Call it what you want...

But the concept is the same.

I call it Open Communications, Charlene Li of Forrester calls it Social Computing, but at the center it's all the same. It's about the level playing field created by new technologies. It's about opening up the communications channels and giving up on control.

This comes back to the reason I keep pushing back on the term "Blogger Relations. Says Charlene: "...as I often stress, it's not about the technologies but about the new relationships that users will form. Technologies will come and go, but the power built on the relationships created by social computing will endure."

She continues in her post on the subject:

To fully appreciate the value of social computing, companies have to let go of control. That means letting customers control the brand if you're a marketer, and it means enabling new enterprise tools that IT can't easily control to attract and support employees with high social computing needs. In many ways, this is the source of the great distress that I routinely hear from corporate managers.

I'd like to take a look at the report, but I'm not sure it's in my personal budget right now.