Pete Blackshaw, of Intelliseek wrote an interesting column on the challenges of the still nascent online word-of-mouth marketing movement. it seems that this business is quickly being divided into those that do things the right way and not.
Now, it’s just a matter of figuring out what ‘the right way’ is.
This reality,
consumer opinion on multimedia steroids, threatens to hold advertisers
to a much higher level of accountability. Try to deceive or trick the
consumer with sketchy ad claims, and blog-fortified "copy cops" go to
work. Screw the consumer, and search engines will remind the world of
your stupidity for eternity by ranking the most scathing testimonials
at the top of the search shelf.