A lot of it is conflicting, so it seems that the more I read, the more the common sense rule of making one’s own mind up ought to prevail. And with opinions of difference such as your own and Jim Novo’s I feel even more forced into that view. No bad thing, but on the whole I think the friendly wild west frontier feeling probably is dissipating for long termers like yourself.

For newbies like me, coming from a more cynical marketing push background, it still feels like new media, and it feels social. A woman from Briish Columbia and a man from Cork, neither of whom I know, very generously gave me the benefit of their learnings in the last week, neatly packaged too. Yep, it feels social to me. But I don’t doubt that when the corporation figures it out finally, that will face some erosion. I’d better stop. I feel an online version of Desiderata coming on…

Back to basics and a good thing too!

I agree – and I think you’ll find that’s exactly what Chris and others in the list offer on their blogs and through other mediums.

I see a lot of people commenting here think social media is a waste of time, and hey, maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong – but it’s an opinion and we all have our own. Which is what makes marketing and any other “service-led” industry such a funky place to be – one man’s cheese is another man’s Baby Bel.

At the end of the day, if a blog encourages interaction (which yours does well) and it makes people think and ask questions of themselves, then that’s success, no? Regardless of Alexa ranking?

(Which, according to my Firefox toolbar, my blog has a higher rating but means absolutely diddly squat as we’re geared to different audiences).

Here’s to every successful blog – one reader or more.

Thing is, the “social media consultants” aren’t really in the market the marketers want in on mostly because that neat package called social media doesn’t exist, it’s the modern day vend diagram bull, just stroke your chin and throw in a few key words and your in. So you get these social media guru’s playing the same old trend setter/spotter game that, as Pat has said, is one of the oldest games in town.

Just look at the fashion industry as the most analogous to “social media”… Nobody devoid of mental defect wares 99% of that high fashion ego fart clobber. Plenty a group wankist riding on the bandwagon, mostly for the free coke and easy sex with wannabe models…

That begs the question, social media gurus, are they in it to bed wannabe rails coders?

The truth is that spinning words to wrap fluffy concepts and bullshit sales methodologies is the highest form of protectionism. Making communications tools as hazy and arcane as possible works for these Ninjas, because it’s a high demo of misdirection and illusion. Without all this bull, they’d all be on the dole or pumping off other suckers. I wonder how many of these hacks were Millennium Eve experts/WAP marketing whizzes?

Shitterville is in the shitter. Not because of the community, but because of these leaches.

Nonetheless – I see your point on revenue but comparing your site and DoshDosh.com, where Maki has built a great blog and following, through Alexa shows that you have a slightly higher ranking than him. Does that really tell the story?

I’ll take valuable content and conversation over an Alexa ranking any day.