From the brand side of things, Facebook recently launched “Talking About This Metric“.  Brands have been focusing on the number of likes for lack of better metrics and Facebook launced this new metric as a first step to measure user activity and engagement.  A recent study found that on most popular brand pages, user engagement level measured by this new metric is around 1%. 

We at WeDecide believe that depth and quality and level of activity, discussion matter as much as if not more than sheer likes or viewers.  We are happy to see that Facebook is taking a step in this direction.  We have also started integrating our WeDecide platform with Facebook and also started working on a Facebook app version.  Contact us if you want to be a tester

Anton Steinø (photo) has been one of the top 5 influencers on 100Dage, impressive to know he is only 16 and had some quite intelligent proposals for his fellow citizens. One of them was “prioritization of society course” in the classrooms in Denmark. His interview on 100Dage can be read here.

One of the clear learnings from the process has been the ability of citizens with highly varying background to produce public policy proposals. The top ten contributors include an auto mechanic, a lawyer, a high school student, a retired teacher.

Another important outcome of the process has been the ability of this large reader group to produce constructive input with no (not a single) offensive critic, that had to be removed. This, in contrast with about 1/3 of comments in regular blogs being removed, is an important achievement for constructive journalism.

It is clear that people are interested in defining new policies, and this kind of engagement has value of teaching citizens about public concerns. It is yet to be proven that citizens can actually produce relevant and valuable input for the public institutions. Challenges – most of them we face – are complex, and many would argue, so are many citizens, who have experience and therefore expertise in the area.

Crowd sourcing for public policy has not been done, and we are happy to try being the first ones to try on wedecide.dk – the continuation of 100Dage project. Wedecide.dk brings together public institutions and citizens, where institutions direct their challenges at citizens who would like to gain influence and effect policy-making.

WeDecide Platform now has a brand new alerts & notification box which helps users keep up with the latest events happening on their proposals and also giving important notification about the community and campaigns.

Available alerts and notifications for:

• Comments made on proposals with investment on it
• Proposal phase changes like Develop, Selection and Decision
• Revisions on proposals
• New campaigns
• Proposals open for public voting

Enhanced reporting options

WeDecide platform offers an enhanced tool to report user based – and community based activities. The reports can be customized by date and many other options available, and can also be downloaded in xlsx, pdf and other popular formats.

WeDecide Platform now supports Facebook log in and sign up features. Existing WeDecide users can also link their WeDecide accounts to Facebook accounts with the help of  the new Settings page.

Settings page

Our brand new settings panel enables WeDecide users customizing their password, linking accounts and  managing email subscription.

Avatars

For the first time, Avatar feature is available for users who log in via Facebook or link their accounts to Facebook.

Improved social sharing on proposals

WeDecide users can share their proposals as given answers of related campaign questions over most popular social platforms with ease!

Differentiate  your proposals at first glance

With the new icons in the proposal list it is easier to see the proposals you created and invested.

Newest campaign appears on the top

With the version 1.9 the newest campaign will appear on the top of the campaign list.

Three key messages were discussed:

#1 Internal – not external – factors make or break open innovation initiatives.

#2 Understanding, connecting and communicating with partners is key to open innovation success.

#3 Open innovation and social media are inseparable. You need to seed now to reap future benefits!

Stefan also talked about the different types of innovation and how important it is to pay attention to all of them. WeDecide is happy to host its next Istanbul Innovates workshop about one of these most neglected but most prospective innovation types, that of Business Model Innovation: http://istanbulinnovates2.eventbrite.com/

You can find Stefan’s presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/StefanLindegaard/making-open-innovation-work

You can find a Turkish summary of the workshop here.

Thank you Stefan and all the participants.

Wedecide won 2nd prize and $ 10,ooo at Intel Challenge in European Finals!.. More info here

We are honored and are looking forward to pitch at Berkeley, where I had graduated from in 2007.

We met a line of fantastic businesses at Sopot, Poland, and looking forward to keep in touch with this innovative and capable community of entrepreneurs and mentors.

Last week, Denmark’s most intellectual and progressive newspaper Information Avis launched a public think-tank in using Wedecide, called 100dage – after the first 100 days of Denmark’s new government at their job. The motive is to provide them with citizen-made solutions to most pressing challenges of the country.

Essentially, Information is using its print media to attract its community of readers in order to generate proposals responding to challenges the country is facing, such as “How can Denmark provide quality public schooling for all?”

Participants log on to the site via their account at Information, and use their credits to buy shares in existing or new proposals they create. The collective ownership on the proposals is fueling collaboration on them, whilst increasing the price of most promising proposals.

The next step is that top-valued proposals are moving to a voting stage – where they are receiving a voting by the platform users. Those that receive 50% or more approval and enough participation (5%) are concluded as community decisions.

Both proposals and their authors (multiple owners per proposal) are published on paper regularly – as the major incentive for participants. The future of the project may include interviews with the proposal generators on TV or radio shows.

Editor’s Weblog author Kathrine Travers made an interview with project manager and Information’s Web Editor Nikolai Thyssen. Nikolai says:

“This is just the beginning. It’s been more than a decade since Dan Gilmore famously proclaimed, “my readers know more than I do”. Many journalists understand this, but also get very disappointed every time they look at the user comments that their journalism provokes. They hear about the wisdom of the crowds, and all they see is bickering. So, we must be doing something wrong.

Usually we ask our users for their opinion. We ask them to be commentators on our agenda. This is an attempt to ask different questions: Instead of ”what do you think”, we’re asking “what do you know, what have you learned?, what insight can you share?” I think the answers will also be different and I’m sure this will radically change the way we do journalism.”