My dear readers, I present to you a guest post from Lefty Wahl ...
Dear“Flagged For” Reader –
I regret
to inform you that this is not your trusted F.F.F.U. provocateur.
Flagged
has invited me to join him in a “Blargument,” which, frankly is a term I’m
embarrassed to even type out, much less partake in. But, I am always looking
for a good fight, so I accepted.
We agreed
to disagree on the subject of Twittering (another term I am loathe to type).
But since we already have differing takes on the matter, we suddenly had
ourselves a virtual battle of the twits.
I think
we all know where Flagged stands on Twitter. He loves it. He follows 161
tweeters. He’s followed by 236 tweeters. And he’s tweeted 901 times. He’s
blogged about twitter at least four times now - all interesting points of view,
on content that typically is not [here
AND here]. And he insists, that as someone who works in marketing and communications, not
having a twitter page is akin to career suicide.
VS 
I am not
a tweeter. I hate most tweets that I read. I hate every tweet that I’ve ever
attempted to write. And I hate the very transparent motive behind most every
Twit out there.
After the
age of 25, Twitter is nothing more than tool for self-promotion. The more you
tweet, the more you appear on other people’s radar. And the more people on
whose radar you appear, the more relevant you stay.
That’s
all fine and well for a brand. I’m in the business of helping brands stay
relevant. And for those of you who will inevitably argue that you are your own
brand, this my friends, is the junk mail of brands.
I like to
think the equity of my brand lies in the quality of thought I bring to the
table. Not the quantity. Or even the ubiquity. If there is a smart memorable
way to tell your brand story through twitter, I’m all for it (I’ve got some
ideas). But to date, I have not seen it. And yet, if I don’t let the world know
that I “just put my kid to bed. Time for Lost,” I’m somehow a professional
pariah.
The fact
that I’m even writing about one form of social media through another, closely
related form of social media, sort of just blows holes through my entire
argument. But since the readership of my blog consists of my mother and a few
bored friends in no position to grow my “brand,” I think my argument still
holds water.
Wait a
sec... This isn’t my blog. Which means there are people I don’t even know
reading this. Which I was part conscious of all along.
Shit.
(Ian-1,
Lefty-0)
Note: This is a guest post by Lefty Wahl. It represents Lefty’s POV alone and not those of mine, Ian Sohn. You can find my [Ian] counter argument at Lefty’s blog.