Dell's IdeaStorm lets customers vote on products — Linux wins, Ubuntu ships

After years of sliding revenue, lost market share and complaints about support, Dell's board brought founder Michael Dell back as CEO in January 2007, replacing Kevin Rollins. On February 16 Dell unveiled IdeaStorm, a company-hosted blog where customers could post and vote on product ideas, as part of his promise to fix the consumer experience.

Run a Digg-style IdeaStorm where customers submit and vote on products and policies — then treat the vote leader as a build order, shipping Ubuntu within 10 weeks

IdeaStorm worked like Digg: users submitted ideas and others voted them up, with executives and department heads watching the most-voted threads. More than 1,400 ideas arrived in the first six days, and the request for pre-installed Linux — filed on launch day — rose to the top within two days. After a weekend of multiple-voting floods, Dell required registration so each person could vote once; by late March, Linux preference surveys had drawn more than 100,000 responses.

On May 1, 2007, only about ten weeks after IdeaStorm launched, Dell announced a partnership with Canonical to preload Ubuntu 7.04 on select consumer desktops and laptops in the United States, with the machines expected by the end of the month. The company said Ubuntu was by far the most requested Linux distribution on the site.

Dell's customer service erosion was a key contributor to its slowing revenue and declining market share, so when Michael Dell ousted CEO Kevin Rollins and took the job back in early 2007, he vowed to fix the consumer experience. His first move was IdeaStorm, launched February 16, 2007: a company-hosted blog, modeled on user-generated news sites like Digg, where anyone could submit an idea for a Dell product or service and vote on others' submissions.

The crowd spoke quickly and clearly. Within six days more than 1,400 ideas had been submitted, and the most popular by far was pre-installing Linux on Dell PCs — a request filed the day the site launched that reached the top within two days and stayed there. Second was OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office. The voting had to be cleaned up after a weekend flood of multiple clicks, so Dell switched to a registration system that let each person vote once per idea.

Dell treated the leaderboard as a product mandate. In late March, after more than 100,000 users answered surveys about Linux preferences, the company said it would preload Linux on some laptops and desktops. On May 1, 2007, only about ten weeks after IdeaStorm began, Dell announced a partnership with Canonical to offer Ubuntu 7.04 on selected consumer systems in the United States, available by the end of the month.

Dell's spokesman called the response overwhelming, and said Ubuntu was by far the most requested Linux distribution among users who registered preferences on the site. Founder Michael Dell had been running Ubuntu 7.04 at home, and Canonical called the deal its first preloading partnership with a top-tier US computer maker — a milestone analysts said could crack the argument that no major manufacturer supported desktop Linux.

A public ballot surfaces demand that internal roadmaps miss: thousands of users asking for Linux was evidence no focus group would have matched.

Digg-style voting with visible counts created momentum — the Linux idea was submitted on launch day and reached the top within two days.

Registration after the voting flood kept the signal honest, showing the company cared about the ranking's quality, not just its volume.

Moving from blog to survey to shipping decision in ten weeks made the promise credible: customers saw their votes change what Dell built.

A visible customer voting channel turns demand into a build order: give users a public ballot, watch the top ideas, and ship the winner fast — while registration keeps the signal honest.

Dell said the Ubuntu-loaded systems would reach US buyers by the end of May 2007, with models and pricing still to be announced, and left open adding distributions such as Red Hat or SUSE later. Analysts framed the move as a break from Dell's Windows-only past — an earlier attempt to sell Red Hat laptops around 2001 had gained little traction — and called Ubuntu the right pick to open a new market.