One of the things that everyone praises about web2.0 is the fact that people from companies interact with everyday people, AKA consumers. However it’s fair to say that most a lot of company seniors have to be, if not dragged, then slightly shoved to the table of social media, to be more open and insightful about the company past (relatively) bland and (very) safe press releases.

But look at the sort of reaction when Whole Foods CEO John Mackey wrote about America’s planned health care reform. Now with this and the outrage over an anti-gay writer being involved in a videogame, these are the sort of things that can make company bosses go ‘woah I don’t need that bad publicity’ (lots of corporations will always look at the worst-case scenario or take the most negative scenario) or perhaps more understandably ‘I/The company doesn’t have the time to deal with this sort of thing’.

The vast majority of companies like to play it safe, so it’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out in the coming weeks and months in influencing how corporates approach social media and if they scale back being on the likes of Twitter, Facebook, blogs and so on.