DISQUS

Happy Birthday Molly!

Ed - Awesome depth of field - and great shot of Hannah in the background ;)

@Dean - Google has teams of guys working on spam footprint analysis, so if it gets out of hand, that will be the end. (It's happened with countless services previously)

As for the genuine contributors - in most cases, it's just spreading their work further (i.e. YouTube videos, reprintable articles, etc)

I agree - the sky isn't falling, the world isn't ending, and [gasp] WordPress Direct DOES actually deliver genuine value.

@Doug aka Nullvariable - Michelle isn't selling the software.

If you said this was a case of a sales pitch backfiring, I'd agree 100%.

Everyone wants the easy, lazy solution - and WordPressDirect spun their pitch to give it to them. And now, it doesn't matter what they do, the Mashable crowd is going to think WordPressDirect is spam software.

For newbies who are setting up their first web-site, for experts doing a lot of niche or affiliate marketing, and 6 or 7 other types of people in-between - nothing is easier to set up a blog.

Re: AutoPosting Content - If you're going to splog, you'll get slapped. The idea is that you use it to find good quality content (that you manually vet), schedule content to be posted, and use it to supplement content that you write yourself.

But if people don't vet the content, and just use it to auto-upload junk, Google-et-al's algorithms WILL spot this, WILL slap them, and WILL stop them getting any benefit from their content.

You get what you give.

If you deliver value, you get value.

Loving podcasts and audio books lately. Fantastic way to digest information. Stick them on in the car - much better than FM radio any day ;)

Just finished Ep #4 of IMTW.

Will need to look at "You look nice today" - sounds like my thing. :)

Been doing a lot of that lately!

Also found that just by "being there" and responding to forum and blog posts, peoples harsh criticisms subside

Brent

Just caught this, Ed you sneaky so-and-so...

The people around the table (clockwise from top left) are: Emily, Marty, Rob, Eugene, Brent, Ben...

But what do they do, and why are they talking?.... ;)

Great post Rizzn - but I wouldn't be too worried.

You're right when you say that it's not going to be profitable for the people who Twitter the wrong way.

On Twitter, we "choose" what we want to listen to.

Unlike the AOL+usenet scenario, there's no real capacity for "spam" (unsolicited commercial communication) in Twitter.

That means it needs to be "pull" marketing/communication - people who successfully market on Twitter will be successful because they use Twitter in a way that people *want* to listen to.

They *attract* followers.

If someone doesn't communicate/market effectively (i.e. - there's no value in what they say, or it's all pump-and-dump, churn-and-burn marketing) then they lose their crowd, no-one will be listening on Twitter, and as a result no-one will care.

So what if a handful of jerks who don't "get it" constantly pitch their products on Twitter... Nobody's going to be listening...

(Having said all that, look at "woot" - it's the exception that proves the rule, with 9,300+ followers and nothing but shameless self-promotion.)

If you want to know how internet marketers will use Twitter, it's 2 ways...

1) Networking;
2) Communicating with their "crowds", and;
3) To keep up-to-date with the latest in their industry..

It's how all those "scummy ebook jerks" are using it so far... those sly bastards! ;)

Brent

http://www.twitter.com/brenthodgson

Great post.

Recently here in Australia, employees of several financiers have complained that they are pressured to "sell loans" to people that can't afford to repay them.

Fortunately, savings here are (slightly) higher than in the USA.

I'm a big fan of the micro-sales.

A buddy of mine is working on a web venture with a "premium services" package as the revenue model - with a potential investor buy-out.

The problem with funding using premium services is getting people to buy to begin with.

I'm a big fan of #4.



This makes running a panel, or even an interview, so easy.



It takes care of #2 too, and if you ARE too scared to ask a particularly juicy question, you can always hide behind the "this question is from John Smith of Timbuktu" phrasing.



Brent