliant example of a brand that is living up to its promise of ‘Life is for Sharing’.

Thanks to: T-Mobile

We all know today’s conversations take place online. Here, we look at how 2 very different brands are using contrasting approaches to build momentum.

Confectionary brand, Skittles, may score points for its brave integration with social media, but its latest campaign also highlights how being brave isn’t always easy.

To market its new range, ‘Crazy Cores’, skittles.com uses a light-hearted, fun approach to embrace independent conversations about its brand.

Visitors to skittles.com can see other people’s feelings towards the brand and even contribute should they feel like it. As you work through the official site’s pages, you are led to a number of different social media platforms - Flickr, YouTube, Wikipedia or Facebook.

Brave? Yes, very. But at the end of the day Skittles has now taken back some control after the campaign stimulated some out-of-hand content, namely crude and pornographic material. To combat this, Skittles now redirects traffic only to sites it trusts is being managed to some extent, like Facebook.
Skittles is achieving a couple of things here. It’s demonstrating to people it understands they want to interact in a social environment that’s more objective than its official brand site. It’s also bravely encouraging all opinions, while choosing to sit alongside them.

Embracing people’s opinion is also on the agenda for the NRMA.

When the 2008 Mini Budget results mentioned no initiatives to improve Australia’s roads, the NRMA decided to provide a platform for people to voice their opinions, with the aim to drive change.

Roadtube.com.au enables people to share what irritates them about the roads.

Look at this example above from Stephen Wright, who attached a camera to the dashboard of his truck and filmed some of the local roads in his village of Dungog in the Hunter Valley. The NRMA is now supporting Stephen by working with the local council, who is in turn lobbying the Federal Government for change.

“NRMA is the white knight here, giving a voice to the voiceless and uniting lone whingers into a vast grumbling army”. Helen Barnes, Research Analyst, Mitchell Communication Group.

An army indeed, let’s hope change is in the making!

Thanks to: Skittles, NRMA – roadtube.com.au, Stephen Wright

As digital media becomes an integral part of society, projects like Google Street View show how useful technology can be when used to merge the on and off-line worlds. Chances are, Google didn’t expect communities to embrace Street View quite like they did in Pittsburgh.

Marching bands and giant chicken sculptures were just some of the events staged, when local artists collaborated with Google Street View to represent their community on the site.

Their actions might have attracted some criticism, but their efforts do provide us with some clues as to how far people will go to celebrate what is important to them. It shows a sense of community, previously intangible, that has been escalated to the masses.

And marketers can learn from this - as web cams, live feeds and GPS become part of people’s everyday life, opportunities are there for brands to use these technologies. The challenge lies in finding a way to enhance the consumer’s lifestyle in the process.

Thanks to: Google Street View