TBM bloggers discuss the sector's use and abuse of Facebook and Twitter.

Matt DeBord: Caitlin, Paul: I'll kick off our discussion of how social media is changing how companies do business from an obvious place: the auto industry.

I've been keeping an eye on how carmakers are using Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter since last summer. There's been good and bad. I liked how Ford (F) used YouTube to build interest and community in the aftermath of its restructuring and the Detroit Meltdown with its “Ford Story" series. I've also liked the way that up-and-comers such as Hyundai have used Twitter to generate buzz around promotions and events—Hyundai did this last year when it offered customers the chance to lock in gas prices for a year.

I've been less impressed with how a company like General Motors has managed its various brands on Facebook. In fact, as we discovered at TBM when we did the Facebook 50, most of the carmakers are only just getting their sea legs when it comes to Facebook. However, this can't continue, as Toyota discovered when its recall problems became a full-on crisis-management challenge.

As Michael Bush recently pointed out in AdAge, Toyota got social-media religion as a result of the Great Recall: He reported on the social-media "war room" that the company set up. I think it might have been too little, too late: At one point, thousands of nervous, negative, or critical Toyota tweets were streaming out there, as if a dam had broken. However, Toyota is crediting its hard-core loyalists, who helped it raise its Facebook profile during the recall crisis, with preventing its February sales slide from being as bad as many commenters expected.

But my talks with carmakers show they aren't entirely sold on the idea that social media is marketing Nirvana. Some would rather set up their own carefully maintained online communities. Others, like GM's Cadillac division, prefer to use Twitter when it suits them.

This all goes to a basic anxiety in the business of selling cars, which is that the carmakers want to control the message. They know that allowing the customer to play a role is potentially a tremendous boon; they already spend tons of money on customer relations. But they're profoundly uncomfortable with the idea that the consumer gets to control the story. So that's the view from carland. What do you both think?