As of today, Starbucks has eliminated the community aspect of MyStarbucksIdea.com.

For those who don’t know, Starbucks launched MyStarbucksIdea.com in March 2008, at the annual meeting of Shareholders. Chris Bruzzo (a former partner) unveiled the idea community website, which was part of Howard Schultz’s 2008 “Transformation Agenda”. The Howard Schultz “Transformation Agenda” had 6 points intended to revitalize the Starbucks business:

  1. MyStarbucksIdea.com: Create an idea storm style idea submission website where anyone can submit an idea to Starbucks: This was MyStarbucksIdea.com.
  2. Clover: Starbucks announced the acquisition of the Coffee Equipment Company, the company which invented the Clover coffee brewer.
  3. Starbucks Rewards: Starbucks announced the generation of Starbucks rewards, which included free syrups and milk changes (the MyStarbucksRewards program has changed many times since 2008).
  4. Pike Place Roast: Starbucks announced the start of an “Every Day Brew” to begin in stores everywhere in April. That coffee is Pike Place Roast.
  5. Conservation International: Starbucks announced a renewed commitment to the non-profit Conservation International.
  6. Mastrena: Starbucks announced the all stores would get a new espresso machine called the “Mastrena.”

I’ve written about MyStarbucksIdea.com many times: (Click on the links below to find old MyStarbucksIdea.com articles).

At the 5 year mark, Starbucks even produced a nice infographic celebrating its success:

MSI Infographic 2

Here’s why MyStarbucksIdea.com looked like before today’s overhaul:

1 - 1 - Screen Cap MyStarbucksIdea 30May2017

1- 1 - Screen Cap MyStarbucksIdea 30May2017 -2

1 - 1 - MyStarbucksIdea popular ideas 30May2017

1 - 1 - Comments MyStarbucksIdea 30May2017

From the beginning of MyStarbucksIdea up until now, MyStarbucksIdea.com had a number of community-friendly features, like the ability to comment on ideas; the ability to vote ideas up and down; and the ability to browse past submitted ideas. All of those features are gone as of today.

Here is what the new MyStarbucksIdea.com looks like:

31 May 2017 New My Starbucks Idea

New My Starbucks Idea 31 May 2017

What do you think of the new MyStarbucksIdea.com?

In all honesty, I’m not sure this is all bad. MyStarbucksIdea.com was cute and interactive. But the old version had some problems. It was like a blank slate where anyone could write any idea, whether related to Starbucks or not. There were a lot of duplicative ideas. The voting wasn’t necessarily reliable as to whether an idea would be good for Starbucks or not. In fact, lots of people in the community would have negative comments about ideas that did get implemented. The comments at times weren’t always related to the merits of an idea. In fact, sometimes people got down-voted for reasons that had nothing to do with the merit of their idea -like poor grammar, an angry style, all caps, or other reasons. You can present an idea anyway you like – that doesn’t mean it won’t work at Starbucks.

So 9 years after it began, the MyStarbucksIdea.com community is gone. You could make a reasonable argument that it just ran its course.