A great article on the Wall Street Journal’s site about the power of social media. As much as you want your positive messages to go viral, the danger in Facebook, Twitter and other similar tools is that they backfire in huge ways if you goof.  Rep. Anthony Weiner’s broadcast of a lewd photograph over Twitter last month (the hook for that article) was just the latest oops by a celebrity/politician using social media. And because of people’s obsession with the unusual (why do you think news organizations now have pages devoted to stories of the weird), the right mess up could land your company in the news for all the wrong reasons.

In the article, Ken Goldstein, the worldwide media liability expert at Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, suggests that companies/high profile people should follow an editorial process similar to those at newspapers to avoid embarrasing and harmful posts, updates and tweets.

And having somebody with a journalism background work with you to promote your business will help in more ways than just avoiding bad press. It will also help you attract more website visitors. Google’s new search algorithm is designed to look at more than just key words. It is supposed to sort out the good content from that which has been slapped up with little regard for quality. Writing, editing and adherence to style are reasons why companies have hired former journalists to work in their public relations departments for years. Now PR and web marketing are mixing like never before and the need for content control is great. Another set of eyes, especially a trained set, can make all the difference between disaster and success on social media sites, blogs and even your website.

Not every company has the resources to bring in outside help, but everyone can set a system in place to reduce the chance of damaging mistakes. It may be a drag on some of the spontaneity of social media, but that’s OK. Speed often causes mistakes.

In part 1 of Why You Don’t Want Flash, we explained why Flash-only websites are bad. But using any Flash at all on your website is becoming a worse idea on a daily basis. The main reason is the growth in mobile and tablet browsing, specifically the use of iPads and iPhones which do not support Flash.

Mobile

According to Nielsen, 28% of the U.S. cellphone market was smartphones in November 2010, and market share was growing by 2-3% each quarter partly because over 40% of new cellphone buyers were choosing smartphones. So by now, smartphone are probably nearing 40% of the market.

With 303 million cell phones in the U.S. (according to CTIA – The Wireless Association) that’s about 121 million smartphones. iPhones now make up 27% of those smartphones, so your flash banner ad, photo gallery, game or other visual website feature won’t show up for at least 33 million cellphone web surfers. And although wireless speeds are picking up, most users would agree that Flash is not ideal on other mobile formats either.

The number of mobile users Flash doesn’t work or work well for will only grow. Nielsen found that 51% of those who own an iPad, but not an iPhone, plan to buy an iPhone the next time around. 25% of those that don’t own either one would like an iPhone instead of their current phone.

Tablets

By the end of March, Apple had sold 19.5 million iPads (in about 1 year), none of which support Flash. And here’s what is even more important—Nielsen reports that 35% of tablet owners used their desktop machine less often or not at all since buying their tablet. Fewer and fewer eyeballs for your Flash banner ad.

Alternatives

Here’s the good news. There are alternatives out there to Flash. YouTube already uses the HTML5 video tag to provide mobile and iPad users with video instead of the usual Flash player. As HTML evolves it will only get better at displaying video. There are also a lot of options, from animated gifs to Java scripting to make your website or banner ad more than just a static page—and they’ll be viewable in the future by the millions more that will do their surfing on iPhones, iPads and other mobile devices.