Everyone is looking to the longtail these days, including the government. You remember GoldCorp, Inc right? The Canada-based gold mine that turned to the world in order to find their next mine site in exchange for a cash prize. GoldCorp released some of its internal data and turned it over to the public in order to leverage a larger group of people. Now, in what looks to be a web 2.0 version of America's Most Wanted, the FBI wants you to help them find D.B. Cooper.

Remember him? He hijacked an airplane back in 1971, told the pilot to head to Mexico, and parachuted out of the plane with $200,000 in stolen cash. The case has been reopened, and certain details have been released in order to give you some leads in order to help you help the FBI.

I'm all for crowd-sourcing, and the concept for use with crime cases isn't new by any stretch of the imagination, but the D.B. Cooper case is a classic in American crime history. It's one of the greatest crime mysteries from the 20th century. The good thing about this is that the notability of this crime may be exactly what the FBI needs to get the rest of the world involved.

So while we're getting the entire world involved with the D.B. Cooper case, I thought I'd offer up my two cents on what would make things really interesting.

Turn it into a reality show. With the writers' strike still going strong and no end in sight, what would be better than another reality show that requires no writing talent—just a handful of psychologists willing to put the participants in compromising situations and a producer willing to promote it? The crowd-sourcing task for finding D.B. Cooper would be a great reality show, right?

Start a social network for Cold Cases. Why not reopen loads of closed case files and turn them over to the public? Photo galleries and videos could populate portions of the site, along with discussion boards and forums for a collaborative effort to facilitate the solving of crime around the world. Maybe CBS would even sponsor the network, and finally find a decent entrant into the current world of the web. That's like, free ideas for CBS Cold Case.

Set up a replica in Second Life. Whether the FBI sets up fake cases for Second Life users to solve, or replicates cases that have already been solved, the virtual realm could garner even more support for the branch of the government that remains the most attractive by mysterious merit and a slew of really good movies alone. Then the FBI could team up with CNN for some crowd-sourcing news coverage of the ongoing and solved cases. It would be so like real life.

Any more ideas on how to really get web 2.0 involved with the FBI's new crowd-sourcing efforts? Leave them in the comments below.

[via Suitably Flip]