Pito Salas raises some good points in his post, Asymmetrical conflict in the blogosphere. He talks about how the power of the combination of blogs and search engines can spiral a negative story, fair or unfair, into prominence on the web. There have been many examples of this in the business, political and personal areas. Someone was even prosecuted recently for personal attacks on the web that had very bad consequences. As Pito writes, "Once a thread about your company, or your product, or yourself, starts up, and gets interesting, it gathers a crowd, maybe because they agree, but just as easily because the attacker is funny or outrageous or clever in an evil way."

Pito concludes his post with the observation, "I know I personally will think twice before zipping off a blog post or comment in anger." I agree completely and this has been one of my guiding principles. If I have a problem with what someone is doing I address them first in a private forum such as the phone or personal email. If the original comment appears in a group email, I always take my concerns out of the group mode and write directly to the individual. Often attacks start in an attempt to demonstrate the cleverness of the attacker at the expense of someone else. Blogs give us the potential for a lot of power. We need to use it wisely.