The irony of this post is,  I was on the Mashable site following some others that had followed me on the Mashable Social Network when I noticed that Mashable itself was advertising for Mashable readers to “Join the conversation by adding Mashable’s Pete Cashmore to your Circles on Google+ .”  The upper portion of the site has a drop down bar telling you to add Mr. Cashmore (see image below).

Google Plus is the new darling of social networks and it is the latest in shiny things that we social media people love to jump in and declare ourselves as early adopters.  We get to try it out and pick it apart piece by piece and provide feedback and add our 2 cents.  I’m somewhat behind that game as this is my first post about the new network.  I must admit that I have been on Google Plus now since I could get an invite when it first launched and tweeting every article I can pass along that I have read on the subject.

Getting back to the issue at hand, Google Plus originally opened up the invitations to its “field test” of their network to the user that had an invite.  This made the invites like the gold standard for a while and everyone in social media was calling all their friends to get in on the gold rush of invites.  Most of my colleagues were in and salivating on the new toy, and I heard tell of brands that were also jumping in and being a part of the fun, the point there is to be an early adopter and get a jump on the competition as we are all seeing how the past rolled out with Twitter and Facebook.  This ended for businesses however as Google pulled the plug on the ability for businesses or brands to sign up on Google Plus. Google went as far as to  suspend those brands they could hunt down and find on the network.

Now enter the folks at Mashable.  The thrive on the metric of eyeballs.  They are a media property that tries to gain as many eyeballs as possible for the businesses that pay them for distribution of their posts.  They are known for reaching millions of readers and have mastered every trick in the book for having those million readers share and re-distribute their content.  Enter the next distribution system in Google Plus and its already exponentially  more than 10 million users and you have yet more metrics and eyeballs to add to your existing pitch of being the most read media property in the world of social.  Last time I checked, Mashable was a business and therefore according to Google, unable to have a presence on its new network.

There are always those that are jail breaking iPhones and those that are gaming the system to get more followers and every other loophole that can be found to get the upper hand.  This apparently is not much different with Mashable and their having a presence on Google Plus.  The route they took?  We will take our leader, Pete Cashmore, and his Google account and use it as a distribution channel.  He is a person and not a business and therefore his account can be used for us here at Mashable.  Is this a gaming of the system?  Are other businesses and brands using their “ambassadors” (Thanks Chris Heuer for that Tweet) to get a jump on the competition and getting an early look as a business on the network?

I have an admission myself, I have not used my Google account for much other than Google Buzz or Wave or whatever else I have needed to use the account for and I suppose my company is getting a leg up on other companies that don’t yet have a Google Plus account, but I am actually at the helm of my account.  I am not sure Pete is the one that is sharing each of the Mashable…err Cashmore shared posts on Google Plus.  It did strike me as funny that they would use advertising space to increase the eyeballs of the Pete Cashmore account.  Are they gaming the system?  Probably.  Do I blame them?  Not really, but I do blame Google for not having a plan on how to better handle this and how they might unfold Google Plus for Business.

UPDATE:  Upon further view it appears that Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land already discussed this in his post and updates.  It appears that Mashable is now just blatantly advertising the fact to get more followers on the account for Pete Cashmore.

There are many social sharing sites and if you wanted to count them it may take you all day to finally include each site in your count. Some of them are well known like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, and of course the latest darling of the dance is Google Plus. Social sharing has been evolving as a way to increase page views and cast a wider net to see if you couldn’t create a larger community and get more readers. We use social sharing at Bloggers For Hire as a way to create this very thing. Social sharing has become big business for many and a way to create some dividends in traffic and numbers. The question I have for you is whether your social sharing is properly branded? Let me explain to you, first what I mean about branding, and then I will give you an example.

Branding to me is making sure that at every turn, your community is reminded of your existence, be it your name, a logo, or something that can identify you as the expert in your field, the product that all must have, or a service people should love. We all know when I say Nike, Pepsi, Ford, that all of these bring an image to mind or a thought or something that stirs our brains to think of the company. That is branding. In the sense of the online world, we must always look for ways to have that in place, be it a link, a banner ad, a mention, or in the case of this post, a social share. Making sure your social sharing is also branded where possible is one more way to make sure you are always putting your brand out front.

The example I have seen and been privy to over the last couple of days has been sharing on Twitter. I read a large number of posts daily. I am constantly consuming information and then sharing that information with my community. It helps the person that has produced the content for me to share and it also informs my clients and others with whom I provide the links. It is a win-win for everyone. I also note that when I share information, via the in post applications people use, they have not branded their default settings.

