There’s obviously been a lot of hype about Facebook recently, with brands hailing it as the future of advertising and geeks hailing it as the future of the world.  To jump on the bandwagon, I’d like to hail it as the future of democracy.

Well, maybe not the whole future of democracy, however it does really (yes really) work as an e-democracy tool, and has seen proper democratic outcomes over the last few months.

In the summer we saw students set up a Facebook group to complain about HSBC’s student back fees.  Over 200,000 students joined the group and forced HSBC to change their fee policy.  The people spoke, and the institution listened and importantly acted.

This week another major Facebook group has exploded, this time to protest against rising fuel prices.  Called “No fuel day - Monday 19th of November 2007″ the group has gathered over 152,000 members and is forging ahead to make the likes of BP change their pricing.

Maybe BP will lower their prices, maybe they won’t.  One thing’s for sure is that thanks to Facebook they certainly now know that people aren’t happy and their brand (and share price) may well have been damaged as a result of direct consumer action.

Lesson learnt: listen to your consumer conversations before consumers shout your share price down.