Remember Dell Hell? Back in 2005, blogger/pundit Jeff Jarvis had a nasty experience with the computer retailer, and vented on his Buzz Machine blog with some very salty language. Readers responded with infernal rage, and in a short time, Dell (DELL) found itself with a huge PR problem. It didn't stop with Jarvis; entire Web sites were set up for people to come and dump on Dell (we'll come back to that in a minute). The episode is often cited as the first, or best, example of how blogs influence corporate behavior.

The Browser was thinking about all of that last night when Dell beat analysts' expectations and announced healthy third-quarter earnings. The financials were all the more impressive, given Dell's encounters with exploding batteries and the increasing market share of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). Oh, sure, there were a few things in Dell's SEC filing that might spook shareholders, such as ongoing investigations into the company's accounting practices. But overall, the announcement tends to confirm the analysis from Fortune's David Kirkpatrick a couple months back: Dell's growth overseas is impressive - up 33% in China year-on-year - and augurs a bright future. Even as The Browser writes, Dell stock is burning brighter than a laptop battery, up 10% in early trading.

And so: For all the noise, did Dell Hell really make any dent? There are a few ways of looking at that. One view is that the blogosphere identified a problem with customer service, and Dell fixed it (and indeed, if you look these days at Jarvis's blog, you'd think Dell hired someone to service him alone). Another view, though, is that Dell Hell was largely hype. Yes, there were some customer service nightmares, as with any large retailer, and yes, the nature of social media allows a large number of people who've been burned to find each other and trade their hellish tales. But it's not ultimately surprising that tech-oriented people are going to take out their aggressions on a technology company as opposed, say, to a health-care provider.

More and more The Browser has been thinking that social media sites do not necessarily represent the wisdom of the crowd as much as they do the prejudices, however reasonable, of the technology community. And while perhaps none of these theses are provable, it does seem relevant that at least some of the once-flaming Dell Hell sites are now merely receptacles for spam and porn.