The Coming Web Revolution

With relatively little programming, you can build a software agent to, say, monitor your key competitors or watch for great real estate deals in your neighborhood. This trend toward open content will happen with or without you. It can influence your brand even if you don’t participate directly.

Consider the case of Kryptonite Lock. On Sept. 12, 2004, a blogger described how the formidable black bicycle lock easily could be picked using a simple pen. Within two days, other bloggers had picked up on this weakness, posting video demonstrations of the lock’s vulnerability. Kryptonite issued press releases, but the blog storm quickly spread. The story reached The New York Times on Sept. 17. By Sept. 19, Technorati estimated that almost 2 million online blog readers had seen some sort of post about the vulnerability.