Social media is getting into everything from food sites to job hunting, and new mobile phone operator GiffGaff wants to apply it to your phone.  But this isn’t another Twitter-a- like, texting the exact contents of your most recent sandwich to an uninterested world – this is a Phone 2.0 where they hope the social network will maintain the mobile world.

True, the idea could work – the internet has lead to some incredible collaborative ventures that weren’t possible in any other medium – but it remains to be seen if they’re prepared for the real expenses.  Asking the audience to do the work for you isn’t cheaper.  You need extremely active and professional moderation of any such service to account for two basic factors:

Some services (like the Apple Support forums) do succeed, taking advantage of the awesome knowledge of a section of the userbase that genuinely wants to help.  But balance that against the number of forums where you’ll be told “STFU RTFM n00b!”, and crowdsourcing your entire operation starts to look like a dangerous proposition.