Mark Grgurich, an avid cyclist and artist was killed in a hit-and-run accident on August 30, 2009 as he was doing a 100 mile bike run in rural Iowa. After examining the location, all police investigators had was a vague description of the vehicle (a truck) and the following clue:

The clue left behind at the scene of the crime

Not having much else to go on, they asked the public for help in identifying the small plastic fragment they believed belonged to the vehicle that killed Mr. Grgurich, hoping it would generate some leads. Little did they expect what ensued.

Within hours of the story hitting the air at a local TV station, the true power of Social Media as an investigative force became known. A website called idthis.org featured the image and the search for clues spread through other social media sites like wildfire, most notably digg.com, a bookmark aggregator which thousands of people visit each day.

Photo posted on idthis.org

Digg works like this (in a nutshell): 1) users submit a story they find interesting, other users who also find the story intersting “digg” the story 2) stories with the most “diggs” land on the front page 3) once the story has it’s moment in the spotlight, it dies. One thing thing you should know about Digg is that its users are the most tech savvy, funny, political, smartass, and damn right nerdy people you’ll ever meet (yours truly included). Some of these folks live, breath, and excrete (not literally) technology. When the story of the clue hit the front page everyone from graphic designers to forensic scientist wannabes started looking for possibilities.

You and I may not be able to do much with the two letters (or is it three letters) shown on the image above, but the Digg community not only had a list of possible businesses the truck could have belonged to (plumbers were first targeted, as Digg users believed the letters were part of the logo or spelled out “HEating”), but screen shots of google maps which showed business vehicles parked in front of the business and image analysis were generated. Some Digg users in Iowa went as far as visiting the locations of interest to check the vehicles in question! When they ran out of business to target, they checked for screen printers in the area who might have used the font used in the plastic fragment. That’s right, they might not know the truck make and model, but they definitely know the font (a Digg user had identified it as… the Kurt Russel font! Horrible taste, I must say!).  One user even had a definite suspect :


I did mention Digg has lots of political smartasses, right?

Sure, a huge percent of the leads that were suggested were not even remotely close to being serious (I have to admit, some of the best comedy I read comes from the comments people post), but a small percentage, the percentage that eventually led to the capture of the person who killed Mr. Grgurich, were. Eventually, a small blurred picture taken from a security camera and details about the findings ended up in a 4×4 forum and a user recognized the vehicle as her neighbor’s! She called the police, the TV station, and within hours, the suspect was apprehended.


What’s amazing about this whole thing is not the fact that this all happened within a matter of hours after the story hit the front page, but the fact that it illustrates perfectly how my generation communicates and works together. Web 2.0 makes the viewers of the content active participants instead of passive consumers and collaboration changes everything!

On a side note: If your site does not allow for your audience to participate, your site is a stone tablet in the age of typewriters (to put it in terms that both the oldest and youngest of readers can understand — some, possibly even remember

The story also illustrates the basic premise behind Open Source. Open Source, whether we’re talking about programming languages or encyclopedias, make the content (source) available for free, let the whole community have a stab at it, and the good stuff will rise to the top. What you end up with is called the Pareto Principle (aka the 80-20 rule), which states that 80 percent of the work is generated by 20 percent of the people, 20 percent of your clients generate 80 percent of your income, etc, etc. etc.

Sure, in the case of the clue, 80 percent of the stuff suggested was way off, but if the Detectives had not made the content available to everyone (made it an “open investigation), that 20 percent that made significant findings (and comedy) would have never happened!

Open does not mean free-for-all (unless you let it be). A basic system must be in place that encourages participation while ensuring that if content doesn’t meet the expectations of the community, it is eliminated. For example, Wikipedia members check the accuracy of the articles other members submit. Apple’s iPhone applications go through a screening process that ensures the application is not malicious, then gets rated by the community, which usually makes or breaks the application.

The Open model is being adapted everywhere. From Apple, where any developer can create an application for the iPhone, to Wikipedia, where anyone can contribute to an article. Organizations that take advantage of this model, the technology, and the way we communicate will prosper, those that don’t…well, they are probably too far into their own demise to see it happening to them already.