Earlier this week, a few of the bloggers at Engadget posted what they called an open letter to Palm. In their typically sarcastic tone, they actually spelled out some intelligent critiques of Palm and their lack of innovation with the Treo. The post was a critical look at what’s needed from Palm to get back to the top of the innovation game.

All this wouldn’t necessarily be that exciting, except what happened next — and after that.

First, Palm’s CEO actually responded publicly, on the Palm blog. Granted, Ed Colligan’s response to the bloggers was pretty general, but the important piece for those of you in PR and brand marketing is he did agree with some of their points. He took a risk of engagement by participating in the conversation. In fact, he says he shared the critique with executives at Palm because he appreciated the fact that these bloggers cared.

I honestly haven’t seen this too often. Typically, companies don’t respond, either because they don’t have a clue that discussion is happening, or they are frozen, not sure what to say because of fear of saying the wrong thing. Ed’s reponse, from a PR perspective, was pretty good. He thanked them, said that he didn’t agree with everything but did in fact agree with much of their critique. His post was short, so he didn’t respond point by point, which was probably the right choice. He seemed genuine — another good thing.

What happened afterwards is the piece many companies could learn from. Yesterday the bloggers from Engadget posted again — excited and surprised that Palm responded. Many exclamation points in their posts. I would almost call it downright giddy. This from a blog that gets tons of traffic and attention.

And, other bloggers discussed Palm’s response in a positive tone.

The takeaway from this interaction?

If you’re on the corporate side:

• pay attention to social media, it’s an important source of information from the people who use your products.
• don’t be afraid to engage.

Sure, its hard to control the message, and that can be difficult to let go of. But, remember, you have no control anyway. Information in the blogosphere and across social media will move quickly, so you have a short window in which to respond effectively.

Don’t be afraid of your customers and critics. Embrace them.