Steve Jobs. I hope you are wearing your best underwear.

A few years ago, I had an idea to create a website which would enable consumers to critique and question companies about their products. Consumers could rate and comment and celebrate brands who were making an effort to become more sustainable.

I’d like to announce that website has been created. It is still in hyper-beta (its got a long way to go from the whinge-fest that it currently is) but it is live. Better still - I didn’t have to make it! Some other guys did.

“By helping each other we can make more informed buying decisions, influence business behavior and, with enough of us involved, make the world a better place - one brand at a time…Brandkarma represents our collective wisdom on brands - we believe that none of us is as smart as all of us.”

Awesome. Sends shivers down my spine -knowing that the web has the potential to bring transparency to the corporate world. Steve Jobs, I hope you are wearing your best underwear. You, and your peers are set to be exposed.

I wager that this website and social technology like Twitter marks the beginning of the end of the practice of trashing-our-world-to-make-a-buck. I bet my life on it : )

So I am clearly stoked about BrandKarma. But from first appearances, my fear is that this website will have the same effect on me as reading all the numbskull comments that people leave below YouTube clips. I vow never, ever to read these. They just send me into despair about the state of citizenship and the “youth of today”. And that just makes me feel old and jaded. I want to see real engagement - people not just criticizing the company (and each others response) but actively engaged in posting ideas, queries, alternative ideas, research, links to positive things too.

Brandkarma need to host their community contributions actively - their challenge is to host an environment that promotes caring and connected individuals who can vouch for each others comments. I don’t have the whole answer to this, But think of the way Twitter works. How do you know if you want to follow someone? You first look to see who they follow (assuming that this represents who and what they care about) and then we peek to see who follows them (assuming this indicates the caliber of their tweets. If you don’t trust what someone says, you unfollow them.

Do us all a favor - go and add some intelligent commentary to the BrandKarma site. There is a lot riding on this working out.