Life in the Network

I really use Wikipedia a lot doing research. I don't use it as a standard, but rather as a starting point. I didn't realize how easy it was to just edit a topic and get feedback on it. I decided to edit my topic on beer, since the family business is running a liquor store and I run the day to day operations of it. I changed the topic on beer cans quite a bit. Here is the link to where I made the changes, my name I made up is jsonbukshot...http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Beer&action=history.
I just mostly talked about how Budweiser cans are the most popluar and the most iconinc brand in the whole world and how they are the number one company in the canned beer business. I wrote and added about 2 paragraphs or so to this section. It went rather smoothly for me, I was pretty surprised. I believe that my point of view maybe construde as biased a bit because I only talk about Budweiser and not really any other company. I haven't recieved any discussion yet on it.

The way that Wikipedia is set up is that it anyone can edit any article and have it be true. I also can't believe how mainstream it has become. In the Lanier article he says "No, the problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it's been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force." (Lanier, 1).

I don't think much of a line needs to be drawn for free marketing for BK or anyother company. I say more power to the company. I just think that if I owned part of a company and someone did some free marketing and it was a hit I would be really happy. And if I owned a company and no one did any free marketing, well then no sweat off my back either. Viral marketing can be avoided, just don't look at it, when you see something that is viral on the internet lets say, turn it off. The problem is there isn't any rules with viral marketing. Like the Brier article says, "In the end the most important rule to remember is there are no rules, that is the beauty of this kind of marketing...(Brier, 1). It just goes to show that viral marketing can get you anywhere you look, internet, TV, radio, in the mail, e-mail, pretty much all forms of media are prone to viral marketing.