Cymfony's Cindy Sullivan has posted a very thorough guide to taking advantage of Consumer Generated Media (CGM). However, one key difference between using blogs and other discussion to predict the buzz about forthcoming media products (movies, TV series, games etc.) and using them to detect early interest in consumer products, is that many of the latter (such as the recently unveiled iPod Nano) are kept under wraps until the day they go on sale. You have to wonder whether this will continue to be the case if marketers start to take full advantage of the customer research potential of online chatter.