If you want to protect your brand then make sure you get it Twittered.

Or any other social media for that matter. There is an LA Times article on big brands but to be honest it could be Superflora for all I care. If you have a name then you need to protect it.

Full article is here.

The 35,000ft view of Twitter

Yeah microblogging, that's what it is. Well yes and no. It's also a vast datastore of information on what real users think of your products. If a product is crap then people will Twitter, if they love it then they'll twitter too.

Find a way to data mine that little lot (10Gb+ and steadily increasing) then you may well be onto a winner. Don't believe me, pick a brand any brand and do a search at http://search.twitter.com and see the responses.