I woke up to an amazing article written by Jonathan Trenn, The fallacy of community, and I responded in a comment to a pretty passionate article and a passionate comment string, and here’s what I wrote — and I have expanded the argument below, so it is an expansion:

Also referred to as Online Advocacy or Online Guerilla Marketing, Online Grassroots and New Media Marketing is an integrated approach to identifying and reaching your targeted demographic from the bottom up. These programs are a quick and effect means of spreading news and information to a targeted network of online influencers within the blogosphere, message boards, video communities, social bookmarking sites, listservs, etc. This strategy involves the development of key creative and general messaging by the client and allowing our team of Online Grassroots experts to run with it, determining the best way to roll that up into what the demographic audience would be most receptive to.

Jonathan Trenn sees the insidiousness in Facebook Beacon. Check out why he thinks that Facebook Beacon might just be a little sinister and how Beacon isn't really in your best interest,

"Beacon potentially violates the relationships that we form online. Ones that we in social media marketer so often say are built on trust and respect. Oddly, this happens with the retailer’s involvement. Facebook could easily come off as intruding into that relationship. This shouldn’t be underestimated. In a time that we’re talking about 'listening' we’re talking respect." Via Marketing Conversation and Memes.org

Markets are conversations. Conversations are two-way. Since you are what you do and say online and since you will be judge on your reputation and follow-through, it is important.

Being open and authentic is step one of who you are, step two is being available to respond to questions, comments, and criticism.

Marketing to the entire Internet is impossible. This is why it is important to define your target audience and determine ways to find that audience while being open to the many and evolving ways of accessing online communities.