Web 2.0 is one of the most brilliant marketing schemes of our era. There is no question that the new edition of the World Wide Web is a more powerful notion that its predecessor. Surfers can now interact with each other, join different communities, and even generate content. Web 2.0 has helped keep corporations more honest in more ways than one. Whether you are an e-commerce firm, a SEO firm, or even a government agency, you can be sure that people will keep talking about you if you are providing anything but the best experience to them.

The consumers’ expectations have gone much higher these days. Take Apple Inc. for instance. They come up with this revolutionary product called iPhone, and they charge their early adopters a premium to have access to this product. About 2 months later, Steve Jobs decides it’s time to reduce the price to get other segments of the market (i.e Professionals and ordinary consumers) more involved. That’s when Apple experienced a huge backlash from its customers. People raced to blogs, forums, and social networking sites such as Digg to talk about how they were robbed by Apple, and how rotten of a company Apple is.

But corporations are now develop online reputation management strategies to fight back. One way they will do that is by hiring PR people to go in different online communities and create positive vibes for them. But I have heard from a few companies that will even consider legal action against individuals who bash them. All the fake positive reviews that these companies are hoping to get will manage to confuse a few of us who trust what we read. Of course, a few of us will ignore positive reviews just we ignore banner ads. Nevertheless, we can expect corporations to bring down the quality of our online communities by throwing cash at PR problems.

Web 2.0 is a great phenomenon.  People from around the globe will soon join communities that have more members than a continent has. But corporations need to make profit, and the only way they can do that is by fooling people who are trusting enough to believe what they read online. Who said more power to people can only do good?