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Social Media basics: even if a company doesn’t want to engage in Twitter or Facebook, there is no question a certain level of monitoring is required nowadays — see 5 social media lessons from Air Canada story.

Perhaps even more interesting than the story itself, are the comments.  And if you didn’t get that far I’ll highlight some of them:

“One sad note about our modern social media world is that apparently people are quite willing to jump on the critical bandwagon without knowing what is really going on”

“Yesterday's Twitfest only proved that Air Canada should NOT use social media as a communications tool. So much misinformation was spread that it became noise and impossible to sort through to find the truth. While I agree that corporations should invest more in customer support, I believe that should be using real human beings over the phone not disembodied user-ids”

“I applaud AC for not 'jumping on the social media bandwagon' as the only people who even care about these media outlets are usually self-interested busy-bodies”

The reason I picked comments against social media is because while I believe it’s a fundamental channel today’s businesses must explore, I also believe a different perspective is important.

Opinions in the virtual space can hurt our brands and move customers away.  However, the importance of the comments above is to highlight that people in general understand not everything in the web is true.  The real democracy created by the current social media and collaboration universe gave the rights and space for everyone to voice their opinion, like I’m doing right now.  Also gave the power to anyone to endorse or dispute it, publicly, where everyone else who wants can read, listen or watch it.  That doesn’t mean our trust has changed.  Common sense — hopefully — still prevails and we don’t believe everything we read, listen or watch everywhere.

The problem is that you just need one trusted source to generate a wave of opinion change.  If a person one trusts posts something, one may repost it and maybe all people who trust them will do the same.  And at the end of the day they have created a new truth accepted by hundreds of thousands or even millions.  If Anderson Cooper’s verified account tweets Larry King died, he is dead, even if he’s not.

In general people will also rely on the track record.  If many similar incidents are being reported by different people in different places and different times, it is likely to become a social media #trend and #tag.

Companies have to actively monitor the social media space.  It’s a real channel with real people.  The challenge is to separate what’s worth responding from what will just fade away.  Through the lifetime of a discussion topic, opinions will constantly morph into something else, change back and forth.  The ability of a company to drive and guide it to reflect the truth will determine its success in the space.

The question is: do companies want to lead the space or constantly try to catch up with it?

--- Vinicius da Costa is Associate Director, Collaboration and Social Media Solutions at Kraft Foods. This text represents his personal opinion and does not represent the views of Kraft Foods, Inc.