Should corporates control social networking?

It’s quite obvious that most of the companies would like to reap rewards from the social media revolution. But at the same time, they are quite skeptical about the social media conversations going out of their control.
The latest news is ESPN Digital Media publishing their guidelines on social networking. It has already became a hot discussion topic in twitter. You can follow the news on Mashable.
My take on this subject is this: I don’t think corporate should control social media. But they can take part on these conversations and positively influence them. But that can’t happen overnight. You need to make your company  web 2.0 ready first.
I feel that ESPN is quite sincere about engaging social media. But they should have found another way to communicate their social media plans to the staff.