I came across two pieces put out by Harvard Business. I found them interesting because they offered competing views of the usefulness of Twitter as a marketing tool.

The first article comes from John Sviokla. He also has a similar post on his own blog.

Twitter: A Marketer’s Duct Tape - John Sviokla - HarvardBusiness.org

twitter is a means of communication that can be layered over anything and everything,

Is Twitter for Serious Marketers? - Tom Davenport - HarvardBusiness.org

Do serious marketers spend a lot of time and energy on Twitter campaigns? I doubt it. Sure, go ahead and play around with it — it doesn’t cost much. But I defy you to do serious brand management in 140-character messages. I defy you to prove that Twitter users are your typical customer — unless you sell bubble tea or something similar — or that their tweets are a true reflection of their relationship with your company.

Let’s face it — Twitter is a fad. It has all the attributes of a fad, including the one that people like me don’t get its appeal. It has risen quickly and it will fall quickly. It’s this year’s Second Life

Obviously I agreed 100% with John. And it doesn’t surprise me to find a Harvard Business School professor dismissing Twitter. What did surprise me was that it came from Tom Davenport an author I widely respect and frequently read. His books The Attention Economy, Thinking for a Living and Competing on Analytics are great books which I highly recommend.

This made me stop and think (it’s important to do that every now and then). A well respected business author doesn’t see the value in Twitter? Step away from the echo chamber and re-evaluate. Breathe the fresh air. So I did just that both voluntarily and involuntary.

I took a 60 hour break from Twitter and almost all online connectivity. Then a few days later I came down with strep throat and slept for almost 3 days straight. My mind is almost completely cleansed of all Twitter activity and I can still say that I disagree with Tom. I’ll still read his books but will always have a bit of doubt in my mind now as to the validity of any future trend predictions he may make. Unless of course he turns out to be right then I’ll come crawling back to his writings like he was Nostradamus. We’ll see.

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