Nokia as a company continues to impress me with their initiatives with Social Media and Interaction with customers. From WOMWORLD blogger outreach (of which I was a small and insignificant part) to Nokia Conversations to enabling people like Jan Chipchase, Nokia does phenomenal work.

The latest in series is an initiative for Nokia N96. Yet again, the idea is fairly simple. They took one N96 and decided to send it on a world tour. Unlike a typical world tour where one person has the ownership, they decided to crowdsource it. They would send the phone to an individual. Each person uses it for a week. And passes it on. Along the way people can upload and share videos on OVI channel, Twitter and obviously write about it on their personal blogs.

Fantastic idea. Apart from touching lives of all these people and people around them, the media and content created with this phone over the tour period would not be less than a treasure trove. I really look forward to the output.

The very fact that I as a mere silent spectator am blogging about it, justifies that the experiment is bound to create some hype.

Costs for Nokia? One N96 handset, shipping across the world from point to point, a webserver. Negligible.