Once upon a time, charities looking to raise colossal sums of money quickly would turn to fundraising kingpins like Elton John or Bob Geldof, who would round up their rich and famous musical pals and encourage the general populous to congregate in a city park, get drunk and wave at the cameras beaming the event live into millions of homes around the country. But what about now?

As I type, the LinkedIn (LNKD for you day-traders out there) IPO still has yet to open for its inaugural day of trading and already tech and finance journalists are buzzing about what this will mean for investors, every-day business managers and the entire social media IPO pipeline, some of it silly speculation, some of it precious nuggets of insights.

Ah, if it were only that easy. In truth, companies are still playing lip service to the practice of “social co-creation,” or using social media to tap your customer base for innovative ideas, new research has found.

Gap, the slumping clothing chain, has been feeling the heat these past few days after introducing a new corporate logo on its homepage, one that critics grumble looks like a logo for a bank, or worse, a medical supply chain. When hundreds of disapproving comments piled up on its Facebook wall, on Twitter and in blogs, Gap responded by turning the flap into an exercise in crowdsourcing. It now wants to solicit design ideas from you. Could this mean curtains for high-priced creative boutiques?

The Pepsi Refresh Project has been one of the most successful corporate CSR initiatives in recent memory, pledging millions to worthy causes and raising awareness for thousands more. But this morning it got slammed by its first wave of bad PR: allegations in The New York Times that well-funded Lefty operatives are stuffing the online ballot box for their pet causes

With the London Underground hit by a strike today, BBC London has launched a crowdsourcing experiment to keep travelers informed of the latest travel news.

Facebook’s “Like” button is becoming much more than a thumbs-up seal of approval. Urban Outfitters is now integrating “Liking” into a social shopping experience to boost its already massive online following and growing online sales, which could also prove to be the next method of community crowdsourcing.

Here’s a story to get you up in the morning. Playboy has launched a “Miss Social” contest that gives Facebook fans the power to undress the next picture-perfect girl for an upcoming issue. Seeing naked girls? What’s not to “Like”? Right? Well, no so fast. Judging by the underwhelming early response, we’ve seen more panting over a Frappuccino.

We wonder if this has happened before – a nation has made a woman pregnant. Jane, the divorced mom in BT’s long-running TV ad campaign in the UK has been the subject of an online vote, and 72% of some 1.6 million voters want her, ahem, “expecting.” And how did Adam, her fiancé, get the news today?

With hundreds of new iPhone applications appearing every day, and with a cut-throat economy of third-party developers all competing for the top spot, how are these apps builders to stay ahead of the pack? The answer may just lie in crowdsourcing.