The sixth in a series on the ideas we received

We’ve been well impressed with the ideas that we have received. While many people sent in short ‘thoughts’, others made a great effort to write clear and concise descriptions of their ideas. Again, we felt that there would be many Web 2.0 ideas submitted and we did get a fair number of ideas about comments, mash-ups and tagging.

Augmento (an internet alias) felt that many people discuss Economist articles and in other discussion forums and that by not allowing our readers to comment on articles we are losing our community and potential ad dollars. Yes, we don’t have comments on our articles on Economist.com but I would point Augmento in the direction of Democracy in America and Free Exchange where we are engaging readers in discussion.

Andy Morrall suggests that we could collate comments/letters to the editor into a digest which could then be published as its own article. Andy suggests one topic which would have benefited from a digest of letters to the editor: our article about Bush and Kyoto.

Lee Mauger wrote in to suggest that we partner with to “provide Economist analysis within the Google Earth environment”. Lee suggests that this economic and political analysis would work well with traditional travel guides about countries and cities. Having been seconded from the Economist Intelligence Unit, I’m a big believer in this idea. I must admit that I always bring along the most recent Country Report (or, for Viewswire subscribers, the one-click report) anytime I am visiting a new place. Okay, at US$525/country report, it’s slightly more expensive than your average travel guide but perhaps the EIU could offer a product which would work with Google Earth. The EIU covers 200 countries so you would be hard pressed to find an area of the world that we don’t cover. Presenting information from the EIU and The Economist in a visual mash-up with Google Earth is a very tempting idea.

One reader, who describes himself as a “former political staffer”, wrote in to suggest that we “let interest groups and ordinary citizens mark up legislation before it goes to the floor of Congress”. I can see this idea working wiki-style and being applied to legislation in any country, and perhaps other important documents like trade agreements, , and strongly-worded documents. It also fits in very nicely with two lesser known brands of The Economist Group: European Voice and Roll Call. Victor Kostyuk wrote it to suggest that we “take the informativeness of Wikipedia, social organization of , comment rating systems of Slashdot and , and mix it all with an overarching flexibility to add meta-content of one’s choice to every piece of the world wide web”. I’m using Firefox which enables me to that have been posted about particular web pages on different blogs. If you have the plug-in and are using Firefox, if you click on the link above for manifestos (or even for the Firefox site itself) you’ll find that there are numerous comments related to the content on that page.

And finally, Bob suggests that we link human and machine resources to The Economist. The Economist already brings readers together for conferences and through our own , Corporate Network. But we certainly don’t tap the unused cycles of readers’ computers. Bob reminds us that we “should not underestimate trust that subscribers have in The Economist”. In return for tapping users’ computers, Bob suggests that The Economist would allow early access to its research and stories for those who are part of the network. Not a bad business model but, as Bob reminds us, “your lawyers will have to work out liability”.

(In addition to those mentioned in this post, we would like to thank all those who have contributed suggestions related to comments, mash-ups and tagging.)

This entry was posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 5:05 pm and is filed under Web 2.0, Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.