Complete Web Monitoring

Risk Avoidance: Watching What the Internet Thinks

The Web is an open forum, and there’s very little control over what’s said. This can affect your business in important ways.

First of all, online content may be libelous or slanderous. With web communities, everyone in the world has a soapbox. Open conversation is the norm and the Web is a relatively free form of expression, but if people post things that can be proven false, you can often challenge them or have them removed.

Don’t be overbearing with your retaliation to online commentary, or your challenge may backfire. Search engine caches, whistle-blower sites (like Wikileaks), and even attentive users taking screenshots will preserve copies of what was said and distribute them on platforms beyond your control. It’s always better to deal with the criticism openly, and to let the community draw its own conclusions, as long as you can support your claims with facts.

A second source of risk is intellectual property violation. So much of your company’s assets are tied up in brand equity, proprietary information, media, and other forms that you may experience significant material losses when others use that information.

While digital piracy might seem the most obvious form of intellectual property risk, other, subtler, ones are also important. For example, some vendors may repurpose your brand or slogan, modify it, and sell it on clothing; you need to defend that brand across all media. Communities provide excellent early warning against ...