elearnspace

Open environments – or at minimum, environments where everyone potentially has a voice – function by different rules than closed environments. We’ve seen this in fields such as news, video, music, and journalism. We’re also seeing it in the marketing and public relations fields. The fully pre-packed, centralized, company-shaped public image is now augmented by images posted to flickr and videos posted on YouTube. An organization no longer solely shapes its reputation. The myriad of bloggers, podcasters, youtubers, facebookers, and twitterers contribute significantly to reputation of a company. William Dutton calls this networked group the fifth estate: “Essentially, the Internet is enabling people to network with other individuals and with a vast range of information, services and technical resources. This is being achieved in ways that can support greater accountability not only in government and politics, but also in other sectors. I will argue that this could be as important – if not more so – to the 21st century as the Fourth Estate has been since the 18th. ”
Social Media Disasters provides numerous examples of companies that have not yet succeeded in transitioning to participation in an open market of reputation creation.