This post was mentioned on Twitter by jrwlay: @rshevlin at least i am not one of “them”… well maybe to grab votes but that is all. good read. http://ow.ly/1mSY6...

I am annoyed like you with marketing and advertising types – really people who think they know that profession that don’t have that job function or title – who see Twitter [you name the new hot thing] as the silver bullet to selling more. The new advertising mediums too often let the inadequate marketers continue to generate sub par messages.

Insightful post as always. Twitter is either going to have a successful ad platform or they are going to have to charge a subscription fee to users. Twitter is a cool concept but there comes a time when you have to generate revenue to pay back the investors.

You said “I’m to blame” b/c Twitter follower count has increased faster than blog readership. I don’t think it’s your fault at all, and I would be willing to bet it’s the same story with 95% of the other bloggers out there. First, Twitter is new, so people jump on the bandwagon. Second, reading a blog post requires 10x more effort than reading a tweet. Who are we fooling thinking people are going to make the effort. (I was considering doing this post as one of the silly animated cartoons (i.e., Twitter Bitches) because twice as many people will watch that than will read this post).

Your observation that 80% of SM connections is one-way Web 1.0 communications is a great point. I don’t know that it’s 80%, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a high percentage. But — for better or worse — the beauty/benefit of an effective tool is that it lets different people use it for different purposes. So if people want to use Twitter or other social media tools for one-way communication, so be it. They’re not wrong for using it the way they want to (thx to JP for helping me to finally realize that).

What’s always been interesting (and sad, I guess) to me is that as the number of my followers on Twitter has skyrocketed, the number of readers on my blog has not. I’m to blame, of course, because that means I haven’t done enough to compel them to dive deeper into my thoughts. I haven’t published consistently or frequently enough to really boost my readership.

And, perhaps a sign that I’m finally maturing (doubtful), I haven’t really cared. People don’t read because they don’t care. More to the point, they can’t care. Our world of hyper-connectedness makes it impossible to give adequate attention to that which we have voluntarily connected to. That realization has led me to believe that social media, at least for 80% of the friends/followers/connections/etc. you are associated with, has come full circle back to the world of one-way, Web 1.0 communications. We’ve approached our online relationships with a “growth at any cost” approach.

Guess what? We grew too fast.