People making a splash in social media?

I found the article Social Media? Get Serious!Understanding the functional building blocks of social media to be very interesting. Most everyone you meet know what the social media phenomena Facebook has become. You cannot even go to pump gas without reading the advertisement to like on us on Facebook and earn a chance to win free Gas. What about the companies who have social media websites, participate in blogs, show youtube videos and Tweet on a daily basis to the many followers but are unprepared to address social media issues that have gone viral? "Authors of social media can range from everyday people to professional writers and celebrities."This has created a blogosphere and there are over 100 million blogs. This social media atmosphere has created a public opinion forum. This has created positive and negatives for the industry. Companies may have embraced social media but not entirely. A great example of this is when a major airline company United Airlines broke the Guitar of Dave Carroll. Although we all know many things before this guitar have been broken by airlines this situation is different. Dave created a Youtube video called United Broke my guitar. This video was viewed over 9.5 million times, discussed on CNN and rated one of Youtube's best videos. All this attention caused a public nightmare for United Airlines. However the company never once responded!?!?  "These days, one witty tweet, one clever blog post, one devastating video forward to hundreds of friends at the click of a mouse-can snowball and kill a product or damage a company's share price. " This is a great example that shows, people can make a positive or negative splash using social media. Companies have to not only use social media to reach their consumers but also learn to respond to negative events on social media. This example shows how one click can damage a company's share price! 

Reference:
Kirtzmann, J.H, Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I.P., Silvestre, B.S. Social Media? Get Serious! Understanding the Functional Building Blocks of Social Media. 2011 <www.elsevier.com/locate/bushor>