Much has been written about the way brands and organisations can leverage the power of social media, indeed whole conferences are held on the topic.

One of the fundamental aspects of our Web 2.0 world is that businesses need to be able and agile enough to cope with the yin and yang of shifting sentiments. One minute they're basking in the glow of positive feedback, gaining fan groups with thousands of members, the next they're facing a firestorm of negative comments when something goes wrong.

This came to mind while contemplating the fall-out from some high-profile departures from PrintIT!. Our story on this has generated a great deal of comment from members of the PrintWeek community. This morning Proskills CEO Terry Watts tweeted thus: "Tuesday full of silliness in the print press. You'd think a team would collapse when a manager changes. People underestimate my guys."

Au contraire, Terry, I would argue that the comments are not silly at all. I realise that dealing with cutbacks and redundancies is no fun, and he's probably up to his neck in it. But I suggest that Terry should sit down with a nice cup of tea and read through the comment trail properly. In days of yore a story like this would perhaps have generated a letter or two, which would have been merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of sentiment. Now it is so much easier for people to make their views known, and they can do so in a far more spontaneous and heartfelt fashion. Rather than dismiss such comments as "silliness" smart organisations will see these views for what they really are: constructive criticism that is actually incredibly valuable. Consider it a free focus group.