Will the practice of keeping your personal and professional life separate become obsolete? Is this one more result of the radical transparency the social web is helping proliferate?

I would add that the main effect of social media to corporate crises such as this one seems to be that it amplifies the successes or failures involved. As Korye mentioned, related conversations on Twitter, on blogs, and on social networks tend to spike when these types of things are going on. I myself published a couple Twitter and Facebook messages about my difficulties. The public is judging the company in real time, and these judgments remain on the internet for years afterward. So “crisis management” for corporations needs to start to include kicking their PR team into high gear in responding on influential blogs, within networks, on messageboards when things start to go down. This is made more easy if they actually already have a presence there.

How could companies actually use social tools to manage the crisis itself? Well, it seems like these companies have huge internal communications issues during these times. There is frantic talking into cellphones, pacing around with CBs, and hammering on the mainframe computer system by the gate staff. It seems like an internal PDA-driven social network that integrated instant messaging would be very helpful with organizing and disseminating information. But they need to get their internal communications in better order before they can extend any of that to customers.