A project started by the company I work for was a minor information victim of the blogosphere last week, and the ripples keep spreading, but mostly in a good way, to the mainstream media. What happened is a prime example for all businesses of how a piece of misinformation can go spinning out of control on the blogosphere and become accepted fact, in a sense.

Citzalia is a virtual re-creation of the European Parliament designed as a social networking forum wrapped in a virtual 3D world. Virtual, because it simulates 3D using Flash technology.

The team behind Citzalia, of which I fit in as editor of content, is creating a debating platform where people represented by avatars can interact, network, debate the issues of today, consider legislative proposals, vote on them and learn about how the European Parliament works for citizens.

The virtual world is a mash-up of the three Parliament buildings in Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg. As we put a blog up about the future site, a Twitter sent the blogosphere speculating about the project (http://blog.citzalia.eu).

Here is how it played on the blogosphere. First, a widely-read blogger, Jon Worth, blogged about the site, speculating that Parliament was spending about four million euros on the site.

He then went on to use Citzalia as an example, rather bizarrely, of the Parliament's supposedly collective aim to squish a measure that allows EU citizens to bring forth legislative issues by referendum.

Since then, the four-million-euro figure has been carried by other blogs, despite our post correcting the original spark. The original blogger himself amended the article to use the correct figures but also responded that we should have contacted him as soon as he blogged his speculation. Huh?

Of course, a professional media organisation would have sent an email or telephoned someone on the project to get the correct information. The mass of blogs got noticed and they did. I have fielded calls from the Guardian, Computing magazine and the BBC, since the blog post last Thursday.

For any organisation, it shows the reach and power of Twitter, bloggers and the web to output good and bad information.

Since the information blog site about Citzalia is a means of recruiting citizen beta testers for the development site, our team was able to enjoy the publicity, despite the error, which did make the project look extravagant at a time when spending is being restrained.

We started getting a lot of positive blogs as well, many deciding to withhold judgment and willing to try the site and capturing some of the fun in the project we are building.

For businesses looking at managing information about them in this brave new world, the best plan would be to have a plan and release as much of the correct information as possible first.

Then everyone has a chance to base their blogs and Twitters on some original information. Then they can make of it what they want. It's more or less out of your control, except for following the blogging trail and correcting where you can.

Those who want to use it to put forward their point of view will do so and they are entitled to do so. For example, the Citzalia concept, at any price, served to confirm the beliefs of the bloggers who are against having an EU. A columnist at the UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper was very inventive in using it to launch his invective.

"We lose power and get virtual democracy," ran the headline to his thundering from his pulpit, before he launched into his real target, the UK Parliament. "All this sounds remarkably like the 'virtual democracy' we already have in Westminster, under our new Coalition Government," Christopher Booker wrote.

"One of its first acts, you may recall, was to open a website on which voters could propose new laws and policies. Last week it was reported that every one of the hundreds of proposals from members of the public had been rejected or ignored."

It all goes to show you can try to guide the debate, just expect it will take myriad different paths from there.

Hurrah for democratic speech. It's a great big ball of blog, sometimes.

Send any comments to Ahmed at elamin.ahmed@gmail.com.