A week in cyberspace is a very long time

It seems incredible that the PR institutions are so slow when their members' interests are obviously at stake.

It seems like negligence.

Why are they not involved in this debate:

I think that PR-firms editing in a community space is deeply unethical, and that clients should put very firm pressure on their PR firms to not embarrass them in this way.

It is part of a very important post in Constantin Basturea’s weblog. This is much bigger than a spat between the PR industry and Wikipedia. It is about the ability of a PR practitioner to represent an organisation. It is not about in-house/agency differences it is about practitioners.

I realise that organisations like PRSA, CIPR, IABC and the rest are big lumbering giants of bebureaucracynd that it takes time to formulate policy and get consensus.

In the new world order for PR that is not good enough. There is a need to use social media to get concensus and for fleet footed responses otherwise events will overtake us.

This kerfuffle is two weeks old and there seems to be no visible stiring among the great and the good. This is going to cost PR practitioners a lot of money, not to mention angst. It will have legal consequences and provide precedentor many other PR activities including the ability to issue statements and news.

It is time that there was a rapid deployment force in the institutions to look at such matters.

Are these institutions monitoring the web and social media? Are they considering the implication for their members? Have they realised that the pace of change in communication is quite rapid. Do they know that a week in cyberspace is a very long time.

Six months is an eternity.