Executives are learning to take the 24/7 patter of online critics very seriously indeed. When Michael Arrington wrote a post on his TechCrunch blog a year ago dissing Marc Andreessen's new startup, Ning, the company's execs promptly sprang into action to change his mind. The founders of the do-it-yourself social networking service dove into the comments on his blog, invited Arrington to their offices, and provided him with progress updates. The result: When Ning launched publicly in February, Arrington offered a full mea culpa that rippled across the Internet and showed up in the San Francisco Chronicle.

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