“Even one negative consumer comment online can end up influencing many customers.”

That’s a quote from Zhou Chunlan, CEO of Daqi, a Beijing-based reputation monitoring service recently profiled in Business Week that has gone to work for several multi-national companies helping them manage their online reputations in China. One of Daqi’s key services is to help pick up potential crises before they turn into public relations disasters. In the booming Chinese economy, one person’s grumblings about customer service or a faulty product can have a huge effect on a company’s success there.

A few months ago Daqi noticed a disgruntled Toyota customer posting on Chinese product message boards about his negative experiences with the company. He had put down a deposit on a Corolla more than three months ago and was still waiting for the car to be delivered. Read more »

Posting to Twitter, a micro blogging community, via SMS makes it easy to share one liners (up to 140 characters) with all your friends at once, from anywhere. I post on Twitter about where I am going to be at night, what I am reading and working on, about how I am feeling. Anyone else who uses Twitter that wants to "follow" me can get these updates.

The result is a pretty amazing space shifting tool that allows me to connect with a lot of people about things otherwise too mundane to share outside of my immediate company. Think of it almost like a status message you broadcast out to the world (in fact, you can twitter your Facebook status message).

For example,

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