Advice to… somebody: Watch Your Back:
“Bloggers are more of a threat than people realize, and they are only going to get more toxic. This is the new reality,” says Peter Blackshaw, chief marketing officer at Intelliseek, a Cincinnati firm that sifts through millions of blogs to provide watch-your-back service to 75 clients, including Procter & Gamble and Ford. “The potential for brand damage is really high,” says Frank Shaw, executive vice president at Microsoft’s main public relations firm, Waggener Edstrom. “There is bad information out there in the blog space, and you have only hours to get ahead of it and cut it off, especially if it’s juicy.”
See the point, in context even, at The Reading Experience.
Nice to know we have at least a little bit of power. I wonder if they (corporations) also comb the web looking for suggestions on how to be more socially responsible.
The interesting thing to me is the implication of the thread that goes, “Old-fashioned censorship and intimidation may have to do.…”
When I tell a friend over coffee, “Proctor & Gamble products kill ponies, and threaten explode the Sun”, I’m within my rights. When I publish a book that says that, I’m also within my rights, isn’t it? It points out the kind of gray area that’s really really dark gray, and really really light gray to imply that blogging is threatened by being constrained in this way.