The group, moderated by Ned Barnett, has experienced a recent back and forth about consumer backlashes. The consumer outrages, whether faux/manufactured or real, concerned a variety of companies and incidents:

- Subway Homeschool Discrimination Around the Web « One Mom

- Rachael Ray ad pulled over ‘jihad scarf’

- cbs13.com – Watchdog Group Outraged By New Starbucks Logo

- Christian Ministry ‘Habitat for Humanity’ Agrees to Work with Abortion Giant Planned Parenthood

- Crane Collapses on Manhattan’s East Side, Killing 4 – New York Times

So, I shared my thoughts stemming from reading those issues / incidents, and how the various members of the listserv felt they should best be handled from a PR perspective. I’d be happy to hear your input and feedback.

Seems that there is at least one overall lesson to be learned here. (Not that it hasn’t already been learned.)

Tracking. We must all be tracking.

It is a given that the Web (in a broad use environment) is not even two decades old … and conversational/personal media (blogs, social networks, et.al.) is not even a decade old.

Yahoo! started their guide in a campus trailer in February 1994 and incorporated in 1995. Google was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 7, 1998. Both companies are, after all, examples of how these stories are discovered and, in turn, help build the memes.

YouTube launched on December 15, 2005 and Movable Type (just one blog platform) was announced in September 2001. So, we’re dealing with a very young environment. And, these are the environments that *really* help to spread the WOM.

Tracking of all media is now the key for all organizations. If you’re not tracking, you’re setting your organization/business up for risk.

Forget whether or not the outrage is right/proper, faux/sincere or not. It is real (even if manufactured) and can grow in this new digital word-of-mouth world. That digital WOM world is growing and shows no sign of waning. Instead, it is almost growing exponentially.

Examples: Think of all the closed social networks and groups (closed Yahoo!/Google groups, for instance) where these memes can grow to a furor before spilling out into the Web that is indexed by Google/Yahoo! news. Ning.com crossed the 200k Social Networks mark in March 2008. Adding more than 1,000 new networks per day, they expect to cross the 300K mark soon. (NIng, as of yet, won’t discuss total number of users publicly.) Many of those networks are closed and have thousands of members. How, if at all, can you really address or curb/stop those furors at their nexus?

These issues of tracking WOM online are some of the most important concerns for public relations today, IMO.

You see, I still feel that a lot of practitioners do not pay attention to online memes regarding their clients. We can debate whether to respond or not, but being aware of potential problems is key. Too often, when I chat with practitioners, I find that they are not actively tracking via online search. It stuns me. Truly.