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Toyota teams up with Digg to answer public questions

Just had this email pop through from Digg.com, asking me to submit my questions for the President of Toyota (in the wake of the potentially soon-to-be largest automobile recall in history).

Toyota has definitely opened itself up here, it will be interesting to see which questions is answers and how.  Here are some samples submitted so far:

How far along is Toyota on moving into some truly gas free cars in the future? Are these kinds of vehicles even possible or feasible in our current lifetime?

I was a General Manager of one of your largest dealerships in the US. I was aware that this problem dates back to 2004. In fact, there was a death involved in a sudden acceleration incident at an Atlantic City Hotel in a Camry that our dealership sold. At this point is Toyota's posistion going to chage as to the dates involved?

In the world of today, why does Toyota still produce 5 types of SUV's, is that not excessive?

Mr. Lentz, I'm currently in the market for a new car, and until the recalls, the 2010 Prius was at the top of my list. I'm now back to square one and researching other manufacturers' hybrids. While Toyota's issues with acceleration and braking issues may be isolated, it has become clear that your company did not address these issues proactively or in a timely fashion. What is your message to non-Toyota drivers who may still be interested in your cars, but are very concerned about Toyota's response to the current crisis?

How does Toyota maintain a minimal presence of union activity in its factories?

I have a Prius. I use it to drive around both of my children (ages 6 and 4 months), sometimes our family cat, and our family to the mountains. We drive in the snow, we drive it everywhere. Needless to say, we love this car. Why would you wait for so long to say anything and put all of the above in danger? As a consumer, I purchased a Toyota product because it had a conscience - because it was a thoughtful product. How are you going to right what's happened and alleviate the concerns about Toyota's integrity?

Some of these are pretty hardcore - others reminisce about owning a "Toy Yoda" as a child ... One thing is true no matter what: These people are asking these questions outside of the Digg site as well, but at least now Toyota is able to collect them - and respond.  They can also see which questions hit home with the largest number of users, thanks to the Digg rating system.  They've brought the issue into their own court so to speak, and now they can address the community-prioritized concerns and put them into context, correct any inaccuracies, and repeatedly apologize in public.  The Digg page isn't showing up in search engines for "toyota," "toyota recall" or "toyota president" yet - and there is no mention of it on toyota.ca or the Toyota Recall Update page, which makes me wonder how invested Toyota actually is in the process or whether they just haven't gotten to creating those links yet.

I haven't really heard much about Digg lately, not compared to a few years ago when it was cooler than sliced bread.  So I looked up it's Alexa data and it is definitely a little bumpy, but improved from where it was a year ago.  Partnering with topics such as the Toyota recall might really help Digg catch up to the other big social players ...

Graph showing 12 months of Digg.com traffic, from Alexa.

Graph comparing Digg.com to Facebook, Twitter and Delicious

Screen capture of the Toyota + Digg email I received today

Here's the landing page:

Screen capture of the Toyota + Digg landing page showing Facebook Connect integration and 351 comments so far