for W3c validation

In the age of social media, are corporations evil? Chris Brogan has an interesting take on the subject that is worth reading (in response to this article). This is the paragraph I really related to (since I’m a community relations guy):

From Faceless to Human

It’s REAL easy to throw stones at a company. Earlier in the year, I found the startup where I worked, Network2, in a situation where a passionate community had some disapproval of how we’d done certain things with the product. And the fire from the community was hot. People were passionately against how we’d done certain things (it was essentially an opt-out vs. opt-in issue).

I found myself in the position of being the “face” of that organization, and showing people that I wasn’t a big company, or an evil corporation. I was a guy, a guy who made mistakes like everyone else, and a human. Further, I wasn’t just someone capitalizing on the community. I was part of it. So, three dozen apologies later, and lots of attempts to better understand people, I discovered a better path. I believe, all this time later, that what little standing I have with that community was earned by showing them that I’m a human representing an organization.

Humanizing a brand is exactly why social media is powerful. It’s easy to dislike a company, but not so easy to dislike a person you know. When you think of a company & automatically think of a person you know as opposed to thinking of “the Corporation” — that’s a good thing for the company in my mind.

So, my answer is — of course corporations participating in social media are not evil.