Don’t Mess With Bloggers, They’ll Shut You Down
Mediapost demonstrates the power of the blogosphere by covering the unfortunate events that led up to the blog Digital Connection raising hell with PriceRitePhoto.com.

After the blogger received very poor customer service, he proceeded to post an account of the episode on his blog.

He posted an account of his experience on Digital Connection, and also mentioned that he had found the retailer through Yahoo! Shopping. As of Wednesday, PriceRitePhoto.com still appeared on Yahoo! Shopping with a rating of four stars out of a possible five, but by Thursday, the site had been delisted.

That’s when things went turned very bad for PriceRitePhoto.com.

Howard Baker, a manager with PriceRitePhoto.com, said the business had suffered “millions of dollars” worth of damages in the last two days, apparently at the hands of consumer vigilantes who had read the Digital Connection post.

“In the last couple of days there was one disgruntled customer that posted a blog that caused thousands of people to come out of the woodwork and jam our Web site,” said Baker–citing viruses, denial-of-service attacks, and thousands of prank calls. “We’re talking to our attorneys this afternoon, and will probably be taking legal action.”

“They’re basically trying to destroy our business in our busiest month, and they have,” Baker said. “No hard-working small business owner should ever experience something like this.”

The difference, is for once, that power is spread out over tens of millions of people all with the same playing field.

A blogger that gets too big for their britches only has authority because of the other bloggers and readers that come to their site.

The blogosphere is famously self-correcting – so if single bloggers had that power, it would be scary – but since it’s the blogosphere as a system that rewards good blogging with traffic and links – well, we shouldn’t have the same problems.

Not to say they won’t occur – but they will be sniffed out. Dan Rather was a good target because he was perceived as important. Top bloggers right now, many who make a living off their ads, know they are one bad post away from losing their livelihood.

Keeps em on their toes.