Scott Troyer

Twitter is a great service, but I’ve been thinking that its full potential is still untapped. Could we use its nearly ubiquitous presence to help crowd solve problems in real time? Think of a service similar to dialing 411 or ChaCha, but free and with a larger answer base. I haven’t heard of anything like this, though there may already be some sort of method being employed. Even so, I propose using a hash tag like #solve when you need an answer.

Recently I was in Washington, D.C. and was wondering what a certain building near the Washington Monument was. (It was beyond my sight at the moment, but it happened to be the Department of Commerce.) I wish I could have snapped a photo of the building and tagged it with #solve via my phone. Then within minutes the Twitterverse would have returned the an answer like: “@scotttroyer #solved Dept. of Commerce. Have fun in D.C.!”.

I’m not sure about the answer being tagged #solve or #solved. Using different tags for questions and answers could help separate them, but it might be nice to see them together as well. What do you think?

This type of crowd sourcing could be used to identify objects (architecture, species, products), solve math problems, translate phrases, get pricing information, etc. The potential is limitless. Let me know what ideas you have for this proposed use of Twitter or if you’ve know of some sort of method already in use. Either way, start using the #solve hashtag to solve your problems now!