Corporate commenting: creepy, or only natural?

The New York Times recently flagged up this issue, which was probably overdue to appear, in Griping Online? Comcast Hears You and Talks Back. Comcast, a US cable services company, not only has a full-time staff to trawl blogs and other social media for customer complaints, it has a policy of responding immediately online - by commenting on a complaining customer's own blog, for instance.

Well, why not, you might say - if it's a public blog or Tweet, everyone's invited to chime in. But at least seven Comcast customers have called the practice 'creepy'. It's one thing for companies to respond promptly to customer complaints on the company blog, quite another to up periscope on customers' own turf.

But maybe it's just the shock of the new. I admit it seems vaguely Big Brother, as one customer mentioned in the article, but it also seems to be the next logical step in conversation marketing, B2B or B2C.

Could be it all depends on the quality of the response. At least one Comcast customer received much faster resolution to a service problem thanks to the spying, I mean proactive listening, than he was getting from phone-based customer service.

And of course, anyone can delete a comment they don't want from their blog, just like that.

What do you think: Big Brother or fair play?