I bet you have read the news from everywhere in the past a couple of weeks about Nestlé, the food giant, has come under crucial pressure on social media sites like Facebook and YouTube regarding its sourcing of palm oil in Indonesia, showing how these platforms are changing communications.

The environmental group Greenpeace issued a report on Nestlé's purchases of palm oil from Sinar Mas, an Indonesian firm alleged to be involved in illegal deforestation, for use in brands like Kit-Kat. Apart from a protest at Nestlé's headquarters, they also posted a clip on YouTube showing a man who had bought a Kit-Kat biting in to the finger of an orang-utan instead of a bar of chocolate, the blood came out and visual effect is quite terrifying.

Nestlé requested that YouTube remove the video, which received 750,000 hits in one week and quickly spread across the web, arguing that its copyright had been infringed. Moreover, it sought to discourage members of Facebook from using a Kit-Kat logo that had been doctored by Greenpeace to read “Killer” when adding messages to its corporate page, which has more than 95,000 fans.

However, this only served to fuel the negative word-of-mouth among netizens, which has extended to other Web 2.0 services including Twitter.

Greenpeace press officer commented that online social network is the place where “major corporations are very vulnerable” & the power is indeed in consumers’ hand.

In the end, Nestlé could not ignore anymore. It has now cancelled its contract with Sinar Mas, which provided only 1.25% of its palm oil stock last year, and has started making more information about its palm oil operations available on Facebook.

"We, like Greenpeace and many others, abhor destruction of the rain forests, and will not source from companies where there is verifiable evidence of environmental damage," Nina Backes, a Nestlé spokesperson, said. "Like all companies, we are learning about how best to use social media, particularly with such complex issues. What we take out of this is that you have to engage." The main challenge in achieving this goal, Backes continued, is "to show that we are listening, which we obviously are, while not getting involved in a shouting match."

In the web2.0 world, a lot of things become more transparent, and people are more informed in an easier and faster manner. All these request corporations to be more attentive. I think use “TLC” (tender loving care) is not an exaggeration to describe the right attitude that corporations should adopt. Specifically to social media, maybe think about more hands-on approach to tracking conversations about your brand, reaction plan ready for any possible crisis and developed guidelines for employees who are active on social media, etc.