Rightmove crowdsources website improvements on Facebook

With its new Facebook campaign, property website Rightmove is aiming to get people involved in suggesting new features for its website. 

The Ideas Factory campaign asks Facebook users to register and submit ideas for possible improvements, as well as voting for the best ideas submitted by others. And, of course, there are iPads to be won...

As well as crowdsourcing ideas for the website, the campaign also aims to increase fan numbers on Facebook, as people have to hit the 'like' button before they can enter. 

At the time of writing, Rightmove had 8,839 fans on Facebook, so it will be interesting to see the how much this number increases by the closing date on August 1. 

As Chris Lake pointed out in March, crowdsourcing is all the rage this year, and there have been plenty of examples of brands using this technique, such as Innocent crowdsourcing a TV ad, offeting £5,000 to the winner. 

Another great example is Welcome to Yorkshire, which uses Facebook to crowdsource content for its website - places to visits, the best pubs and restaurants in the county etc. 

There have been some interesting ideas so far, such as video tours of houses for sale on the site, crime maps of the local area, and virtual rooms so potential buyers could see how their furniture would look if they bought it. 

The new campaign seems to be a good idea for Rightmove, for the cost of a few iPads it gets some free ideas on website improvements, a bunch of publicity and presumably boost its Facebook following.