Google's Moderator a step in the right direction

I'll be the first to say that Google is the one of the most exciting and innovative companies around, and with the release of their latest application, Moderator, this spells interesting times, not only for citizen participation, but even for how we think about product development.



Google's Moderator is an application in which users can submit questions to vote for the ones they most want answered. Users can even submit questions to world leaders, such as Obama, Putin, Chavez, and then vote for the ones they want answered. Already the White House has implemented the application for Open for Questions, where Obama answers questions from the public. Obama made extensive use of social media during his campaign, and seems to be extending this strategy to encourage greater participation from US citizens.



Since South African parties have already started to replicate social media strategies in their campaigning, if political leaders, or even government structures, could implement a similar platform based on such an application, this might encourage input by citizens and improve access to government. Of course, as stated in my previous post, only a small percentage may be able to participate on these platforms, but perhaps that will change dramatically after the arrival of seacom. The only problem with this is platforms like these need the participation of those political leaders, there's no point in submitting questions if there's no hope of them ever getting answered. Recent events has shown that SA citizens are not apathetic about politics, and would like to participate, but most times their concerns are not taken into consideration at all. If political leaders do decide to to use applications like these to interact with the public, it'll be a good sign of political will to encourage political participation.

Applications based on user-generated content are seeping into all spheres of modern society, and if businesses could use similar applications in their product or service development, we could see better designed products or services tailored to market needs. However, this might not always be best option to go with in all cases. It'll be impossible to meet every one's needs, but in terms of using a rating/voting method, companies will be able to prioritise customer needs and release products with fewer callbacks.

Government, and companies, that use tools to encourage citizen (and user) input is a step forward in the way we think about how we are governed and the products we consume.