ExperienceCurve by Karl Long

Kluster.com is an interesting collaborative crowdsourcing decision making platform. They seem to position themselves as a sort of collaborative ideation/innovation platform. It seems that their main marketing strategy is to launch interesting services on it’s platform and the most recent one is called Name This, the main idea being that for $99 companies/entrepreneurs can post products and services to have the community come up with names for. As a demo they are running an initiative to rename Wolf Blitzer, a newsman who is famously on CNN more than any other person.

I particularly like these suggestions:
Garrison Sontag
Stonewall Blitzer
Slartibartfast

Other things they are attempting to rename in this demo are:
Chevy Nova
Zune!
Verizon’s G’zOne

As with all social tools like this I like to look at the rewards and recognition part of the culture, why would people participate in this in meaningful ways. In the case of Name This the primary reward seems to be cash money. Essentially they distribute $80 of the $99 fee to the top 3 names and the invluencecers:

Personally i think cash is a pretty weak motivator, especially when so few are going to benefit, and they need to do a better job of showcasing the top participants and have some non-cash community points for participation.

Via Mashable and my friend the Mad Finn

Another recent branding related crowdsourcing application is of course the runaway success BrandTags.com by Noah Brier