Following up to something I said at the AMA blogging seminar in Seattle, where I posited that by having a corporate weblog, and partcipating in the conversation about your company going on in the blogosphere lets you 'contol how the conversation ends', at least to some degree. I'd like to thing that the rhetoric about counterblogging and the concept of blogging being only about talking 'at' someone, vs. with someone is a moot point here, as I'm looking at the whole 'market as conversation', where what you really want is a voice that's on parity with the determined detractors, like the one's profiled in this NYT article.

The determined detractor is the one from the 'dark side' of consumer generated media, or the rogue hacker in the world of open source marketing.

Left unchecked, "hear me" types can become "reputation terrorists" who have a personal interest in publicly criticizing a company, Mr. Rand said. "These are the folks we have to track and stay on top of," he said. "To not do so can cost money."