his article might have seemed too far into the future just a couple of months ago. No longer. A recent spat between management school IIPM, which attacked youth magazine JAM and its editor, Rashmi Bansal, following an article in the publication which questioned the institution's extravagant claims, set off a storm. As hundreds of individuals argued this way and that in cyberspace, and as IIPM scampered to protect its reputation, one fact became evident: the blogging phenomenon had arrived in India.

For corporates, used to managing their image in a controlled environment, the blogosphere is precisely the kind of medium that would make them uneasy. It is hard to touch, made up of anonymous characters who can be either extravagant or virulent, and it can create a viral whirl that is hard to manage as IIPM discovered. And while it will always be a bit of a wild horse of a medium, large companies are learning to not only live with it but use it.... more