As you know, facebook is now everywhere, you can’t even go to your favorite grocery company’s website without seeing a little facebook box in the sidebar telling you that 5 gazillion people like this brand and 20 of them are your friends.

But what do these boxes really mean? Yes 50 people like this site, brand or post, but does that really mean anything if there isn’t a vote in the opposite direction?

I’m sure that if you open a site for some racist movement you can get a few hundred people who will click “like” on it. That will give a certain impression to the visitors of that site, maybe something like: “There are a lot of racist people around, maybe it’s acceptable”.

That might have been an extreme case, but that same logic can apply to every day companies that give overall bad service, there will be a percentage of its client base that would get great service, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the norm. If there was a “Don’t Like” button on said company’s page then you might see an accurate representation of that company, which would drive them to actually try and better themselves or if they don’t get their clients to go look elsewhere.

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I sometimes like to think of hypothetical situations, or as my primary school teachers called it, day dreaming. Personally I think it’s a great way to stretch those brain muscles and keep them ready for when you have to come up with an actual fresh idea.

So I had one of these ideas recently and I thought it’s actually interesting enough for me to write a short article about. It’s about the repercussions of a simple wish. I know this isn’t a new idea and some books have been written about the topic before. One that comes to mind was something called “The rabbit’s paw” which I read in high school at some point.

So as some of you might know I work in Sea Point and if you work here (or any other coast line town) you will know that Seagulls are public enemy number one. In breading season they just become very aggressive, very noisy and just tough to get along with (like teenagers).

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OK, before I write anything else, I need to say that this is not about anything that happened to me at work and it’s simply an idea I thought of in the shower this morning. (I think of a lot of stuff in the shower or on the loo, I find my thought to be free when I don’t have pants on. )

So the idea is as follows:

I think that if an employee of a company comes up with a great idea, that is above and beyond his normal work, and doesn’t involve a pitch the company is working on and the company decides to use that idea (for profit or not for profit), that employee must be paid a creative idea bonus.

The reasoning behind this is very simple. There are a lot of really creative people stuck in cubicles in large companies. These people can actually add value to the company they work for, but because they know their ideas will just be used to make the company richer while they will probably remain in their cubicle with the same salary they started with, they won’t come forward and another profitable idea is lost.

A good example of an idea like this that helped a large corporate company is Google’s Gmail. When Paul Buchheit started with Gmail, it was something he did in his spare time and as it started to become better, internal staff at Google started using it. Eventually the product became good enough for Google to package it as a product and use it as an ad serving platform. Gmail is now used by more that 150 million people on a daily basis and in 2009 there was hinted at revenues of $100+ million range for Gmail and Google Apps.

Recently, Google profiles and Google Buzz was also integrated into Gmail and it seems that this once small personal idea has turned into the heart of Google’s future social endeavours.

I don’t know if Google paid Paul any for of an “Idea Bonus”, but imagine one of your employees is sitting on the next Gmail, wouldn’t you want to know about it? Let’s make it a profitable experience for both parties involved.

When I found this link, I thought to myself, there is no way I’m not adding this to my blog!

What the guys and girls at kox.sk did was to take LEGO characters and recreate the old photos we all know and… yeah know. (I can’t say love, because there’s some horrific scenes amongst these)

http://www.kox.sk