GREAT idea. a lot of our clorox advertising/marketing collateral look and feel while nice, is a little too "pretty" for college kids, esp. single guys. maybe we can create a tongue-in-cheek college kids guide to laundry and pass it out with greenworks detergent, stain remover, and clorox/clorox 2 samples and coupons. also, could we do a "care package" that moms can order online and send to their kids in college? ideally, it would include a dorm address selector to simplify the addressing process (since college addresses are often complex).

I agree that it's only useful if the data is being used by the company. However, the company may be using the data without any outward signs. For example, I report on plant quality for Kingsford, and a really helpful tool is the consumer complaint data that we get. Due to the nature of the charcoal usage, there isn't a 1:1 relationship on complaints vs quality, but it's an additional tool in our arsenal for troubleshooting.

Quick plug: if you ever have problems with a product, call the complaint line because the company does need to know if there's an issue. Besides, people complain about everything under the sun, so it's not anything they haven't already heard.

Excellent points, Greg. You see similar things in the open source community where volunteers will contribute their software fixes and changes not for monetary reward (usually) but for increased respect in the community.

So how do we bring this to the Clorox community? I think your system of recognizing people's level of contribution with ribbons is a good start. One site I frequent called FourSquare awards badges for a wide variety of random things--I got the "oversharing" badge the other day for making 12 updates in a day--and you earn points for "checking in" at places. If you check in to a place the most number of times, you become the mayor. (I'm mayor at my two favorite bars.) What are these points, badges, and mayorships good for? Absolutely nothing besides bragging rights.

Perhaps we start awarding badges for things like "highest rated reviews" or "most interesting review". Also, one thing intriguing about FourSquare is that the leaderboard resets every week, thus ensuring that everyone starts with a clean slate. Otherwise, you run into an issue where newcomers feel that the rest of the crowd is so far ahead that they could never keep up. (Seriously, at this point, who's ever going to best Greg in number of points?!?)

(An aside: Perhaps the "want money=work hard" paradox actually makes sense if you abstract it up a layer and replace money with respect. In most capitalist cultures, your level of respect is related to how much money you have. Thus, money has been a proxy for the level of respect you're owed. In social networks, you now have a new proxy for respect--number of positive reviews, badges, etc.--so the old money-based system is less important.)

p.s. You're right. AT&T hasn't quite figured out how to cache the report when there's a data failure. There's no "try again later" option, much like your PG&E example :)

thanks. let me ponder that for a while.

cesar, i think you've hit on a good point, which is applicable even in the real world. we had a scientist who, depending on how you asked the question, would or wouldn't give you the answer. if you later went back to him and asked why he didn't give you the information, he would tell you that you didn't ask the right question. annoying, but actually great feedback.

i'm hearing some dissatisfiers here: smell of lighter fluid, charcoal dust on hands and in your face. any others?

interesting. i've heard that the economic downturn has dramatically affected wood supplies. thanks.