One such instance this morning was sharing a news item from Media Buyer Planner. No I am not picking on them but it was what spurred this post. The have the sharing buttons as everyone on their news item that can be shared via various networks. I hit the Twitter share button and up popped the Twitter window for me to share with my followers, and I saw the title of the post, and the link and then i saw “via @AddThis”. This is the name of the application and not the name of the Twitter handle of the company where I found the article. They have missed an opportunity to brand @MediaBuyer. Many companies don;t put anything in the spot they can for branding. Make sure you are taking every opportunity to brand your company.

As I sat and watched Mike Arrington of TechCrunch interview Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, I heard them discuss the future of privacy.  It seems that Zuckerberg is evangelizing the death of the doctrine of privacy.  With Facebook being the largest social network out there, that is a pretty scary notion given the fact that we all are signing up and turning our social life over to the Internet.  I wonder what privacy will look like in the next few years?  In fact it seems to be changing at a rapid pace and evolving with every new application.

I recently helped present a series at my son’s school on “Cyber Safety”.  In addition, local law enforcement also presented on the dangers of the world of social networks and what our children are doing online and the predators that are out there and their methods.  It was very sobering to figure that there are that many people out there trying to harm our kids via the Internet and social networks.  An yet, we are all flocking to these networks as our new playgrounds and the place to be and all from the safety, or so it may seem, of our own homes.

I am particularly interested in geo-location or geo-tracking applications that are becoming more and more popular.  Twitter themselves have opened up location based Tweets so that people can determine your whereabouts as you click away at 140 characters.  These software applications are so new that they have yet to become mainstream uses for evil but it can only be a matter of time until we begin to hear of predators using them and suddenly you will hear of their evil deeds on the prime time news.

Is privacy going away?  Is our notion that we are protected by privacy laws and common sense enough?  Have you read the terms of service of each and every software application that you are using today?  Perhaps you have agreed to give up your rights to a private life by participating in that latest cool place to hang out on the Internet?  In 2009 I deemed it “The Year of Listening” as that was the new marketing mantra.  If that were the case, we should probably listen to what I am now calling “The Year of Privacy.”  It could turn out that our privacy will then turn into the “Year of Living Dangerously.”

photo via Alan Cleaver_2000

I have been writing this post in my head for a while after I was catching up on the drama that unfolded with Jason Calacanis and the people at Comscore.  If you have no idea what I might be talking about, you can read all about that flap on Jason’s Posterous blog, and certainly the echochamber that ensued following as compiled by Techmeme and listed out by Jason.

In the tech world online and in social media circles we have been trained that we can do a whole lot of things for very little, and in most cases, everything we want to do has a “Free” application associated with it.  Things like YouTube, Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and a plethora of other things we “sell” to clients and companies that come in our toolkit we obtained for free or for very little investment.  Our investment at this point has been the time it takes to understand and implement the use of such tools.  This has been a very lucrative part of being a social media consultant and I suppose why you cannot swing a dead cat in a room and not hit one or two of the “experts” in our business.  Free is always easy to sell.

I have talked before about “The Problems of Free“, and I also talked about how companies are using free as a business model. I want to turn back to the discussion or debate related to Comscore.  We have begun to expect companies to provide services online for free or for very little cost, and as I see it that proposes a problem somewhere in the chain.  Comscore cannot compete with Free.  Someone has to pay for free.

If you are providing a service online, or if you have the latest cool application and you offer it to your users for free, how do you make money?  I often ask many of the startups that come to me what their revenue model is and how they plan to make money.  This is usually followed of course with “How are you going to pay me?”  I am not yet providing “Free” for my own services.  Many companies have long drawn out plans with “ad revenue”, affiliate marketing”, or worse yet I get a blank stare of “we have not yet come to that part of the business plan.”

In the end, you have to pay for the service you provide, be it your time, servers, salaries, and long lunches at In-N-Out.  Comscore is having the problem explaining that they have to pay their bills.  We have to give our stockholders a piece of the pie and we have to pay our salaries and everything associated with the costs of giving you what you want.  They are not able to barter it all and they certainly cannot ask their employees to do it out of the goodness of their hearts, so they have to charge.  I am not sure whether Jason or anyone else has really come up with an alternative to charging for Comscore’s services, other than perhaps the aforementioned ad revenue or the like.  Someone has to pay for the free in the chain of the exchange.  The problem that I see is that Comscore is asking the customer to pay when others are offering it for “free”, but even in that instance, someone is paying for the free.

