The consumerist advantage of the blogosphere
Imagine this. You’re a lazy worker for a local company. You’re scheduled to install a major appliance in a man’s house. Because you’re completely incompetent, you screw things up, piss the guy off, and when he gets annoyed with you, rather than trying to diffuse the situation, you give him lip when he complains.
It’s only after you’ve passed the point of no redemption that you find out that the guy is the business reporter at the local daily paper, the only major media source in a 50-mile radius. You’re fucked.
I was reading this post by Edward Champion, in which he complains about shitty service from a phone/cable/internet company, and it drove home the consumerist advantage of the blogosphere. Before the internet, the chances of a company pissing off someone with access to a major media outlet was slim. Now, there’s no telling whether the person you’re screwing over has a blog that’s read by perhaps thousands of people.
It’s a great example of the plurality–the democratization–of Web 2.0
