Sometimes monitoring blogs and mainstream news sources just isn’t enough. This can become very apparent when you’re trying to manage your company’s brand or image while an issue is exploding in your lap.

One example of this is the uproar that happened when Senator Obama decided to support the compromise bill on FISA immunity recently passed by the House. These tweets were posted on Twitter just as the group Senator Obama Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity — Get FISA Right, was forming on my.barackobama.com to protest Obama’s stance on FISA.

The anger that caused people to post these tweets has helped the anti-FISA group become the singe largest in Obama’s own online community: a fact that has received significant media coverage from mainstream sources.

Any good PR rep would tell you messages like this need to be nipped in the bud as soon as possible, but you need to know these conversations are happening to do that.

Obama’s campaign staff saw what was happening and responded by taking and answering questions live on its online community. This didn’t happen in time to save the situation from blowing up (and nothing might have given the issue, the election season, and the political savvy of the protest group), but it did score him points with some supporters for engaging in a conversation with them.

If you’re not watching microblogging platforms like Twitter – and additionally social networks like in Obama’s case – you stand to miss out on knowing what a whole segment of your supporters or potential supporters are saying about you.