14 DAY TRIAL // If there's one word that sums up Mozilla is crowdsourcing. The open-source outfit is now experimenting with crowdsourcing support, asking Firefox users to help a fellow user out. The idea may not be revolutionary, but the way Mozilla is handling this is rather interesting.
A page has been set up a page over at Mozilla Support, dubbed Army of Awesome, which enables users to direct Twitter users to appropriate resources for the various problems they have. And, in most cases, this only takes a few seconds.
"Every day, thousands of people tweet their Firefox questions. We wanted to set up a lightweight way for them to get answers right away from fellow Firefox users. That’s why we’re pleased to announce a new community care program called Army of Awesome!," Mozilla's William Reynolds announced.
"Anyone with a Twitter account can join the Army of Awesome and reply to a tweet about Firefox. Many times it’s as simple as showing someone where to find the info they need," he explained.
Using the site is rather straightforward. You get a list of tweets about Firefox, you can choose the one you want to reply to and simply choose from the existing support categories. The reply is automatically filled in and you can send it on its way in a manner of seconds.
The automatic responses mean that everyone can help others, it's just a matter of understanding what the issue is and selecting the appropriate help pages.
Of course, you can also write your own message to give it personal touch, or to explain a solution not easily found in the support pages.
The idea sounds great, but there are a few caveats with the way the system has been set up.
For one, you have to go through a number of Firefox-related tweets, most of which will likely not be about problems with the browser. It's up to you to find the people that are actually asking a question and you may have to go through a large number of tweets to do this.
There is also no easy way of keeping up with the tweets, you have to regularly visit the Army of Awesome page. Still, the project doesn't really need that many people to be a success since pointing users towards a solution takes only a few seconds.