And with a great name – IdeaStorm – to boot. Essentially, it’s a suggestion board with Digg-like voting (fresh off the heels of the Yahoo! Suggestion Board controversy, though, like Pete Cashmore, I think inDiggnation over other sites using voting is as pretty tedious use of one’s time). Details at Direct2Dell, and Jack Schofield at the Guardian blog has a nice overview. Update: My friend Mark has also blogged the story.
This strikes me as a pretty darned cool idea. I can’t help but wonder if Dell learned from The Jarvis Fiasco (it has a nice ring to it – in the vein of The Caine Mutiny or The Bourne Identity). Or perhaps (kidding!) IdeaStorm is just an evil plan to take back the top Google hits from stories about The Jarvis Fiasco.
But here’s the takeaway, for me: just as forums proliferated after the first few launched, what we need now is a platform that will allow anyone to create a branded voting-powered suggestion board – now that would be impressive. Update: Mathew reminds me of Pligg, which is a big step in the right direction, though not as plug and play as I had in mind …