What's the difference between Company and Organization?

hmmmm.. ok...

if there is no real value in making this distinction, would be nice not to have to think about that when adding a company :)

There you go, that's what I asked: what is the difference.

My second point is, not a lot of people may know the distinction you are trying to make WHEN they are entering that info. While it be evident to someone who works on a non-profit it can leave some folks wondering.

So it's really dependent on how relevant is that info to the relevance of system.

Additionally, not many consumers know the distinction between a brand, product or service, and a company/organization. If someone wants to discuss Oreo products (cookies, cakes), they may know that Oreo (brand) are made by Nabisco (brand umbrella), but not that Nabisco is owned by Kraft, the company. I would bet nine times out of ten, they are going to start an Oreo profile and not a "company" profile.

Likewise, a brand manager is going to feel more comfortable participating in conversations about his/her particular brand, and the products under that brand, (such as a toothpaste), rather than feeling like they are representing a behemoth such as Procter & Gamble or Unilever as a whole.

The higher up in a brand within a company you can get, the more meaningful the conversations become for both the consumer and the brand. Most customer service agents aren't empowered to go "off script" anyway.

I would give the option of adding a product or service in addition to a company or organization. It would provide a better experience for both consumers and the brands.

You can do that, it's just attached to a company/organization now.

But you bring up a good point about the taxonomy of relationships of massive companies with subdivisions and subsidiaries.

In our case, I create our umbrella company and added the three services (the three core business lines), then created another company (my division) and added the products we are responsible for working on (which are much more granular and specific and relate to some of the 3 core business lines). That relationship can be made (though I don't know how), as seen on this page on the right "Get Satisfaction related:" where it shows other companies/products of relevance.

I'm loving the structure flexibility because even though the relationship between product and company may not be self evident "from the consumer perspective" at first, people don't HAVE to go through a company to find a product. Conversely, the information is not presented in a way that reflects a company's internal structure (which is irrelevant to the consumer but often translated into company websites).

Get Satisfaction rocks my socks.

I saw that. I guess I'm thinking from a admin and user experience standpoint for Satisfaction itself - in these beginning stages, you're going to get consumers that will come in and start an Oreo "company" page while you may have someone from Nabisco come in and add a Nabisco page with Oreo, Chips Ahoy and Teddy Grahams as products, and then Kraft comes in - is there a way to eventually merge what could be duplicate threads and entries?

I know if I try to create an Oreo company, and it already exists, that this site will alert me, but if I create Oreo as a company, and then someone else puts it as a product under another company, things can start getting confusing and messy. Add to that that Oreo has several products and then it gets crazy.

(Are the product and services labels aware of the company labels? "Oops - that already exists as a product." or, "The product you are trying to add already exists under the company XYZ".)

A brand manager is going to "get" participating and monitoring conversations on his brand/product profile page, but when he has to sort and select and follow threads related to his brand/product from a slew of conversations about hundreds of other products under his company's main profile page, it becomes a bit trickier.

One last thought - at times, the brands are going to want laser precision when it comes to topics. Using Oreo again as an example, they may only want to hear or participate in conversations about their new snack cake for a period of time.

A lot of fun things to ponder. I am looking forward to seeing how all of this works itself out!

Sounds like you are a big Oreo fan ;)

Great points.

livlab - i guess it sounds that way! haha. i've worked with kraft and some other consumer product corporations in the past.

Wow, lots of great thinking here! With a system this size we realized that trying to create a top down structure was really going to limit flexibility (and growth, since we don't know exactly what Satisfaction is going to become, or to whom, though we've got ideas). So we've been thinking of other ways to make sure that people hear about conversations they want to be involved in. Explicit and implicit following of people, companies, and in particular products & services will help employees and reps stay in the right loops. As Thor mentions a more product-centric system is in the works. We're also keeping a close eye on tagging patterns because that may provide another way to stay in the center of relevant topics. Turns out this will be pretty important for employees AND the super engaged customers we want to cater to. And wow, thanks for the lessons on brand structures!

what is the different between company and organization

I notice that this topic was started a year ago and yet there is no short, clear multiple choice explanation added, that makes the choice a no-brainer...
I lot of good feedback was made -- and not picked up..

We've labelled ourself as an organisation. (Lane Becker's hit the nail on the head here: we're a university so we hate being called a company).

However, when we answer problems etc, we get a dropdown which states: 'The company is working on it', 'The company is aware of it', etc. This seems at odds with our labelling of ourselves as an organisation not a company. Could this be altered?

Promotions and Marketing are companies..!!???!! Is it???