When things go wrong online, they go horribly wrong. Take the Motrin vs. Moms war that started on Twitter this weekend. Pretty crazy stuff.
When a product gets panned or someone possibly gets sick, or hell, when the bloggers all turn against each other...when the online world rallies, it gets, hmmm, out of hand pretty quick. I think this is one of the biggest problems I have when explaining social media, web 2.0, bloggers, whatever to clients. They want to know how to control millions of people voicing their opinion - I don't care how good I am at my job, I cannot control the entire blogosphere. And neither can they.
I am always encouraging clients to get involved, but I think they see these horrific meltdowns and they just shrink away. Then, the further away they get, the demands get more foolish. I had a client insisting we contact a forum and have them remove all negative feedback about their product - uh, okay...I'll get right on that.
And then I have another client who just posted anonymously on a NYT Bits blog post - in defense of this client, he wasn't astroturfing (if that is still what you crazy kids are calling it). Honestly, he was just trying to inform the journalist and the other readers of some information that had been left out of the initial post. I wish he hadn't posted anonymously - I am a firm believer in transparency. Post away...just claim your posts. I suggested as much, and I think the client is on board. But I understand his hesitation...the online is a scary place.
The deal is that old chant that it is all about participation is no joke. It really is all about participating – start with a facebook page or hell, just set up your Google home page to watch a few of your favorite sites. Make a comment or two, set up a profile on digg, go play around on Vanno (it is fairly new, but I think it has a lot of potential).
And yeah, sometimes the bottom drops out. So I guess the chant should be, "Participate, be transparent, but for the love of god, don't piss 'em off"
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