Photo via Photos8.com

I was going through my feeds last night and funneling all of my reads as I tend to do in the evenings and sharing some of what I found to be interesting to my community through Twitter.  This is becoming more and more of a habit with me as I tend to pour through a lot of data.  What I think might be of interest to my followers I share.  I am generous that way.  Actually it is part of my overall plan to let the blogosphere and other platforms know that I exist—I network therefore I am.  I see a t-shirt in the makings here.

As I approached the 11:00 pm hour I noticed that my Tweetdeck was acting up.  I am the type that wants everything just to work.  I don’t care about the Internet service and other stuff I want it to work when I hit the power button.  The same thing goes for Twitter.  When I hit send and let everyone what is happening, I want it to work.  When it doesn’t I just chalk it up to another fail whale.  That is until today when I found out that Twitter was hacked.  Not  hacked by a 13 year old kid in his parents basement but by the “Iranian Cyber Army”.  Excuse me?  I was just watching a Leo Laporte show about Cyber Warefare and making fun of it actually on Twitter, but now I read that headline on TechCrunch.  You can see the rest of the coverage on Techmeme.

Twitter is starting to lose my trust.  Is this what we are going to expect out of Twitter’s future?  There has been numerous Phishing problems with Twitter and there are many other incidents just this year of them getting hacked and Google documents being obtained.  I am losing trust for Twitter quickly.  I hope they will learn from the recent attack and work on making adjustments.  Do you trust Twitter?  I’m not sure I would give them my user and password for…. Ooops!  [Runs to change password again]  I am clearly not trusting the Twitter world at present.

I think I have seen it all or in this case heard it all and then they come out with a Twitter song! This is awesome!

I am trying to wrap my had around the idea that Google may possibly be the next owner of our beloved golden child in the world of social media, Twitter.  Are we ready yet to turn the keys to the Twitter kingdom over to the folks at Google?  I have been a serious watchdog lately it seems talking about Twitter ethics and the gaming of Twitter and the eroding of all things pure about the application.

How about if we turn it over to Google and make it a part of that empire?  I know Techcrunch talked about it in terms of Twitter search and that it is becoming the real time search engine.  It makes sense actually and since they turned down the money offered by Facebook due to valuation issues and Facebook’s stock, I think it could be said Google has the bank account for it.  Google and the leadership at Twitter have had dealings in the past with Blogger so in fact there may already be that relationship.  We will see how this unfolds.  I am hoping to get some further analysis from some of the people in our industry to help me grasp the idea but for now I will just try to fathom a life of Twoogle.

Update:  You can read more about it at Techrunch and the rest of the folks on Techememe.

Marketing has taken a new look as we enter the digital age. Companies are now looking for a new way to reach customers. They are reaching them in different ways because their customers are finding them in different ways. With everyone, even my 84 year old grandmother, searching the global market through Google, and getting recommendations from every friend in Facebook, Myspace, YouTube and in circles like Twitter with their options to buy or find services and products, businesses are clamoring for the attention of people. The new look and feel of marketing is participation, or what I have been calling participatory marketing.

Social media is really nothing more that participation in a social structure using different tools. All of the vehicles I mention above are merely a community of people. Like a block party where everyone gathers. An online neighborhood. They talk about their lives, they talk about their kids, they stand around the water cooler now known as their computer screen. They talk about you, your business, your product and your service.

Companies are trying to work their way into these communities now and they want to be the most noticed person at the party. The problem is that many of them are doing it wrong. They participate in the community but don’t provide anything of value. I’m not talking about walking into the party and handing out coupons for $5 off your $100 ice cream scoop. That is the way most are doing it. I’m talking about actually participating. Getting into a community of us Daddies and talking about how your 6 month old kept you all up all night is the conversation starter and ice breaker that works to get an in, but again companies open with that and then turn around and say, “Now download my sidebar widget thingy.” Again, what does that have to do with a sleepless night unless my 6 month old is put to sleep by your product? It takes a while for you to be in the group before I want to be approached for life changing conversations, like here let me help you buy a new home. Perhaps I should be calling this Kumbaya Marketing.

It takes a while for you to be in my group long enough to give me marital advice or if you want me to buy your stuff. Some of the companies have already been in my group a while. Some of the big brands and major companies are a part of our everyday lives and they can leverage that into instant credibility. If you come to my community for instance and say hey look at this cool Mac Book Pro, chances are we will all look and perhaps buy. If you want me to send you $100 to have me try your latest blue pill that will change my life, I will probably have to get to know you first.

