UK-based Market Sentinel and Weboptimiser just recently launched a new whitepaper that takes a look at the impact of new internet developments, such as RSS, blogs and search, for brands.

The whitepaper takes a good look at the emerging threats, especially RSS-distributed content from hundreds of thousands of new content sources, for established brands, as well as the solutions available to them.

"There are estimated to be 900,000 active bloggers in the UK, producing highly-optimised content on adaily basis covering a broad variety of topics. The consequence of this huge growth is that RSS distributed news, and news from bloggers, isincreasingly dominating how readers access information."

If you're interested, here's the executive summary:

"The rise of blogs and message boards as influential places for customers to seek help on buying decisions, combined with the rise of search engines, poses a serious threat to brands.

87% of the population use search engines as theirprimary means of finding sites. Search results are increasingly impacted by commentary from message boards and blogs.

In a recent survey of a Google search on the top 50 UK grocery brands, 20 were found to have detractors in the top ten results, including Coca-Cola, Walker's crisps, Lucozade, Mars bars andMcCain oven chips. 25 of top 30 FTSE companies were "not easily found" by search. Blogs are increasingly rivalling mainstream mediafor mindshare. 15 of the top 37 online newssources are blogs. Blog stories have recently had serious consequences for brands ? Kryptonitelocks recalled their product at a cost of $10m. New research shows that online recommendation correlates strongly to stock price.

But brands can take action to minimise the risks:

- Auditing and monitoring the threats to their interests
- Ensuring their web presence reflects their message
- Optimising their web presence for usability
- Making their web presence searchengine friendly
- Ensuring that "brand detractors" are responded to, or outmarketed
- Creating and optimising a corporate blog
- Using search engines for tactical ?audibility'
- Benchmarking customer loyalty against the competition

If companies use the most recent techniques of online monitoring and search engine optimisation, and if they borrow some of the techniques of the bloggers themselves, they can ensure their own message is clearly heard in the blogosphere and reflected in search results."