I came across this very odd ebay auction for some of the now infamous Salesforce.com promotional chocolate today. And while it made me chuckle for a lot of reasons, it also brought up some interesting points.

The seller says some pretty disparaging things about Salesforce.com in the product description, which I will not quote here – apart from noting that the chocolate is “sickeningly sweet.” So, what that made me think about is just how much the web 2.0 world opens companies up to derision and badmouthing from all directions. Paul Greenberg gave a great speech at our recent CRM Acceleration event about how the customer is more in control of marketing in a web 2.0 world. But it is also important to think about how dangerous actual employees can be. After all, these individualstend to know the most about a company – including which closets hold the most skeletons.

So, while many applaud the emergence of the social web, it comes at a price. Fortunately for some companies with more transparent products and corporate cultures, the amount of overtly verbal detractors should be less. But of course, in such a wide open world, there are no guarantees.