Crowdsourcing online is nothing new. Every social voting site and its cousins crowdsource content moderation. You can also use the Internet to crowdsource advice, non-profit donations, movie funding, movie content, “flash mobs” (though that’s usually through text messaging) and more. Now, Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, makers of Skittles candies, wants to crowdsource the digital equivalent of random acts of kindness. They’re trying to leverage Facebook’s huge user base to “cause some fun,” via their Mob the Rainbow Facebook application and campaign.

Skittles’ plan: to leverage the power of crowdsourcing and have monthly missions that anyone on Facebook (not just the 3.7+ million Skittles Fan Page fans) can participate in and collectively take positive action in the real world. The very first mission for the Rainbow Mob: Crowdsource kindness in the form of real Valentine’s Day cards to someone unsuspecting. In this case, the plan is to send thousands of Valentines to a Parking Enforcement Officer (aka Meter Maid) somewhere in the USA, with the blessing of her employers. At the time of this writing, there are already over 21,000 Valentine’s Day cards waiting to be delivered to a person who has a work day “full of insults.” (Good luck reading them all, whomever you are.) The delivery of the cards will be filmed and the footage later posted on Facebook (presumably somewhere on the Skittle’s Facebook Fan page).

If you’re on Facebook and want to participate in the Valentine’s Day mission, you can use the “Mob the Rainbow” tab on the Skittles Facebook fan page. These missions are going to be a regular monthly event, so don’t forget to check back regularly to see what’s new and also the results of previous missions. The Facebook application itself is made with the help of Involver and their platform, which offers a suite of marketing tools for integration with Facebook Fan pages.