Edelman Atlanta

Check out today's Technorati home page and you'll see that Edelman is the most searched term in the blogosphere. No doubt, all of our competitors are checking out what's being said about the debacle over the lack of transparency behind the Wal-Marting Across America blog. Richard apologized on his blog and Steve Rubel noted his lack of involvement in the Wal-Mart situation and with that, the bloggers got even busier. Edelman is taking a lot of heat for not responding "soon enough" to the criticism. Edelman chose not to respond to the demand for an explanation until we had all the facts straight. That just wasn't good enough for many bloggers.

This situation is a great example of two things: 1) bloggers can be prolific, passionate and pejorative; and 2) the blogosphere is quickly changing the rules of the game when it comes to responsiveness. A week in real time is equivalent to a month in cyber-time.

We'll be hearing more about this case internally. There are many lessons to be learned: chief among them is that transparency is critical to earning trust and when it comes to the blogosphere, there's no such thing as do-overs.

Personally, I have complete faith in Edelman's ability to overcome this single debacle. Richard Edelman and Steve Rubel have earned my trust and respect and I'm not willing to toss that aside over a single incident (especially when I have no inside knowledge of how this really came down).