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Consultants, focus groups and research only have so much power when it comes to meeting customers’ demands. Thanks to social media, companies now have a direct line of communication with the people who use their products and services.

Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky spent Christmas night on Twitter after he posed a question to his followers: “If Airbnb could launch anything in 2017, what would it be?” The tweet transformed into a thread of brainstorming, troubleshooting and partnership-building for the home-sharing marketplace.

If could launch anything in 2017, what would it be?

— Brian Chesky (@bchesky)

Related: The Smarter Way to Humanize Your Company’s Use of Twitter

Some followers pointed out gaps in the booking specifications.

A feature that tells you if the hosted place has a private bathroom, unfortunately none of this info does so accurately ?

— Moaaz Sidat (@moaazsidat)

Chesky engaged with many of the respondents.

you are right, will fix

— Brian Chesky (@bchesky)

He was one step ahead of some users. His Twitter brainstorm session doubled as a way to gather ideas and promote forthcoming projects.

Basically allowing users to search by the activity that’s tagged, like “parents in town” or “Saturday morning in Madison” and allow ratings

— Andrew Foxwell (@andrewfoxwell)

broad, more activity oriented natural language search is coming

— Brian Chesky (@bchesky)

Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover reached out with an idea to collect the suggestions generated. Chesky said “sure” and replied with his email address.

wanna do a sometime and group together all the 2017 ideas? ?

— Product Hunt (@ProductHunt)

Other respondents proposed new platforms or user categories.

“business” accounts with volume discounts (for SMB, not just enterprise), filter for biz travelers, w/ meeting rooms, workspace…

— Erick Schonfeld (@erickschonfeld)

Some suggestions were a bit more ambitious, but Chesky took them seriously.

airbnbs on mars.

— Veeral Patel (@vral)

working on that… no joke

— Brian Chesky (@bchesky)

Chesky is not the only executive to solicit feedback via Twitter. Elon Musk often shares and workshops ideas this way. In September, he tweeted at government agencies for help with an investigation into a SpaceX rocket explosion.

Support & advice from , , & others much appreciated. Please email any recordings of the event to report@spacex.com.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)

Related: Jack Dorsey Explains Why Elon Musk Has One of the Best Twitter Accounts

Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey highlighted Chesky’s use of his company’s product, quote-tweeting Chesky’s thread and giving it more exposure and momentum.

Love this

— ??jack (@jack)

Less than 24 hours after his initial callout, Chesky tweeted that the experiment had exceeded his expectations a hundredfold.

1,000 ideas have been submitted. I was expecting 10. I think I’m now hosting a Twitter Radio show.

— Brian Chesky (@bchesky)