Google AdWords Specialists

Is Twitter another Second Life?

April 19th, 2008 · 3 Comments

At eMarketing Summit in Portland Kent Lewis happened to mention he had lunch with Seth Godin when in New York. Nice happenstance to be able to mention

To paraphrase, Kent expressed surprise at Godin’s outlook on Twitter, which Kent characterized something like, “short term buzz, long term impact unlikely.”

What fascinated me most about the comment was that at SearchFest‘07 someone had asked Kent what he thought about Second Life. I would characterize his comments as something like, “short term buzz, long term impact unlikely”. It is looking like Kent may have been correct on that, from what I hear anyway.

Now this is a lot of characterization and paraphrasin’ so if anyone is really interested in the opinions of either of these men on Twitter or Second Life, please go to the source.

What I am mulling over is the evaluation process used by experts in Search, Internet, and Marketing when deciding where to put their time.

Can’t do it all.

And as an entrepreneur in a volatile and rapidly changing field, not spending a lot of time on losers is critical. Capital can be recovered, time cannot.

I take the short view. Mainly, where is my target market online, and what are they doing online now, and for the next several years. That is often a far cry from “what is cool” in the world of search, internet, or even more general marketing.

This at times makes me a bit of a Luddite amongst some of my peers, but right now not getting distracted by every web fad that is the hot topic in search and yet has not gotten traction among the general market place is best for my clients and my practice. I think. Maybe a jealous Luddite would be more accurate

Nonetheless, based on the buzz I guess I best get with the Twitter bandwagon, (as in take more time from some other aspect of my life and put it towards Twitter).

Unless of course I take Seth Godin’s view.

Tom Hale - AdWords Specialist