Seth Godin Tries Out Brandjacking

Has anybody seen exactly how "taking control of your brand" works? It would be interesting to know how exactly replying on the left sidebar, or whatever, works and how it impacts the original tweet/forum/etc. I see a lot of people are commenting here about how this is blackjacking because the company would filter out the bad information about them and let only nice stuff show. So far I don't see evidence of that or even how that would work so if somebody knows please share.

The way I see it this brand site would be more interesting for the marketing/public relations department of a company that wants to see every discussion about them in one place and jump to the actual content where they want to reply, and not as interesting a page for other people outside the company.

There is no brandjacking here; Squidoo is very clear that they are not affiliated with the brand.

There is no extortion here unless Seth is flat-out lying about how the site works. He states that all of the content on the page is algorithmically generated [1], and no human has editorial control.

The lack of editorial control also applies to the brand. Even if they pay the $400 / month, they only get control over the left-hand column [2] and nothing states or implies that they have the ability to take down negative comments. In fact, it seems very clear that they cannot take it down.

The main use I can see for this site is for people doing research on a purchase--e.g., checking to see if a Canon PowerShot XS10 is a good camera for them. Even then, I would probably go to something more focused, like ePinions.com.

[1] "Each page collects [online content] about a brand. All of these feeds are algorithmic... the good and the bad show up[....]"

[2] And once [Squidoo builds] the page, the left hand column belongs to you. [...] You can publicly have your say right next to the constant stream of information about your brand[....]"