Reasons and/or Occurrences That Should Keep You From Posting About Your Latest "Great" Idea

(in no particular order)

1. You regretfully told two co-workers about your blog in a misguided attempt to "save" an awkward conversation. Subsequently, you do not have the stomach to live in a constant state of anxiety about whether or not you will be mocked, fired, and/or served with a sexual-harassment suit after posting about any work related subject.
   Note on regret: So many subjects are now out the window... such a waste...such a sad sad waste.
2. It's apparently still what your wife refers to as "too soon" to make jokes about that.
3. Tweetage Wasteland would probably do it better.
4. Tweetage Wasteland has already done it, and in fact did it better.
5. It's not "Casual" enough.
6. Everybody already knows Steve Jobs has resigned.
   Note on self-worth: You don't even own a Mac.
7. Not controversial enough.
8. Too controversial.
9. Posting about that would technically be a hate crime.
10. After tweeting an amazingly creative and provocative industry-shaking tagline, which you spent hours crafting and perfectly wording, you received exactly no responses, mentions, or re-tweets.
11. You've come to realize the fact that "anything you can do, Ethan Marcotte can do better."
    Note on self-confidence: This will always be true.
12. This is only your second blog post and you should probably save the really "good" ideas for when your reader participation has expanded beyond "...pure charity."

Stop Looking at My Tweeteage!

This past month News Corporation (i.e. the second stupidest company in the world) sold MySpace to Specific Media (i.e. THE stupidest company in the world) for a loss of nearly $545 million (excluding whatever it cost to promote, maintain, and cry over the toxic investment for the last 6 years). I'm sure the decision to purchase MySpace will haunt News Corp. for many years to come. However, the pessimist in me still thinks they got the better end of this deal. Specific Media (and new part owner Justin Timberlake) claim to have big plans but I just can't see what they expect to do with a website that was once bought for $580 million and then "flipped" for... $35... million. Then again maybe Specific Media might have bagged the deal of the decade... it can't get much worse.

So what happened? Most would say Facebook happened and it was clearly a better experience so everyone just switched over. That's probably true. My opinion is two fold: 1st - Everyone left MySpace because it was horrible. Period. It was cool for awhile but then the insincere self-promoting singer-songwriters and annoying corporate marketing junkies took over. This left little room for the rest of us. 2nd - MySpace was not Twitter.

I firmly believe at the end of the day Twitter will be the last man standing when it comes to the social media arms race. Don't get me wrong, Facebook profiles are great, Flickr accounts are handy, Google+ looks promising, and LinkedIn is... still around right??? But I feel they all fall short in relevance to the humble Tweet.

Twitter is the only place on the web with the scope of mundane introspective daily updates to providing the momentum behind protest movements in the Middle East. Twitter is the only place I can talk trash about Bon Iver's "overly-hyped and disappointing" latest release and within 30 seconds receive a threat of castration from some dude in Canada for daring to hate on his indie cred (true story). It's great. If you are late to the game (as I was), I suggest you take the plunge and start assembling a mass of Tweeps. You'll be surprised at how addicting it gets (I actually used to have some sort of life before Tweetle Mania landed on my phone). In fact, I want to draw a line in the sand and go on record stating as long as people are willing to converse, Twitter is where the relevant online conversations will happen.

Do you agree? Am I preaching to the choir? I would love to hear what you think (unless you want to hash about Bon Iver... I am unwillingly to budge on that). Leave a comment or better yet - find me on Twitter.