At the CIPD conference in Harrogate this week, there was a lot of talk around social media; it seems everybody has heard of Facebook, but the majority of people have very little understanding about how to harness its potential (or the potential of any other site, for that matter).

One of the most interesting features of social media is in it’s capacity to harness the power of the collective in a positive way. So this week’s mail has three examples of things that do this.

Money for old rope? (www.incspring.com)
The first is a Beta site called IncSpring that tries to “help designers with ideas and business owners seeking same find each other for mutual gain.” Based on the assumption that when working for a client, an agency will generally create six concepts and only use one of these, IncSpring provides a platform for people to review and reuse those ideas that are cast aside; a recycling pool for creative ideas, so to speak. Now there are some of you who might think that if a creative idea is rejected, then it has to be a bad idea in the first place. But if you think about it, how many great ideas are rejected for other reasons? ” Too costly”, “Too edgy”, “Too blue”. You get the gist. My only real issue is that a logo isn’t the same as a brand, but hey, who am I to criticise. Leading edge or bleeding edge? You decide.

The great literary freak show (http://www.authonomy.com/)
I’ve spoken about sites that allow users to rate unpublished artists to help drive their careers (or sometimes, consign them to the dustbin) and for those of you who have witnessed the rise of bands like the Artic Monkeys, you’ll understand that crowd consensus can have a strong part to play in defining today’s modern music marketplace. Anyway, here we have the equivalent idea for those of us who have ever wanted to write a book. Aspiring authors can submit their manuscripts which are reviewed, rated and recommended by site visitors. The more recommendations a writer gets, the higher they are ranked. And to help the transition for virtual to real world, once a month, the top five books are delivered to an editorial book made up of international Harper Collins commissioning editors. A win-win all round.

Does my bum look good in this? (www.checkyourimage.com)
Now there are those of us who are image conscious and those of us who are not; this site caters for the former. In a Teutonic expansion of the concept behind Am I Hot Or Not (still a class site!), Check Your Image allows you to post photos to a site and solicit opinions from a wealth of people you’ve never met before. I think the idea is that users will provide honest and impartial advice. I’m not sure, but the concept of submitting concepts to a random audience for testing their validity is a sound one and has been proven to work. Only it’s never been tested on vain people. The site is only in German, so is a tad difficult to use, but the idea has legs. I’m just not sure whether the legs are attractive or not.