Thanks for this post, I'm sure this worries a lot of firms. Information on blogs travels quickly. I wrote about a law firm's marketing brochure and before long I had student I'd never met emailing me about meeting a lawyer from the firm who had read the post.

Corporate attempts at "reputation management" will be as hampered by bureaucracy, groupthink and cognitive bias as everything else the pointy-haired bosses try to do.

Just Google "swarming," "open mouth sabotage," "assassin's mace," etc. This is one of those technical potentials that comes down clearly on the side of networks against hierarchies.

If you look at other attempts by hierarchies to become more network-like and incorporate network technology as a means of combatting networked enemies, they're just jokes. E.g. the military's 4GW doctrine for combating assymetric warfare networks. The military's doctrine, as formulated in the academies, is to use network communications technology to increase the autonomy of front-line commanders. Instead, though, it's been hijacked by the military bureaucracy to increase the number of sign-offs to approve any mission.