If your business has just started hearing about the benefits of blogging, Twitter, and Facebook…let Smashwebs clear a little bit up.  I’m finding that businesses are putting efforts into the areas of marketing that don’t necessarily benefit them at all.  There’s plenty of examples of situations where a business’ marketing methods not only didn’t reach their right target, but did nothing more than annoy potential clients.

Lets examine Twitter for today:

Of course, the place where online marketing and annoying converge is often located at Twitter.com.  Our beef with Twitter is simple enough, it really doesn’t serve a purpose for most people other than an excellent means of spreading gossip and rumors to people that don’t really care.  The company itself is seemingly worthless from a financial perspective and despite having over $50 million dollars in venture capital raised in its third round (and millions of users) it is still a non-profit, in the sense that they aren’t making any money.  In my opinion Twitter is absolutely a fad, and unless they find a way to attract people that are willing to actually buy things from the people they are subscribing it is going to remain a red mark on any of those investors tax returns.  Facebook prides itself on being a free tool for social connection and updates, that’s why people use it.  It’s free because people want to advertise where millions of people can see their ads – it couldn’t exist without the business side!  Twitter is no different.  The main thing that strikes me as odd about Twitter is this: The only people I see using it are businesses or celebrities for the SOLE purpose of gaining followers.  It’s a free-to-lease-mall full of stores that has no shoppers.  We call that Behind the Wall Advertising.