[photo via mikebaird]*

*Not really relevant to participatory marketing but that is the point. Be relevant. That is one cute critter though. Since we are talking about Otters, check out Otter Box. See what I mean? No they are not a client, but they are a cool company that is using social media. They have been in my community a little. Now if I could get them to send me a new Blackberry case with the actual Blackberry in it.

I have been asked that a number of times and I have a specifically crafted response, “I follow everyone that includes social media expert in their bio.” The response has a certain tongue in cheek quality to it but it has more truth than anything else. Yes it is true, like falling out of boat you hit water and like pulling up a Twitter bio you see “social media.” There are experts, gurus, strategists, consultants, wizards, rock stars and many other titles associated with social media people and their listed professions. I often joke about my own title. I have called myself social media consultant as it seems to be the buzz phrase, but I used to be a blog consultant, and my running joke at present is side bar wigetizer expert. You can never tell which way that tide will take you.

My point to all of this is merely to state that it really matters not the number of followers but the quality of those followers. If you sell flowers or if your business is chocolate covered cherries, chances are you can find your own niche on Twitter and any other network. Heck, some of those niches have huge networks. Scrapbooking is a group that comes to mind and knitters. They have a huge niche. You can find like minded people using some of the apps available, I mentioned before using Mr. Tweet, and then there is Twellow, and some of the other apps you can use. The idea is to find people that have your interest.

The important takeaway from this is to make sure you put the information you want people to see in your Twitter bio and profile. If you want people to find you, your bio should be filled with the keywords or phrases that people are looking for or trying to find. A look at Twellow makes my point. Just so happens at the time of this writing there are 3800+ people that have made “social media” a searchable term. Also it just so happens I have just over 4000 people I am following. Actually, it is more a coincidence because I am also following lots of mothers and fathers and other niche’s, but if you want to find a specific person to follow on Twitter, say an underwater basket weaver, I can find one for you (Thanks to @zinkly for allowing this bit of humor, our sole listed Twitterer at the time I put this together).

People talk all the time about search and increasing your search rank and search marketing, are you being found through this source? Ask yourself that question and I hope your answer is yes.

[Photo by Sreejith K]

One the best referrals I get from Google is my post on Google as a Lead Generator. I get many leads as a result of people simply searching on Google for the services I offer. I recently found others that are using online tools as a lead generator as well. Twitter.   

I am speaking at an event in Miami this week with Rick Calvert of Blog World Expo and Chris Brogan. We are doing a panel on using social media to help promote your convention or trade show. The event is IAEE which is the trade show or convention for the trade show and convention industry. I am looking forward to being in Miami while the snow falls here in Denver. I sent out a Tweet on Twitter about heading out to the city.

Anyone want to organize a Tweetup in the Miami area Wednesday night?

Immediately upon sending out that Twitter I noticed that three new twitter followers were now following me. As is my norm I checked out these new followers and wanted to see their bio, where they were from and who they were following and speaking to on Twitter. Did i have anything in common with them, Should I be interested in following them on twitter as well? What I found was interesting. 3 out of the three new followers I had gained were from the hotel or travel industry in the Miami area. This is interesting because one of the followers had a pitch right in their bio. Coming to Miami? Check out our stuff. I am paraphrasing of course but this is a very interesting use of Twitter. They can quickly follow a user that sends out a tweet that contains a keyword they are interest in for instance “Travel Miami”. They set up a twitter search for that phrase and can quickly drill down and get a quick lead follow up to the person sending that Twitter. If I had been looking for perhaps their service, they are there and showing me what they have to offer. Chances are I might but their product or book travel through them or whatever the case might be.

I remember Robert Scoble talking about this when Marayam was pregnant with their child. He continued to ask why companies were not there looking for ways to sell him a stroller or to get him to sign up for their gods in a registry etc. This is doing exactly that. Using Twitter to generate a possible sale. I think this is an innovative way to do business. If they get a few sales or leads for sales using this method it makes sense. It is an inexpensive use of a social media tool.

[Pic via Glengarry Glen Ross]

I have been meaning to write this post for some time and continue to get sidetracked and have my ADD kick in which keeps me from writing (oh look something shiny). It wasn’t until Guy Kawasaki recently wrote a post on Twitter as a business tool or as he refers to it a Twool, that i decided I had to finally get words to a page.

