Thank you for this post and for the great content you share in your blog.

I wanted to briefly share our own thinking related to acquiring attention amidst the overwhelming number of competitors. At WordWrite Communications (http://www.wordwritepr.com), we focus on telling the great, untold stories of our clients. This has led us to develop StoryCrafting, our own process for helping organizations to create, develop and share their great, untold story. We focus on three things: developing the authentic stories of our clients, identifying the fluent storytellers in the organization who can tell those stories, and helping our clients to constantly “read the audience” to assure that real dialogue, and thus, real communication, is occurring, when the stories are told.

We very much would like to expand the dialogue on StoryCrafting, and for that reason, I invite you and your readers to take a look at our new white paper on this topic (http://www.wordwritepr.com/pdf/storycrafting_white_paper.pdf) and also our blog, which shares additional background and ideas on these topics (http://www.wordwritepr.com/blogstorytelling/).

I’ve noticed a shift in the quality of people following me. With the popularity comes the bots and those trying to exploit the space. And this, I think, is what will affect Twitter as a social media space. How potent will the conversation be now that it’s being diluted by millions of phantom accounts? Maintaining your list of followers will be crucial to sustaining this space.

This tendency will only increase as we hurtle towards a real-time web. FriendFeed has launched the world’s first real-time, live streaming, social media service that is set to revolutionize all media. Yet as people constantly and seamlessly update their “lifestream”, I wonder about the role of meaningful communication?

The funny – and yes timely – Flutter April Fools joke (below) parodied our growing obsession with instantaneous information, exposing the growing misunderstanding that the newness of a means of communication automatically makes that communication meaningful.

The important distinction, as Zeus Jones points out, is that while real time information loses value over time, timeless pieces grow in value.

When you consider brands also rely on an emotional connection with their customers to motivate their behavior, this confusion can be costly. Of course, a meaningful connection isn’t always timeless but the same limitations apply. Hoping to generate trust, interest or loyalty in 140 characters alone is as misguided as a guy wheeling out his best one-liner at a bar. Brands must use a composite of media to build an effective relationship with their customers, rather than see social media as an end in itself. Even when a brand, its products or social entrepreneurship becomes the focal point for conversation it must also play the overarching role of “aggregator and curator”, as Joseph Jaffe asserts, “to provide a place where consumers can see the conversations pulled together, engage with the brand, hear the story in the brand’s voice”.

A means of communication is not an end in itself. It exists to create a connection that enables us to recognize ourselves in others. If our daily exchanges are reduced to a teeming sea of quips, asides and blunt reductions, we simply enlist ourselves in the service of data tracking. As if our lives were some enormous marketing focus group and our communication ticks for empty boxes.

When communication becomes a shooting gallery, the first casualty is dialogue that adds meaning to our lives. As both marketers and consumers, we would be foolish to let this happen.

It has already distabilised the email mode of communication and now it is very quickly entering into the mainstream media as well..as you have highlighted quite nicely the post!!

1. that Twitter's prevailing cultural sociology of behavior and interactions (that we've come to know and enjoy) becomes "mainstreamed" by the clutter of fandom and the din of "irrelevance?"

2. that Twitter's pioneering early adopters, the followers they formed, and the countless other users who share in the community's prevailing culture of creating & collaborating and belonging & bonding simple vacate the space all-together?

Regarding your interesting observation that Twitter users are increasing their reader share in online traditional media networks, I have a feeling it's more of a hollow solace for their owners/shareholders. The fact is, what these traditional media properties need are opportunities to earn revenues off of fee-based content, and Twitter traffic will not monetize for them. Oh well…what will they do to survive?

Brian, always good to comment on your insight.

This post is great, and recently (yesterday) I wrote about other topics covered here in our blog (see link on my name), and what I most strongly agree is that relevance is going to become a definite must, and a very scarce commodity. People won’t handle following tons of people broadcasting “next to useless info”. It would kill the whole purpose of creating a new world where we only listen and absorb what we really want to, and need.

Our blog is a month old, and I can say, like Phil just said, that not only 50% but about 90% from our traffic comes from tweets and RTs. =)

Cheers everyone, great post Brian, thanks!