The thing is, I'm not sure I really believe that companies want to have public dialogues about social issues. After all, the longer the dialogue persists the longer it sticks in the public consciousness that you "did a bad deed". One of the problems resulting from mob backlash is the inevitable slow death of the public apology.

A public apology from a company is currently something of a litmus test for the success of a movement. If any old Internet shit storm elicits a public apology in the future, then a public apology can no longer be a decent metric for how much has been changed by web activists. And will eventually lose all credibility.