I am referring to Guy’s post of a few days ago called “How To Use Twitter As A Twool.” I had to look twice to see if he spelled that correctly. Normally I do not disagree with Guy. He has about twice the brain power I have and it shows in his success and frankly his bank account. When he speaks people really do tune in and listen to his advice. He is one of the leaders in the world of tech and social media which is why I don’t often disagree with his blog posts. In this instance however, I have to say I think he misses the mark on a couple of things. Not because Twitter should not be used in business as part of your online social media arsenal, but because his advice comes from on high and not down in the trenches.

Guy has paid his dues early and has worked hard to garner the celebrity status he has today. He has launched a few online things that take off immediately just because it has his name attached to it. Some of his things are not too popular as in Truemors, but other things he has are quite cool and do well such as Alltop. I needed to preface my post with all of this because I have seen companies like Guy’s try to launch and get attention and hit below the mark. His companies get instant saturation because he is in the cool kids group. I struggle to help some companies not in the cool kids group get the traction they deserve and help with with the use of tools just like Twitter, which brings us full circle to my point (we had to get there sooner or later).

Guy provides 10 ways to use twitter as a business tool and I agree with nearly all of the points made but I wanted to clarify the point or flat out tell Guy he is wrong. The first of his 10 tips caught my attention immediately:

1. Forget the “influentials.” You must buy into the theory that products and services reach critical mass because mere mortals spread the word for you. This defies the common wisdom that a handful of “influentials” shape what the rest of us try and what we adopt. In the online world, these influentials include Mike “I can go a week without Twitter” Arrington, Robert Scoble, Seth Godin, and to some extent me.

Guy is very much correct in his opinion that mere mortals will make your business a success. The problem with that statement however is the fact that mere mortals do not have the accessibility to the information as much as the influentials like Guy and Robert Scoble and Mike Arrington and Seth Godin. It is easy for Guy to say I can’t make or break your company you have to have a product that doesn’t suck. Agreed Guy, but you have to have the ability for a mass amount of the little people to actually hear of your product and then you can sit back and watch the buzz begin. Not everyone has that luxury. I watched at Blog World Expo when you mentioned a company you were looking at everyone madly making a note to go and see what company you mentioned. Yeah, it was a cool company, but because you mentioned it, I actually had a chance to check them out. My advice is don’t discount getting the info to the people through a megaphone such as those influencers mentioned. It is the somebodies that get the information to the nobodies. I myself would never hear about some of the cool stuff in the tech world had it not been for Robert Scoble having access to things where I cannot get past the door. Yes, Robert Scoble is the Richard Grieco to me being a Butabi brother. This is a blog post unto itself (more to come).

Remember the Motrin debacle? It took a few of the influencers in the Mommy blogdom to get the ball rolling, then the army of the nobodies were able to take the ball and run. Actually that is not true completely as a nobody mentioned it to a somebody and then, well you know the outcome. Getting the influencers to light the fuse is a part of the equation Guy discounts in his post. I think it is one of the more important parts of the puzzle. Guy has never not been invited to the party. He has not stood on the street hoping his name is on “the list”.

I also wanted to touch on the third point Guy makes in his tips:

3. Get as many followers as you can. I recently explained what I do to get more followers. Click here to read about my methods. Ignore people who tell you that it’s the quality of your followers not the quantity. They’re trying to make friends, not use Twitter as a tool. And, truth be told, there are only two kinds of Twitter users: those that want more followers and those that lie. You can follow me here.

The reason you want more followers is the law of big numbers: the more followers, the more people talking about what you do, the more you can reach the tipping point. If you think you “know” exactly who can and will help you, you are deluding yourself.

I purposely ignore those people on Twitter that don’t use the tool as it is intended. This is a fine line you must learn to walk. Guy seems to imply that getting followers is important, and it is (follow me here) but how you get those followers is more of the point. I get many people that follow me on Twitter and when I go to their twitter page they have perhaps 10 updates in the last 6 months or even not at all and they have 3000 people they are following and have about 100

people that have reciprocated that action. This is in no way using Twitter. You have to put a little effort into it to get anything out of it. Yes, Guy is correct, the more followers the larger the reach, but make sure you are not shelved as a Twitter spammer. Your influence will be ignored.

At the end of the day however, pay attention to Guy and what he has to say about things. He had a hard time with twitter at first and I must admit I unfollowed him and ignored any Twitter stream he had. He has since turned that ship around and really uses Twitter as a tool for his own business. I have read a book or two and the man is a genius when it comes to doing things right. Guy’s latest book is Reality Check and I don’t yet have my copy. I’m hoping I can get one of those checks soon.

