What happens when you search for your company's name on Google? If you were used to having to worry only on what is being said about you in the real world, you now need to take a look on what's happening in the virtual one!

A few weeks ago a client faced this exact issue. A blog was writing about his company in a not very cuddly manner (to say the least). His initial response was "We're doomed!". This was partially true. Visitors of the blog had read the story and already commenting on it. In a couple of days after the next Googlebot pass the bog entry could show in search results for the  company's name. And you cant change the page or have it removed. After all, it's content was somewhat valid.

The only choice was to respond. A mail was written and sent to the blogger explaining the other side. But more importantly, an official response was posted on the blog. Without even going into the content of the post, this move showed to visitors that the company cared about it's customers and valued every possible feedback. The blogger didnt make any comment about the official reply. Other visitors did though (and in a positive manner) and more importantly, the official reply is now there for anyone that stumbles on the page. The effect of the article has been greatly reduced.

Of course this is a continuing process. Do a Google on your company every couple of weeks. Check your stats for any referrers that you wouldnt expect. Be on alert and ready to respond!

Flavor of the day: Godiva Caramels

We store more and more data on the net every day. Texts of any kind, photographs, personal data, telephone numbers, even thoughts (if you consider blog entries to be a product of the intelligence as opposed to mind garbagge ;))

But what happen to this data is that often they are tied with the service we have used. The things you can do with your data are thus limited to the features of the particular service. And what happens if (science forbid!) the service closes? Your data is gone with them.

Luckily, services running on the web are more and more providing your data back to... you. In research for this article I looked at the possibilities of Facebook and came up with a decent way to revive my personal site, giannopoulos.info. Facebook provides an RSS feed of my posted items. With the help of Feedburner and some css I am able to post this feed my site as if it was it's actual content. And my site is updated whenever I add something new on Facebook. Of course at the moment you need to be a Facebook user to comment on my posted items but I could script an Essence module to import the data as actual blog entries and allow commenting by everyone.

Still, there is a long road ahead of us. Facebook for example doesnt have an RSS feed for photographs and when I tried to import the feed of ilovehotchocolate.com in my Facebook notes it worked once but then new entries were ignored (as opposed to being automatically imported).So what can you export from your favorite service or site?

Flavor of the day: KitKat