Another day, another massive recall in the automotive industry, this time impacting General Motors, which must now pull 1.3 million cars off the road due to faulty power steering. Surely, GM, with all its social media savvy, will not mismanage the potential reputation-wrecker the way Toyota did – by clamming up and keeping the public uninformed. Think again.

Details on the North American recall are ubiquitous in the press this morning, but, 24 hours into the news cycle and there’s little to no information at all on any of GM’s sites, nor on its Twitter feed nor on any of its seven corporate blogs, including the well-trafficked GM Fastlane blog.

A humbled GM recently relaunched its corporate web site to focus on its people-powered reinvention. And what detail do we see there? Zero. In fact, the Twitter feed and news headlines that stream into the site (pictured below) seem frozen in time, plugging headlines such as “General Motors Roaring Out of Bankruptcy.”

The fact is carmakers order recalls on a surprisingly frequent basis. In the past only a few – think the Ford Pinto – proved to be PR disasters that killed the brand. What then was Toyota’s undoing this time? The carmaker was remarkably slow to understand that in the age of Twitter and social media consumer activism the rules have changed. As Matthew DeBord recently wrote on The Big Money Toyota’s crisis management strategy never had a chance.

Toyota’s sputtering response is a cautionary tale that will be studied in business schools around the world. The first lesson (free of charge) is to be responsive, be thorough and be present in the same forums that are expressing the concern.

Toyota botched this badly. It never adapted its crisis-response strategy to the social media age. And it is paying today in lost confidence and painfully expensive brand recalls.

Far too often companies clam up at the outset of a PR crisis, making the cardinal mistake – thinking that addressing bad news means you are spreading bad news. Thanks to the life-extending power of social media, bad news doesn’t go away over night. In other words, the old standby – hoping the matter will die down – is no longer an option. It’s not enough to have a crisis management strategy. You need a social media crisis management strategy. GM, for all its trailblazing blogging and Tweeting (not to mention its share of troubles too), should know this by now.