[tool photo via flattop341]

As I was growing up in rural Colorado, we had plenty of opportunities to see magpies in their environment. They were usually standing over the latest roadkill. Basically they are scavengers. They get fed from nothing they have done on their own but finding the opportunity. I draw that picture to my own mind and drawing the metaphor of the name and bird over to thinking about the latest company and their attempt to monetize from the efforts of others. I am speaking from the recent launch of a advertising site that is asking people to use their Twitter stream for advertising purposes. I am speaking of Magpie. I had a chance to hear of this from my friend Lucretia Pruitt (@geekmommy) on Twitter itself.

I spoke about the idea of a third party monetizing Twitter earlier today. I think that Twitter needs to get on board with a private beta or an alpha or a something. I know they have been wrestling with this like most others on how they take something and make money at it. They throw ads on it and sit back and hope the sales guys can turn a profit. I’m not in the boardroom of Twitter and this is probably already a part of their behind the scenes workings. At least I hope so given their latest offer of $500 Million from Facebook. To turn down an amount like that you have to have your reasons. I know they say Facebook is overvalued but that is another blog post completely.

Frankly they may do well to have Magpie or another third party prove the ability to make it work and then just take some of the money they have and buy it up. I’m sure that they would not have a problem to make that happen unless of course the price tag of the company was too high and in that respect they merely block the company from the API and not allow them to use twitter for that purpose. The terms of service clearly allows for them to do what they feel is best for Twitter:

We reserve the right to alter these Terms of Use at any time.

Magpie spends the time the effort and energy to monetize the system, gets everyone used to the fact that Twitter now shows up with ads in the streams, or in the background and companies bring the ads and back the money truck up to the Twitter dock.
I have seen and read about the idea that the people on Twitter are calling the Magpie service the PayPerPost (Ted Murphy’s company that used bloggers and their blog content for advertising, now known as IZEA) of Twitter. People forget that PayPerPost was not real popular with the blogging elite or the purists, yet the investors and VC types have been writing checks to the group on a regular basis. I can foresee the same thing happening for the folks at Magpie. They are beginning to get some traction and according to TechCrunch people that use their service are bound to make some decent money.

[photo via Neil Phillips]

I have been busily working out my Twitter thoughts here in the last few days as it has become apparent that I have a slight addiction that needs to be fed now and then as it relates to how I use the service.  I have, at this writing, just under 3000 people or organizations I am following and have begun to turn up my drinking from that fire hose of information a little.  I continue to feel a connection with this application, and I am drawn to it much like I was to blogging when I first caught on with it nearly five years ago.  To me Twitter is the epitome of social media.

I joined Twitter about the time Robert Scoble said he had found this new application in late 2006.  I didn’t really get it at first, but I continued to monitor things.  I have joined and downloaded many apps and tools, but this one seemed a little different.  Then I went to SXSW and suddenly I was caught up in the Twitter plague like most of my friends and colleagues.  For whatever reason, the application had gone viral.

I am now at more than 7000 messages or “Tweets” and not looking back.  It’s funny how some applications just seem to catch on with the people that use them.  I think there are a few components that make an application like this work, and it has to do with need obviously, ego which is the driving force for many of us, and lastly it connects us as groups.  This is why I think Twitter is successful.  Looking over my Tweetstats, I see that I am talking to the same friends in my Twitter life as I do in my real life.  This makes it a little simpler to speak to them and I think that is a hook as well.

I was reading Kara Swisher this morning about the possibility of a merger between two giants, Facebook and Twitter, and I don’t see that happening until the two can at least figure out a way to make money.  Twitter is valued at $98 Million and Facebook is exponentially more.

Neville Hobson showed us what we might expect to see as it relates to Twitter putting advertisements on its pages.  Frankly, if they don’t launch something soon, a third party (i.e. Magpie) may be in the works to do it for them. Of course, this may be their thought or plan to have someone else find and fund the way to making money for the company.  I continue to joke about the fact that people like Guy Kawasaki, and I will admit even myself would pay a monthly fee if they wanted to charge for the service.

This post started out being much more in depth but I kept biloing it down to 140 characters or less.  To say the least, it is a beneficial tool for anyone looking to be a part of their network and communicating with that network.  As I sit here hoping that as I type this post my computer does not crash again, I find that many of my Twitter followers are helping me decide what desktop to buy, what third party Twitter client to use to monitor my Tweets.  I also have a good understanding of what all of my friends are doing.  I guess it all starts with that single questions we see as an empty box on that Twitter screen…”What are you doing?”