A post I wrote on the effect of marketing on social media titled Tower Bridge and the End of Innocence

"To a first approximation, the entire web is spam when it comes to appliance reviews"

Self-promotion may appear revolting, but it’s the only promotion that’s guaranteed in this business. Do it right, and only haters will hate you for it. To get, you must give.

Twitter have finally written a comprehensive guide to how businesses can use their service commercially. It's geared towards etiquette with some nice case studies the seem to emphasise the conversation and not pissing people off. It's a bit of a tightrope and there are no blanket rules (don't spam people with promotional links, unless people are following you for promotional links, and so on) but I can't see any major problems with this document.

We are mainstream...

If you want your thing to spread wide on the net, best get the geeks on side.

This guide is aimed at software developers, obviously, and outlines the steps used in launches for Gmail and other services where they started small with limited invites, learned from that manageable pool of users and gradually let in more and more, building a great product and a trusted marketing campaign at the same time. What interests me is how this could be applied to non-software launches, especially those that look to engage people on a community basis. Could the invite / testing paradigm be applied to, say, an arts festival? I'm not sure but I'd love to see it tried.

"is the first single from Deerhoof’s upcoming record, Offend Maggie. Download the sheet music, make your own version, upload it to your webpage or blog, then post the link here." Fantastic way to promote a new album!

Chris Brogan runs through the obvious and not-so-obvious in this very useful list.

One of those fine line between good and evil things here but when you strain the marketing stuff out there are some interesting thoughts on the whole authentic voice thing.

and blogging his notes.