Over 85,000 ideas have been submitted to the company through its crowdsourcing site since the launch. The company’s social media initiative was rewarded in 2008 by Forrester Research with a Groundswell Award, recognizing it as an excellent example of using social media to embrace customers. However, the company’s approach to tapping into customer
wants and desires hasn’t impressed everyone. John Moore (2010) questions how many of the ideas the company says its customers generated really came from the community, suggesting that most of the implemented ideas were already under consideration by the company. The biggest concern seems to be about credibility. Some critics say the overwhelmingly positive tone of the message postings and the relative lack of negativity suggests the possibility of censorship. That runs against the cultural norms of the social Web. Others suggest that if Starbucks was really interested in engaging people, it would be taken more seriously by participating in conversations at existing Web sites where people talk about the company (see starbucksgossip.typepad.com/).